Community IT Innovators Nonprofit Technology Topics

Unprotected Data, Unprotected Mission with Jenn Walen

• Community IT Innovators • Season 7 • Episode 3

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Learn how to manage valuable data every day at your nonprofit.

Director of Data and Systems at the Greater Washington Community Foundation in Washington DC, Jenn Walen, discusses her role in managing data policies and training and supporting nonprofit staff in keeping data clean and organized.

Jenn stresses that you need a single source of truth, standards for data entry, and policies. Spending the time to decrease the time spent pulling reports and seeing the whole picture is extremely valuable in this moment. Jenn shares advice and experiences in getting your nonprofit’s data where you want it to be.

Everybody wants to look good. Good data helps everyone at your organization look good – to your board, your executives, your donors, your constituents. And good data saves everyone time.

Additionally, nonprofits looking for one thing they can do to protect themselves in this political environment should look to their data governance and standards. This project doesn’t have to involve highly paid consultants or new expensive tools. It just takes prioritization, time, and good change management.

Recommendations: 

Be consistent. Create standards and uphold them. No exceptions.

If you need data governance documentation, templates and assistance are available online. You don’t have to start from scratch, ask your colleagues. 

Kindness along the way is important. This is not easy. Data clean up is a pain. Everyone lending a hand can help create solidarity and a culture of accuracy. Support your colleagues!

People learn in multiple ways and with multiple styles. Provide training and support to meet them where they are.

Get support from leadership to emphasize data clean up priorities.

It is so satisfying when the data is in good shape. The rewards for doing the hard work are great.


Is there an AI tool that can do this for you? 

AI tools are helpful. Start with education and training on the tools you plan to use. The tools you can use will depend on your database. Get the training from your vendor on the AI that is being incorporated into your tool. Work with a data consultant to understand implementing AI to understand the implications, the security, and matching the tool to your needs and use policies.

Every output from AI needs to have a human review. Don’t expect to give AI your data and have it sort and clean it for you with minimum input from humans. 

Be careful. Respect confidentiality and follow your organization’s data governance policies. Think about how you would want an organization to handle your own data.

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Start a conversation :)

Thanks for listening.


Carolyn Woodard:

Well, I love the title of it, The Unprotected Data, Unprotected Mission, instead of saying like governance, you know, because everyone's like, whoa, governance, that's so boring. The way you presented it is so great.

Carolyn Woodard:

Welcome everyone to the community IT Innovators Technology Topics podcast. I'm Carolyn Woodard, your host. And today I am really happy to be welcoming a new guest to the podcast to talk about unprotected data in your nonprofit leading to an unprotected mission. So, Jenn, would you like to introduce yourself?

Jenn Walen:

Sure, Thanks, Carolyn. Uh, my name is Jen Wallen. I am the director of data and systems at the Greater Washington Community Foundation in the District of Columbia. Uh my third community foundation. I've been working in development and database and all the things data for about 25 years. Um, and am here to talk about how important it is to protect our data and how it has to be an organizational priority, not just in the sitting in operations or sitting with your database manager. So I look forward to the conversation.

Carolyn Woodard:

Yeah, I think there is nothing, well, I don't know, maybe fundraising makes nonprofits go even a little bit more crazy, but data is just it's a constant. And I think a lot of nonprofits and foundations have a lot of anxiety around data. So you had some questions that you like to ask around how your organization is using data and thinking about data.

Jenn Walen:

Right. And I think it's especially um true now because cybersecurity is and data security is such a fresh topic and something that all nonprofits worry about, including our foundation. Um, I think it's important to ask where does data fit into your organizational priorities? You know, and data is not just financial transactions. Data is also the phone calls we have with our donors and our grantees, the email interactions we have with advisors or with fundholders or with people interested in working with you. All of that data contributes to the overall success of the organization and determining how you track and how you create a culture within your organization of kind of all that data is really, really important.

Jenn Walen:

One of the things we do here at the foundation is um all that we are a BlackBaud Um Foundation right now, and so everything is tracked as actions. And the actions report for the week goes out to every single staff member every Friday. And it's a great way to get caught up on what's happening in the foundation. And sometimes you'll see an interaction that might affect what you're doing, or you might have something to contribute. Um,

Jenn Walen:

I think it's incredibly valuable to share data across departments, across uh, across the desk, um, because you never know. Someone might have some information that can contribute to that interaction or contribute to that relationship.

Carolyn Woodard:

I love that. I before I was at Community IT, I was an IT director at a large international nonprofit. And this was like kind of way back in the day before there was a lot of good search and good tools. Um, and we used Raiser's Edge at that time. And I would say data was just um people really protected it, their contacts, their uh interactions, and their it made it really hard to get that full view. And also it meant that people used a lot of workarounds to they would not trust that this was the current address of the person or that the most recent note was in fact the most recent note, that there had been other attack since then. Um, so they would have all of their own little mini, you know, Excel sheets or whatever it was that they were keeping, which just compounds the problem.

