Welcome to Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio. Big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host and the pod father of your favorite hebdominal podcast. I’m back in my office studio. So the audio should sound much, much better. I’m glad you’re with us. I’d suffer with exotropia if I saw that you missed this week’s show. Here’s our associate producer Kate to introduce it. Hey Tony, introducing. DFS, 2026 benchmark report. We return to our 2026 nonprofit technology conference coverage with a discussion of the 3rd annual report on donor advised fund fundraising. Our panel shares DF giving results, changed donor behaviors, illiquid assets, best practices, and much more. They are Karen Kirchoff at K2D Strategies and Mitch Stein from Chariot. Then Dashboards as functional powerhouses. Kalinda Ellen James reveals lots of info on dashboards, including what’s their value, free entry-level tools, user training, timestamps, a warning on use of public data, paid apps, and more. She is with Common Point. On Tony’s take too. Career broadening. Here is DAFF’s 2026 benchmark report. Welcome to Tony Martignetti nonprofit radio coverage of the 2026 nonprofit Technology Conference. We are wrapping up today. It’s, it’s, this is the first interview of our final day, Friday. With me now are Karen Kirchoff and Mitch Stein. Karen is president at K2D. That will be Kilo 2 Delta Strategies, K2D strategies for those who use the uh The uh military uh alphabet and Mitch Stein. Mitch is head of strategy at Chariot. Karen, Mitch, welcome to our 2026 nonprofit technology conference coverage. Thanks so much for having us. Yeah, we’re happy to be here. Alright, I’m glad, I’m glad you are. Um, Karen, I’d like you to just do like a 30,000 ft view of the, the topic which is unlocking the power of donor advised funds, the 2026. 2026, the 2026 benchmark report, just give us a high level view, please start us off. Yeah, I, uh, sort of became obsessed with donor advise funds back during COVID, and a byproduct of that obsession was a secret shopper study that K2D participated in, made a bunch of daft gifts to different nonprofits, and then sort of watched the donor experience and spoiler alert, the donor experience was not very good, which led to a whole series of questions and how we met, uh, the folks over at Chariot. Um, with an interest in trying to get behind the scenes on why the donor experience was so poor, and that ultimately led to this donor advised fund fundraising report that we’re now in the 3rd year of digging into billions of dollars’ worth of donor data, um, shared, uh, without donor information by nonprofits. We have 53 participating nonprofits this year. Uh, to give us insight into the donor behavior and how data is captured and really what it means for donor value and the overall contribution to nonprofits and their and their mission work. OK, cool. Thank you, Mitch, what is your role in the, uh, 2026 benchmark report? Yeah, so Karen and I have been, um, co-authors of this. Karen and I have been co-authors of the study since we started, uh, and we collect, um, from a group of nonprofits we have them submit their historical fundraising data and we work with an outside, um, data scientists and analyze that. And we’ve just continued to build on number of participants, amount of data and depth of analysis, uh, together and then put that report out which has now been, you know, read by thousands and thousands of folks. Karen and I have gotten to present on this research at probably 1 dozen different conferences and workshops and it’s really opened up a whole new conversation for fundraisers where they have data and research specifically on their. Historical giving information because before that there was a real gap in the market. The only research we had was produced by the donor advised funds with their like outbound grant data, but no one really knew what was the nonprofit experience? How is this changing the makeup of their overall fundraising? How do the donor behavior differ for someone using a DAFF or when someone changes to start using a DAFF? Those are all questions that you can’t answer from the donor advice fund’s perspective. So it’s opened up a whole new field of research really in the fastest growing segment of philanthropy. OK, um, stay with you, Mitch. Uh, what are some takeaways from the 2026 report that we can go into detail? Yeah, I think the two most important ones that I saw were just the rate of growth of DA giving at nonprofits. Um, in 2024, the median across all participant organizations was 30%. The year over year change in the DAF revenue they saw from donors and the median change in non-DaAF giving, so all the other ways that individual supporters donate, was actually slightly down. So it is a drastic difference in the dynamics of DAFF giving versus overall individual fundraising. And the other insight is related to how donors change their behavior when they start using a DAF to support that organization. So what I mean by that is if Karen gives to um the American Cancer Society in 2022 and used a credit card, um, and then the next year used her DAFF for the first time with that organization, that’s an insight we have in this study, uh, and had over 40,000 examples of that. And what we found was that the average change in that support from one year to the next was a 10x increase in giving and the median was 2X. So yes, there are some large outliers, but those are still very valuable to the organizations that got much larger gifts, but over half of your supporters that changed their way of giving to using a DAFF are at least doubling their support. Yeah, OK, um, Karen, so let’s, let’s look into these. These two takeaways, uh, it’s just identified. So, the, the, do I understand it correctly, the rate of daft giving is down slightly. What, what the rate of daft giving is up exponential down? What’s down slightly? Oh, non-aft giving is down slightly. Oh, OK, which tracks with other industry benchmarking reports. That’s been a long standing trend. DF giving is really bucking that trend exponentially. OK. And why are we seeing that? I think there’s a lot of reasons for it. I think that, uh, the tax law changes in 2017 inspired a lot of people to fund DFS, um, the DAFFs