According to Nonprofit Hub, 90% of nonprofits report that they are collecting data. However, 49% of those groups also say they don’t know how the data is being collected. For organizations whose value comes from relationships with the people they serve, bad or irresponsibly-collected data can have far-reaching ramifications. So how can you responsibly collect and steward data? Here are our top five tips.

Problematic data. It doesn’t just impact your reporting. It impacts staff relationships. When we lessen the temperature around problematic data and treat it as a curiosity rather than a reason to blame, we’re much more likely to create the kind of openness among teams that yields to what we actually want: progress.

If you’re part of the team that drives data operations for your organization, you’ve got a big job. And you’re likely receiving a lot of questions – and feedback – regularly. Understanding if that dataset is really taking too long to load or that piece of reporting is actually incorrect is only half of the battle. You’ve then got to determine why that’s happening. We understand. We’ve been in those seats, too. These are a few guided questions to help you uncover what the source of your challenges may be.