Jenn Walen:

So it does. You need to have a single source of truth. And um, it's important to set standards for data entry and standards for when something changes. So, for example, creating a checklist when your board of trustees rolls over, what are the pro who needs to know and who's gonna correct it in the database, who's gonna update the records? Um, if you if relying on those Excel sheets means you cannot generate accurate mailing lists, you cannot generate accurate like development lists of people and pipelines that you need to work with. It's also it also makes reporting incredibly challenging because you can't see the full picture if people are holding on to information that everyone needs to have access to. So I, you know,

Jenn Walen:

we have the same challenge here at the foundation, and it is it is about kind of setting standards, getting leadership behind you to reinforce the behaviors that you want, which is data belongs in the one source of truth that you have. It's not easy, and a lot of people don't want to change. They don't, they like their spreadsheet. Um, but it needs to, all that data has to be accessible to everyone for it to be useful for your executive director, for your board, um, because they want to see reports, they want to see progress, they want to see what we've done over the year. And if you can't keep your database up to date, it's impossible to do.

Carolyn Woodard:

And I know you went through a process over several years. So I wondered if you could tell us a little bit more about that. Where did you start at the Washington Foundation?

Jenn Walen:

So I started um five and a half, a little over five, five and a half years ago. Um, and I was brought in because a consultant, our our foundation was ready to switch to a new database, um, but a consultant had told us that our data wasn't ready, our data wasn't clean enough, which was kind of um, I'm sure that was a shock to the organization. And so as a result of that, they created the position that I'm in now.

Jenn Walen:

And I started the first day that the office went remote during COVID in 2020. Um, so I spent the first six to nine months of my work uh remote, having never met any of my colleagues. Um, but my charge was to come in and clean up the data and also to um create some standards for entry. Sometimes that means taking away permission so that everyone doesn't have access to everything and creating standards and guidelines that everyone abides to. It also means that I look at every new record that's created because I want to make sure that people are abiding by those standards. And sometimes you can identify patterns when you're doing that. You can see certain staff members maybe never put a prefix. Well, then it never shows up in a mailing list. And so catching those behaviors as they happen, uh, you can correct them along the way. So it was a lot of cleanup, it was a lot of duplicates.

Jenn Walen:

It was also kind of getting our staff to trust the database and to use it. Um, I think we had some several people had gotten used to not using it and not relying on it. And you have to set the standard that there's only one source of truth. Um, it's not easy, uh, and behavior change like that is can be painful. Um, but I think it's important to make it accessible to everyone. Sometimes it's sitting down at with them at their desk and going through how to do it. Sometimes it's providing written guidelines. Sometimes sometimes people, you know, do trainings at your staff meetings, just a reminder of how to do things. Um, and be accessible. Um, you know, I try to always say, I'm here to help you do your job better. And we're gonna create a system that will make um make it easier for our leadership to report on what we're doing and to show our success.

Carolyn Woodard:

And I really I want to go back to you said that you share all of the actions weekly with everyone so everyone can see what everyone else is doing. That is such an interesting idea.

Jenn Walen:

It is. And I think I think sometimes we're surprised you look at it, you're like, oh, well, I've been talking to that person too. Or, well, I know something, you know, that might help them, you know, build this relationship. So I think it also, you know, when you think about the organizations, you've got finance, they've got transactions, you've got grants, uh, sometimes just seeing an interaction with a grantee or, oh, hey, this gift is coming in. I need to watch for this, you know. I think it makes us a little more uh connected to what's happening and gives us opportunities to talk to our colleagues about what they're doing, which anytime we can break down those silos between departments is a wonderful thing. And actions has doing that report weekly has been a great tool to do that.

Carolyn Woodard:

Yeah, so the title of this is the unprotected uh data. So I wondered if you could talk a little bit more also about when you take these steps and you treat data really seriously and organization-wide, you're sharing there's one source of truth.

Carolyn Woodard:

Can you talk a little bit about connecting that up with cybersecurity and protecting that data?

Jenn Walen:

Yeah, I think it's important. Um, you know, every organization kind of organizes their tech support and their cybersecurity support differently. But uh in the current climate, and I can tell you, for us as a foundation, you know, we're located in DC proper. Um, we are ever mindful of the threats verbal and otherwise that are happening. Um, someone at one point told me we were on a domestic terrorism list, which I don't know if that's true or not, but it just kind of illustrates that you have to be careful.

Jenn Walen:

So we do uh some cybersecurity education. We have a tool that provides videos to our staff to learn about the ways that are ever-changing, the ever-changing ways that people are trying to get our data and spoof us through email. Um, we do security email tests once a quarter and see how everyone does. What do we need to work on? What do we need to remind people not to do? Um and I think even it's also minding the confidentiality of the data that we have. You know, as a foundation, our donor data, our financial data is incredibly important and confidential. And we want to make sure that it stays that way so that our donors and our fundholders trust us. Um and

Jenn Walen:

I think the same goes for any nonprofit. You need to be mindful of standards internally on confidentiality. Um, even when you're entering notes, you know, there are certain things you don't put in notes on a donor record. And what we always say is if you don't want the donor to read it, then don't put it in there. Because I've never had a donor ask for their record, but they could ask for it at any moment. So don't put anything in there you don't want them to read. Um, otherwise, you know, and sometimes that can mean um, you know, personal health information or personal history that's irrelevant to their relationship and needs to be kept private.