themselves, the number of people who have DAFFS has been growing exponentially. Um, the change in the minimum required to open a donor advised fund has democratized staff giving. Um, donors are becoming increasingly strategic about their giving and more intentional about their giving. By using D DFS, um, and so all of that and, and frankly nonprofits are becoming increasingly strategic about how they ask for donors to use their dafts and so the combination of all those factors I think really influences that rate of growth in this particular form of giving and how can nonprofits be more strategic about about encouraging promoting DAFF giving? Yeah, I mean you gotta talk about it, right? You have to uh encourage donors. To use DFs in in every circumstance possible and that includes all of those mass market vehicles like direct mail and email and um other digital forms of giving but it also includes things like peer to peer fundraising. It includes things like events, um, it includes, uh, obviously major gifts, leadership giving those really large gifts, uh, but the number of, of daf gifts that are coming in below what is often considered a mid. Level or a major gift threshold meaning below $1000 is almost 70%. So I’ll say that in a different way. 70% of DAFF gifts come in under $1000. So there’s a bit of a perception that DAFF giving is only for the wealthy. It’s very, uh, you know, the sort of really high-end gifts, and it’s just not, uh, and I think the more that nonprofits lean into using mass market vehicles to solicit. At DAFFS and to remind donors that they can use their DAFF is driving a lot of that giving as well. You mentioned the democratization of DAFF, so that the minimum gift, what, what, what’s a, what’s a more typical, not gift, what, what’s a more typical, uh, donor advised fund opening requirement? So Fidelity a couple of years ago changed their minimum requirement to $0. You can now open a DAFF at Fidelity without putting a single dollar into your account. Um, Fidelity’s minimum distribution is $50 and so there’s, you know, this sort of very different world now. Are those numbers common or typical, or, uh, they’re, they’re, are they a bit of an outlier? They, it, it, it’s becoming increasingly. I mean, Mitch can certainly speak to this as well. Vanguard, uh, still has higher thresholds, um, and, uh, $10,000 or yeah, I think, I think Schwab’s 5, to open. No, Schwab is also $0 minimum. and $50 gifts, uh, minimum gift size, so same, same as Kelly, and those are the two largest, and they’re like drastically larger than any other daff. So that’s like a really large segment of the market, and Vanguard is the next largest, and their minimum account size is $25,000 and their minimum grant size is around $500 so they’re catering to a different audience, but it is certainly becoming common that. Community foundations around the country are lowering their minimums, um, both account size and, um, minimum grant size, and just thinking about how can we be a part of this trend. This is becoming popular for so many different demographics of donors and how can we make sure we’re not missing the chance to build those relationships. OK. And again, the two largest commercial DF providers, um, Schwab and Fidelity Fidelity, are zero minimum. And $50 distribution minimums gift minimum combined the two of them in 2025 donated $28 billion to charities. Yeah, alright, so we need to dispel the myth that your, your donor advised fund gifts are only gonna come from wealthy folks, so that’s, that’s in the past. OK, absolutely, very clear. OK, um, what about the, um. How common are the, the, the website widgets, you know, daf, uh, click here and connect to your daf. It’s, it’s easier now to give than it was just a few years ago, isn’t it? Through a donor advised fund. Like you had, used to have to go to the back to the fund site. Now, aren’t there widgets that that are on nonprofit websites, right? And a lot of those widgets send you back to your fund. To log in and and set up the distribution you don’t have to remember to do it right. I, I will say I’m gonna pass it to Mitch because Chariot has a product that really streamlines and I am not evangelizing the product necessarily, but it has a really great product that helps nonprofits capture a lot more of the data associated with staff giving. Yeah, Tony, what you mentioned has been around for a while are these widgets which is like you. Point reminds people and then sends them back to their fund. Um, what we introduced 3 years ago is a payment option, so it’s called Daftay that can be on the donation form at checkout next to Google Pay, credit card, all those ways you pay. It’s like express checkout and you can finish your grant recommendation right there. So especially for what we kind of call inspiration-based giving, a giving day, peer to peer fundraising, a match campaign, um. Anything where someone is trying to respond and make a gift and be part of something in the moment that often they’ll just make a credit card gift. And when you can intercept them and say no, no, no, make that daf gift right here, then that’s a huge opportunity for nonprofits and to Karen’s point that also comes in your marketing language, what you’re saying at events, how you’re communicating with peer to peer participants. It’s both and the technology, how can we make the user experience prompt them and use dafts more readily. But also educating your entire staff to know that they should be talking about it and communicating with donors about it. Someone just came up to our booth yesterday and said they were at a protest in Boston last weekend. And someone was going around handing out some flyers to donate to their nonprofit that you know was helping with the cause and we’re like, and remember you can use your donor advised funds that is awesome this person was like Mitch’s influence is everywhere. That’s amazing. Walking through the crowd at a grassroots, uh, at a grassroots protest, for like a mutual aid society for their neighborhood, it was incredible. I love it. Uh, Karen, I’m sorry if I missed it. Did, did you say what the average DF distribution is was in 2025? Do we, do we know that? It’s uh $1200 I think in the is that right Mitch? Am I remembering that right? The average through