Addressing the Data Analytics Gap: A Community-University Partnership to Enhance Analytics Capabilities in the Non-Profit Sector

Although data analytics has become an increasingly important tool in the for-profit sector, non-profit organizations frequently lack these skills. As data availability and usage increases, this also exacerbates the data analytics gap. In this research, we describe the process of establishing a community-university partnership with a non-profit organization to address the data analytics gap. We present a case study of this relationship from the perspective of the university research team, the non-profit organization utilizing the analytics to seek grants, and a grant-providing foundation. We find that the local organization adopted data analytics because it was necessary and also the organization embraced the importance of making data-driven decisions. We also found the main themes that emerged regarding the reasons to adopt data analytics were: the need to ground assumptions in evidence, increase accountability to donors, increase the efficiency of the organization, and be competitive in an already saturated non-profit sector.