daft pay is around $1200 which is that tends to be a little smaller, yes, because that’s when people are supporting these events and causes and, um, the median for us was around $300. Um, it’s spotty from what the DF providers disclose, but Fidelity’s average, I think is around $4500. And then Schwab did actually disclose or Daft Giving 360 is their new name, but they did disclose a $500 median, uh, grant size in 2025 and in this study, the average is about $1200. OK, among those 53, 53 nonprofits that participated. OK, all right, but still, all right, but, but. That’s not a huge gift. Uh, it may be a major gift that a lot of small and mid-sized nonprofits, but there’s still a lot of, and that again, that’s an average, and there’s a lot of potential for smaller gifts because of the democratization we’ve been talking about, right? There’s potential for smaller gifts and there’s the potential for larger gifts. Fidelity reports that the average size of a daff in their, um, the, the daffs that they hold. Is just under $20,000. So if somebody’s making a $1000 or even a $100 gift out of their daff, odds are good there’s a lot more money in their daff. And with a strong case for giving, this is where a nexus between mass marketing and major gifts, I think, is really important because with a solid case for giving, I think you can go back to anybody who’s made a daf gift that maybe is not at a major gift level. And ask them to make a distribution that is at a major gift level because of the um likelihood that there’s a lot more money that’s sitting in their daff. What I was just gonna add, Tony, that the yes staffs are being democratized and they’re using them in all different levels, but like what Karen’s mentioning is it’s also still a really promising sign that that person likely has a lot of capacity. And so even if it is a smaller gift, I know a lot of folks that want to dedicate their prospect research, for example, to anytime someone makes a daft gift, try to learn more and see if there’s a chance that they actually have a lot more capacity. And to Karen’s point at Fidelity, it’s the median account size is over $20,000. So that means over half of of their fund holders have more than $20,000 that they’ve irrevocably committed to giving. It’s the only thing it can be used for. Those are relationships you want to build. What about the concern, uh, maybe this is in the past, so you can allay this maybe misconception as well. I’m happy to be. Contradicted, uh, that, uh, a lot of DA gifts come without donor information. We don’t know, you know, it comes from the DA provider, whether it’s a community foundation or a commercial institution and we don’t know who the donor is. Is that still a, is that still an issue? It, it does remain a problem. Um, the DFs themselves are getting better at, um, asking donors if they want their information shared. Fidelity now defaults to donors sharing information. If the donor wants to opt out and become anonymous, obviously they can, um, and Fidelity reports that more than 90% of their D DAFF gifts come with at least the name of the fund, if not also the address of that donor. Um, this is another place, frankly, where the daft pay tool is really effective because it captures all that information on the front end, including an email address which you don’t get from any of the DF providers, um, to be able to start to build those we’re not using Mitch’s chariot product. What, what do we do if we get a, a gift from any, any DF provider that doesn’t have donor info? What’s your advice? Yeah, I mean, it’s, and we, and I want, and we do, we’d like to have the info too, of course we want to have that info. What’s your advice? I mean, I, I think this is, there’s. A lot of value in having those internal conversations, um, you know, if that, because a lot of times those staff gifts are coming across, you know, over the transom through a caging operation or through the, you know, internal gift processing, and if those gifts aren’t flagged for, say, a major gift officer, even if they’re not at a major gift level, the major gift officer may know that they’ve been talking with somebody who has a daff and can reach back out to that person and confirm, was this your daft gift? This is not your daft gift. I mean, so it’s, it is additional legwork that is often required. Research if it, if a daf comes over, uh, with just the name of the fund and it’s the puppies and kittens fund, um, a major gift officer may know, oh yeah, that’s Jane Smith. Let me, I’m gonna reach out to her. That’s the internal. What about going back to the daf provider and asking, can we, can we get this information? Yeah, that, that most of the big dafs will not share it. Um, community foundations often will relay messages back to donors. And so if, if a daf is coming in from a community foundation without a name or an. Associated address, um, reaching back out to that community foundation is a really valuable step because they often have those donor relationships and will at a minimum relay a message if not share additional information a message, OK, you might write something and ask them to forward it. The commercial one, yeah, you’re making the point that’s, that’s on the, on the community foundation side, commercial ones, they won’t, they won’t forward a letter. They won’t. I, I had a client literally last month who I’m not kidding, out of $400,000 DF that came in through their caging operation. Um, and they reached out. It was a Fidelity gift. They reached out to Fidelity multiple times to try to get some information and, and got nothing. The donor wanted to remain anonymous, and, and that’s the donor’s right to do so. But, but Fidelity wouldn’t even forward a message forward this letter. No, no, they will not. Yeah, Tony, just one thing I wanna add there is it’s very important for nonprofits to know there’s a difference between being anonymous and only sharing the fund name. So I think a lot of people historically have said if I don’t have full information I just dump all of this into anonymous gifts and that’s really not a best practice when it comes to tracking your DAF giving, number one, because you’re not gonna be able to track it very well like when you wanna participate in analysis like what Karen and I do if you just have a big dump into it an anonymous donor record, that’s not helpful, but also you likely get more information over time. So if you’re tracking this account under a fund name. Then in the future, the puppies, all right, so if it comes back, right, you get another one, there might be more information. I might get an address, so it’s good to start tracking those donor records on the fund name even if you don’t have a donor name on it or it’s not fully clear. Um, and also if, if they’re disclosing something and not fully anonymous, there’s a much better chance that the DAF provider will engage with you on it to say, hey, actually I don’t know who this person is. Can you share this letter with them and you’re likely to have a better chance building that relationship? What would the something be that that would get shared, but it’s not full and it’s not a name, but you said if something is shared, what, what would that something be that you might, what, what data point might you get that’s not the donor’s name? So often you’re getting a fund name. So when you just a, yeah, and or you might get a donor name, but you, it’s John Smith, and so you don’t have enough information to identify them. So that’s often worth following up on. But, and I’ve just heard from many providers that as long as it’s a personalized letter, like a personalized follow up, that they will get it to them and oftentimes then they do engage and you’re able to build that relationship. So particularly for larger gifts, that’s definitely worthwhile. OK, all right, so. So you’re saying it is worthwhile, but Karen had the example of the $400,000 gift that, well, that was fully anonymous was one thing and also it’s from the data at all and from the large commercial staff which is gonna be hard to engage with. OK, OK, good. All right, thank you for making the distinction between community foundation ones and the and the commercial ones providers, but you, but Mitch, your point is if there’s some data. Then you have a better chance of being able to engage, at least get something forwarded than than if there’s nothing. It’s just a, it’s just a fidelity check and that’s it. OK, OK, uh, you know, you, you guys work with this day in and day out for years. I’m, I’m not newly initiated, but, uh, my work is in planned giving, uh, it’s not, I mean that there is some donor advice fund crossover, but you, you, you all are thinking about this day in and day out, um. So another takeaway aside from the rate of giving and the methods of giving was that People who give through DFS, once they give through DAFS, their, their behavior changes toward the nonprofit versus, I guess a control group that never gave a DAFF donor advice fund gift. One of the, what’s that, what’s those behavior changes? One of the data points that we looked at, um, in part because there are some we thought myths out there around DA giving and once. Somebody gifts from a DAFF, it’s in part because data collection can be difficult. Then they lose value over time or it doesn’t, doesn’t, it’s, it’s not worth soliciting D DAFF gifts. And what we learned in the study, and this has been repeated in each year of the study, was that if once somebody converts to using a D DAFF, let’s say the example Mitch was using a couple of minutes ago, I made a credit card gift in 2022. The American Cancer Society, it was $100 in the next year if I used my DAFF, uh, more than 50% of the time that value was gonna now be $1000 so 10x increase in value, um, and so that donor behavior really changes very dramatically from purely from a value perspective. Um, the other variable is around, or meant there are several variables, but a big one is around retention. Um, and donor retention among DAFF donors is exponentially higher, 13% points higher, not 13% higher, 13% points higher for donors who are using a DAFF versus donors who are not using a DAF to make a gift. And so there’s a, a case for, um, encouraging D DAFF giving and, um, developing those relationships to build longer term D DAFF giving because of the value associated with donors who are making investments with that giving vehicle. And 20% of DAF donors make more than one gift a year to the same organization, same, OK, OK. Any other interesting behaviors? In this giving community. Yeah, I, I think to Karen’s point, which the cohort, yeah, um, I just think what’s behind the data points we’re flagging like higher retention, um, multiple gifts a year, giving more, supporting more organizations is something we definitely see from the DAFF data, um, is the, the reasons why is there’s really a psychological change when you’re using a DAF for giving. And I find this is something that a lot of fundraisers don’t fully appreciate, and I always encourage them to open their own DA account, see it for themselves. They’re very accessible. You’ve got the big commercial ones. You can do it for 0 dollars at the top two commercial and even at like a Daffy is a mobile first app. Uh, DF provider where the minimum gift size is $18. GoFundMe has a DF product now where the minimum gift size, I think, is $5 or $10. So it’s really become accessible and then you can see for yourself what happens when you make a proactive decision to set aside money for giving that can’t be revoked for something else. So now you have these committed funds and it kind of forces you to think, well, what do I wanna give? like where do I wanna support and whenever you do get, you know, asked by a friend who’s doing a fundraiser or some crisis happens, you’ve got this ready store of funds. It’s like having a gift card at the ready and so you are way more you give much more liberally because you’re not weighing it against your other budget items that month it’s already accounted for. I’m gonna give a shout out to a friend of mine, Rudy Fletcher, who’s at the National Philanthropic Trust NPT. Uh, he has opened my eyes to something I’d like to explore with you that at, at, at the higher level, uh, the major, major donors, um, donor advised funds are valuable because the type of assets they can accept that are unusual like closely held. Uh, corporate stock or or LLC interests or something like that, uh, more esoteric gifts, wine collections, wine collections, art collections that are non the average nonprofit, well, probably 95% of nonprofits are not equipped to take these types of assets, so there’s, there’s value there too, I guess we’re talking about the, the commercial daft. Providers are set up to accept different types of gifts that others aren’t any that’s even the community foundations, yeah, yeah, yeah, they, they specialize in this. I mean, a lot of them use the same partners to help if you’re doing something that’s really a liquid or or complex to help, you know, value it, get the appraisal, do the sale, etc. But yeah, that’s thank you for using the word illiquid. You, you just condensed 600 of my words into one. I could have just said illiquid assets. Yeah, but illiquid and, or, you know, public securities are not always the easiest thing to divvy up and donate to a bunch of different organizations, get their information. Do they know how to handle that and sell it? Like there’s a lot involved. So if you’ve got $100,000 worth of stock that you want to donate in a year, you can do one transaction into your DAFF, a place that is set up to do that day in and day out. And then make cash grants out to 100 different nonprofits and so it’s really efficient for people who like to donate um these more tax advantaged avenues so that’s certainly once you’re on the higher end of donors, the DAF benefit is you know that you have all this flexibility it’s easier to manage you can do all this more complex giving uh in one place and the nonprofit experiences that they just receive cash. Yeah, so much easier, right? OK, thank you. Thank you, Rudy Fletcher, for making me aware of that. Thank you, Rudy. Do you know National Philanthropic Trust, NPT? Yeah, OK. I don’t know Rudy, but I know that’s OK. I know Rudy. You, you’re 2, you’re only 2nd away. You’re only 2 levels of bacon away from 2 levels of Kevin Bacon away from Rudy Fletcher. Everybody should know Rudy. Alright. Um, so, uh, so Mitch, why don’t you take us out with some inspiration about Daf Giving since, uh, Karen did the intro. Please leave us with, uh, inspiring words around Daf’s. Yeah, I mean, I just say there’s a lot of focus as we’re doing research on past giving trends and so I think it’s worth ending like thinking about the future, especially after a 2025 where every DAF provider I know has told me that their December and Q4 was like multiples of prior years in terms of contributions into those accounts. So with the tax changes, the markets are really hot, people were flooding their accounts with money. So that means that the opportunity in 2026 is enormous. Like no nonprofit can be ignoring this. You really should have a plan for how you are engaging with DA giving to make sure that you don’t get left behind from the fastest growing cohort of donors out there. Thank you very much. That’s Mitch Stein. He’s head of strategy at Chariot. With Mitch is Karen Kirchoff. Is it Kirchoff or Kirchoff? Kirchoff Kirchoff, with a C H. No, I don’t except Kirchoff. No, no, it’s Kirchoff. No, it’s Karen Kirchoff. She’s president at K2D Strategies. Thank you, Mitch. Karen, thanks very much. Thanks so much for having us. It’s a pleasure. Thank you and thank you for being with Tony Martignetti nonprofit radio coverage of the 2026 nonprofit Technology conference. It’s time for Tony’s take 2. Thank you, Kate. Career broadening. Last week, I took a course, just 2 days. And it had nothing at all to do with what I do, planned giving, fundraising, consulting, nothing. It was about organization design, how lots of organizations don’t do as well as they could, nonprofits we’re talking about, of course, uh, because they’re not organized correctly, the, the structure and the, and the processes and the, and the metrics and the people. are not all aligned around a strategy, strategy. So, a lot of times this is why strategic plans may not be so. Easy to implement because your organization is designed for the pre-strategic plan time. And so, that, I mean, that’s the basics of it. But the point is, It’s totally unrelated to what I do. I’m not adding this to my practice, certainly, and just on the strength of a two-day course. I’m not authorized, I’m not, uh, I’m qualified to do this with any nonprofit, but it’s just something different, you know, I, I saw it on LinkedIn, someone posted about the course. Uh, I was able to make the time and it’s just, it’s totally non nonprofit related, Certainly, it was all about social impact organization design. That was the name of the course, but just very different from, Anything I do in nonprofits. And it was, it became stimulating to, to think about. Nonprofits from a different perspective on a, with a totally different purpose. So, I would encourage you to step outside your comfort zone. You know, there was no test at the end. I mean, it cost me some money to go to the course, but, you know, it’s not like there’s that much at risk. And, um, I would encourage you to step outside and just like learn something different, even if it’s not something you’re gonna apply. It’s just a different perspective on nonprofits or maybe not even, maybe it doesn’t even have anything to do with nonprofits. Broadening, broadening, I just. It, it was very uplifting for me and I hope it would be for you too if you did something like that. And that is Tony’s take 2. Kate, One of my favorite university professors of all time taught me characteristics of knowledge acquisition. And one of like his big, you know, overall on our last day, he said never stop learning something new. And so, like a part of the course, we had to go take some, anything we could choose. It could have been like an art class, gym class, but like, learning something that we never like would push ourselves to go do. And that like still sticks with me today. It’s like, what can I learn today? What did you choose for the, what did you choose for yours? So long story cutting it down, I wanted to do like a glass mosaic class, uh, so the, I guess sea glass and we were supposed to make like a lamp. But it actually got canceled, so I ended up following a Bob Ross tutorial because I wanted to do something artsy. So I was learning from Bob Ross. Bob Ross, the classic. There, there are no accidents, just happy mistakes. Yes, there are no, there are no. Mistakes, just happy accidents, something like that. I think that’s what it is. There are no mistakes, just happy accidents. Yes. All right. Did you paint something? Did you paint a seascape or a tree? I painted a landscape. Yes, it’s hanging up in our dining room. Outstanding. Bob Ross is, uh, Bob Ross from the grave is, uh, is very pleased that you, you chose him for your. Characteristics of knowledge acquisition. Outside the box course. Excellent. We’ve got Bu butt loads more time. Here is dashboards as functional powerhouses. Welcome back to Tony Martignetti nonprofit radio coverage of the 2026 nonprofit Technology conference. My guest now is Kalinda Allen James, assistant assistant or associate vice president. Assistant vice president of information technology at Common Point, New York. Kalinda, welcome back to nonprofit Radio. It was about 2 years ago you were with us. Yes, it’s great to be here. Thank you. Your topic this year is dashboards, moving beyond pretty charts to functional powerhouses. Could you give us uh like a 30,000 ft view to kick us off? Um, yes. So, building dashboards is gonna allow people to have a quick view of their data and create narratives to help them make decisions. That’s pretty quick. OK, OK, thank you for that, um. How should we best uh approach the topic? Can we look at what, uh, what, I don’t know what the potential is or how to go about building your dashboards? What’s the best way to go into the topic? It’s like we have different entry points. So the first entry point is I just have raw data. I’m still got 15 Excel sheets. And there’s a manual process for every question that is asked. OK, and it’s like the first time, every time is like the first time we’ve never heard this question before, correct? OK, that’s why. OK, what else you got? OK, and the next is we have this expensive software and it comes with dashboards, so how do we leverage them now that we have our data in this expensive system? OK. And then it’s like we’ve been doing dashboards, they’re starting to make sense. What’s the best way to present these dashboards to our forward facing public? OK, those are our three entry points. I love how concise you are. It’s like boom, boom, boom. OK, OK, excellent. Um, all right, so let, let’s, let’s start with the, like. We don’t even have dashboards. Yes, so if you’re still the sun just got in my eyes. The sun just came out of a cloud. I’m sorry, go ahead. Yes, so if you are still at the spreadsheet way, um, there are some entry level tools like if you’re in like Google Sheets, there’s like Google Looker Studio, which is a free tool from Google. That can already access your Google Sheets to help you start building an entry-level dashboard, OK. And you do have similar um capabilities in Office 365 with Power BI. I’m sorry, it’s called Power BI. Yes, OK, OK. And both of these are included with the software you’re already using, um, but when you want to start sharing with the public, this is when you get into possibly licensing, this is when the prices start to go up, but this is the good part to start to see what you want your dashboards to look like, what questions are you trying to answer. And does a graph, a bar chart really help your story, or is it muddying the water? Are those the uh those are the the the the free resources that Google Power sorry, Google Looker Studio and Power BI Microsoft in Microsoft 360 Office 365. OK, OK. And um also a lot of our CMRs, um, customer relation management tools are offering a dashboard section in our products and we could start looking there. They have a lot of out of the box widgets, see how many in the past 3 months, how many in the past 2 months to start. And then you can start to look at your data. Um, I’m working with Salesforce at my company, and we are currently pushing our limits to the internal. Dashboards. From the water cooler standpoint, we want dashboards but better, but when you look at the analytics from the dashboards you already have, we see through adoption. 18% of the people haven’t logged into the system to look at the existing dashboard yet. So maybe they would have more enjoyment if they actually looked at the dashboard. All right, so you have a recalcitrant 18%. Yes, um, and then when you look at the changes to the dashboard. There was only 3 requests for changes, so maybe taking your complaint from the water cooler directly to the dashboard designer will move the needle for you. So a lot of times we get the tool included. Um, our power users do our best to try to make it work, but sometimes pausing and investing in some training can help you leverage what you have so much better and so much faster before you go to the next new product. OK, right, training what you already have, yes, yeah, OK, and then using all the samples that you have, a lot of we come lots of templates we think we know what we want. But sometimes just experimenting with one of the built-in templates you’d be like, oh this is a really good way to look at our data, this totally changes the question and how we’re presenting it so I feel a lot of us for the time pressure to get our questions answered, we move away from native stuff too quickly. And another thing is when you start looking at the native, you’ll might see that there’s cracks in your data. And we’ll need to pause. I know in like one of our charts. Um, I didn’t know the primary language of 26% of my clients. But when you deep dive into the data, this occurred because a data merge between our case management systems and our fee for service systems. I’m not asking anybody about their language when they’re booking a tennis court. But this is the type of information I need to provide wrap-around services at the food pantry. And so we have to remember we cannot report on data we did not collect. So this is the type of question where, hey, do I leverage AI to review all my correspondence with the client to check which language I sent their correspondence in to update this field. Is this a time for us to pause and look into a universal intake form to get the base language so we can wrap data apples to apples when we are merging it? Or is this a question that we stop asking because that was for a project grant from 8 years ago and maybe we just need to clean up our question sets. So once we start looking at the dashboards, if they start to look wonky, it’s a great time to pause and reevaluate your data. We’re pulling data from a single source of truth, but sometimes the data will show us that we still have some side quest spreadsheets in some departments, and it’s not making it to the single source of truth, and this is where we could do some retraining. Um, some evangelism around the agency of why the single source of truth is the way to go. Evangelism around abandon your spreadsheets, you know, and come to the new, new, and how is it going to help us. Um, another thing is, as my co-co-presenter, um, Ash Shepherd, um, gave us was When we’re using dashboards internally for our current employees, making them fun and interactive so they can really relate to the work they’re doing in the data. So designing dashboards for people, not just for information. Make sure you have the company logo on it. Make sure that you have the company branding colors, so you can really feel connected to this is our data, this is our company. I stand behind this data. This data is showing the work I do person to person. OK, and also in Involving the users of the dashboards in the development of the dashboards. So, so, so I mean this is, I’m kind of amplifying what you’ve already said, so, so it reveals what the people actually want to know. Yes, OK. And also adding a good old fashioned instruction. This is how you should be looking at this data. Um, having good indexes, like, does pink always mean the same thing across every graph? Is red a bad color? Like is green a good color, you know, so really just adding some depth and context to your dashboard will help people approach it in the appropriate way. Can, can be. Personalized to the users like, so I don’t, I don’t use any dashboard tools. I’m a one person business, um. So I’m, I don’t have a, I don’t use these, but can individual users within the, within the nonprofit customize a dashboard for what they want to know, or is it needs to be more centralized and everybody’s looking at the same dashboards? No, that’s a great question. You can generally have more than one dashboard and you should, so you can really have targeted audiences. So there is going to be an executive team who’s gonna want to see the 30,000 ft of the whole agency at all times. and they will have a distinct dashboard, but then there’s going to be a dedicated department who’s gonna want a more nuanced and and detailed dashboard for just their part of the business. And so this is where you do get to individualization of the dashboards and you know, so what the executive team needs versus what the directors need versus what district managers need versus the individual contributor. You know, an individual contributor just might need a simple two graph, um, Dashboard with how many case notes I’m supposed to do this month and how far have I gone, you know, just like nice little ticker tape gauge system. And the executive team might want a more nuance how many clients year over year. OK, alright, so very personalized, um, yeah, personalizable, customizable, that’s what I wanna say, very customizable. OK, um, please, you know, you were, you were on a roll. I, I, uh, made you digress with a question. Yeah, go ahead. Um, other things to think about with the dashboard is how long are you going to use it. Are you looking for something dynamic that’s updating every month? And if that’s the case, you wanna add some automation, so maybe have the first of the month, pull the data, update the dashboard. Um, if you’re doing a community sur survey and you want real-time data, you might link your dashboard to like a Google form, and every time somebody answers the survey, the dashboard updates. Um, depending on the type of data. Um, depending on how people access the survey. You might want to put some distance between. Um, survey and live update. If there’s a chance that your data could be usurped by bad actors, you might want to put a human set of eyes before publishing. And creating a delay before public consumption. Um, all technology is a tool. And these tools can definitely help us make our jobs easier, give us the capacity to help more. But tools are only as good as their instructions, and when you’re new to dashboarding, it can seem confusing and overwhelming, so putting some more pauses between creation and public consumption is the best thing you can do for yourself because sometimes you only get one chance to make a first impression. Yeah, and protect yourself and your reputation, OK, organization and personal. You told everybody you did the work and now it’s embarrassing to the to to the organization. That’s a bad look for you. OK, yeah, yes, and also when you’re doing your dashboards, the curious minds want to know what is the underlying data that got you here. What was the time frame? Um, 2020 looked very different for a lot of organizations than 2019, and so not putting some time stamps to the data can create the wrong narrative. So definitely index your dashboards, be prepared to share how we got here because the inquiring minds will want to know. Yeah, that context, you’re right, people are going to forget what happened in 2020 and they’ll be questioning, well why. Was 2020 so bad? What’s this big rise since since 2021? Yeah, um, so definitely, um, making sure that you’re putting correct context, you know, advertising the data that created the dashboard, um, explaining the methodology will make the dashboard more believable, trustworthy, and people want to relate to it more. OK. These are great tips. What else? What else do you have? I mean, I’m just like, uh, letting you either a quarter in the slot. You go, go. And back to the data piece. Everybody likes a compelling graph, but there’s no data fairies. It is real people collecting data, analyzing data, entering the data way before a dashboard occurs. And we always have to circle back and double check our data is coming from the correct place and even if we are automating our dashboards for convenience, we need to always keep double checking to make sure the data is still good. Um, we have 70 different business models at our nonprofit. I’m collecting data from internal sources, third party government sources, um, individual contributor, family surveys. And if our third party chooses to change how they do data. The sink that has been working for me for 18 months will immediately break. And if I don’t have eyes on my data and I just rely on my automation. I’m going to start missing chunks of clients month after month until I fix that sink. And so even with the automation. Um, we must always have the human eyes on the dashboard and the data, because if you’re doing the work on the ground every day, you can spot immediately why 41,000 people without a primary language looks weird. But if you are a casual observer of the company, first time, um, seeing the corporation and you see this on a public dashboard, well, maybe that makes sense. And so this is why the person should never get separated from the data so you can continue to make sure that your data is reliable. OK, you gotta keep the human touch. Yes, alright, right, right, right, yep, that applies to a lot of artificial intelligence, well, all uses of AI. We haven’t specifically talked about AI, but there may very well be. You may have one of the tools involved in your data synthesis process. There has to be human oversight. And what will happen is the AI tracks learned behavior, so the AI will just assume what the numbers were last month, disregarding that the sink has broke, you know, and so we don’t want any hallucinations. Um, and that’s just with a constant check because AI is always changing. The business is always changing, so change has to be monitored. OK. Mhm, um, also with the human touch. Data and numbers can be very frightening to some. A lot of people who go into the social services might have started off in the 3rd grade with, I’m not a math person. So to now come into a data spreadsheet. And to see graphs and numbers and percentages and pie charts that can feel overwhelming and disconnected to the human connection of a caseworker working with a client. And so by making your dashboards with the human touch with the logos, with the funny gifts, really, you know, disarms the person who might have had a previous math aversion from earlier schooling and so that’s one of the great ways about making the personal touch, creating dashboards for the non-traditional analytic person. Built some humanity in yeah I like the idea of the like gifts and whatever yeah emojis yeah yeah and also providing detailed instructions even adding like a video instruction of where the data comes from, why we use this dashboard helps with onboarding so as you bring on new employees to your team, they will have a much faster uptake of the information if we build it correctly the first time. They’re like, yeah. OK. Mhm. And the other thing to look at is. There’s a lot of free tools. But free generally means open to everybody, visible to everybody. Depending on your clientele of the um customers you work with in your nonprofit sector. Public data might not be the best kind of data. You know, some of us are working with vulnerable communities. We are working in hot button topics of service. So just having all your data on the free platform to get a dashboard might not be a good look. So sometimes you have to look at how can you sanitize your data before you share it with the public good. Um, what is the privacy policies of your free software? Are they gonna be like next week, oh, I got a subpoena. I’m just sharing this information. Um, or is this like, hey, it’s a free website. I just downloaded it, used it for my personal use to sell people Beachbody. Um, therefore, really reading the terms and conditions of the software you enter, free and paid, will help you make sure that you don’t let the convenience of a dashboard put your company, your reputation, and your clients in danger. Are there some paid apps that you like beyond the the the two that we mentioned, the, the free resources? Are there some paid apps that you all talked about in the session that are valuable for dashboarding? Yeah, so things like Tableau, they really specialize in creating data collection from multiple sources and creating great dashboarding, um, Salesforce Native behind the paywall. And even in the um the free services they usually have a paywall version where you can enter a business agreement about how you’re both gonna protect your data, so depending on. What type of data you have and who you’re working with, you can always have the conversations and get the safeguards you need for your particular data, mhm, but some, you know, some of our um conservation nonprofits working with water counts, working with tree counts, that is the type of data that might be easily public. Without safety concerns. But some of our housing clients. You don’t want to have a spatial diagram. With a Google Map directly to a client’s house, show up on a graph, cautious, yes, and so this is why, you know, really working with your internal dashboards, really testing it for the questions you want to be answered internally, um, is the way to go at the beginning of your journey before you make everything on demand to the public. OK, you wanna leave us with one, final, I don’t know, overarching idea or the overarching idea is dashboards is an elevated tool to help you tell your story. To convey the message that you’re trying to communicate about the people you serve. But not let the convenience. Of the dashboard prevents you from being the best actor of the data that you collect. All right, we’ll leave it there. Thank you very much. Thank you, Kalinda Allan James, assistant vice president of Information Technology at Common Point, New York. Thanks very much, Kalinda. Thank you. And thank you for being with Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio coverage of 26 NTC, the 2026 Nonprofit Technology Conference. Next week, our 26 NTC coverage continues with brand you giving programs and donor retention. If you missed any part of this week’s show, I beseech you, find it at Tony Martignetti.com. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff. I’m your associate producer, Kate Martinetti. The show’s social media is by Susan Chavez. Mark Silverman is our web guy, and this music is by Scott Stein. Thank you for that affirmation, Scotty. Be with us next week for nonprofit radio. Big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. Go out and be great.