Jenn Walen:

So it's about respecting individual confidentiality, but also respecting as an organization that you do whatever you can to protect the data that's in-house. Because that one source of truth, um, it has to be protected. And and the standards help you do that too.

Carolyn Woodard:

Yeah, and I think it's a little counterintuitive, but in some ways, having lots of little pockets of truth, you if you don't have eyes on those, you don't know if something has been compromised. And so, I mean, an Excel sheet is not right the most secure place to keep that data.

Jenn Walen:

Exactly.

Carolyn Woodard:

So having the one source of truth that is something that you have, like moats and nights and you know, I don't know, barbed wire around protecting it.

Jenn Walen:

Backups, make sure your backups are happening on a regular basis and um, you know, confirm that they're happening, do the audits, uh, whatever your IT provider is, keep them honest and make sure that they're protecting your data.

Jenn Walen:

I can tell you about three years ago, we had an incident where over the weekend nothing, there were like three days of data that we lost. All the financial transactions, all the activity, because for some reason our backup didn't happen. Um, I can tell you that it was a very stressful week trying to retrieve and re-enter all of that data. You don't want that to happen. Um, just

Jenn Walen:

cybersecurity, data security, confidentiality, all of those things, just make sure there are priorities in your organizational priorities, um, whether that's in operations, whether that's in finance, whether make sure your leadership understands how important it is because they're gonna want reports to present to the board. They're gonna want to talk to the board about how you're doing. And if you can't provide accurate data, it's you're not gonna look good. And nobody wants that.

Carolyn Woodard:

Yeah, and oftentimes, I mean, the recovery from an incident is so, so, so much worse than just taking an ounce of prevention to begin with.

Jenn Walen:

It is, it is. You know, we're constantly looking at cybersecurity trying, and our board has actually kind of given us a mandate to do whatever we can to protect our data because it's just um it's just a really difficult time right now, and everyone's getting more creative and more um aggressive in trying to get stuff.

Carolyn Woodard:

So I think you talked about um data governance really um being from the moment the data is entered, that first transaction throughout the life of that record. So, can you talk a little bit about how do you weave that into governance and how do you communicate that with all of your staff?

Jenn Walen:

Yeah, that's a great question. I I think you have to look at all of your business processes. Start with um, you know, think about gift entry. If, you know, you've got a record, what are the standards for entering that record? What fields have to be completed, what fields are required? And then what is the standard for, you know, what is your have everything documented.

Jenn Walen:

You need to have procedures for all of your business processes. And I think it's good to look at those every year or two and make sure that they're still accurate in the way you're doing it now. Um, if you build in those standards with your business processes, that way everyone, regardless of who the staff person is, they're gonna have a guide and they're gonna know exactly what is expected. Um,

Jenn Walen:

I'm not saying that's easy. Um, it's it involves multiple departments, and you have to sit down around the table and say, okay, do you have this whole process documented every single step? And is it does it reflect how you're doing it today? Um, and then you as a data guru and data champion have to look at it and go, okay, where are there opportunities to build into that process data standards? Yeah.

Jenn Walen:

So build them into the business processes so it's part of every single business process that happens. Uh it's not easy, I'm not saying it is, but if you do that and make it the expectation instead of the exception, then it becomes part of normal behavior in a day-to-day work.

Carolyn Woodard:

Yeah, it is not easy. We have a lot of clients who come to us, uh, and one of the issues is they have no documentation on their inventory, on their processes, on the licenses that they have, and also on their onboarding and offboarding processes, which it sounds like from what you're saying too, that when you have this documentation of how data is entered or how this record is created, what the required fields are, then it doesn't matter if people offboard. Like your staff isn't going to be your staff forever.

Jenn Walen:

Right, exactly.

Carolyn Woodard:

It makes it easier to transition to somebody else's needing to take over that role. Oh, and here's the guideline of exactly how you enter that record.

Jenn Walen:

And I and I also recognize you have to make time for this kind of project to set aside and make sure your processes are documented.

Jenn Walen:

It could be led by department. You know, each department could take responsibility for their own business processes and then make sure that whoever is your data champion has eyes on it to include those data standards in within the process and that they're agreed upon. I mean, obviously, you don't want to just put something in a process because you want it, you have to make sure that it's something they're willing to do and agree that is a good idea. Um,

Jenn Walen:

Buy-in is really important when you're trying to implement change like this and certainly get leadership to support this, getting, you know, me as a peer, I'm not going to go to a director and tell them how to do their job. Um, but if I have a director talk to another director and reinforce that behavior, then it's more effective because it's coming from a peer.

Jenn Walen:

I realize sometimes that leadership can be the challenge if they're not a believer or behind you in data governance. Um, but hopefully you can find someone on the leadership team that will be your champion and help you create a culture of data security and governance and standards.

Carolyn Woodard:

Yeah, sometimes it can be a board member too, because that's part of what they're charged with is that risk assessment.

Jenn Walen:

Yeah. And last time I presented this, the most questions I got were about what do I do if leadership is the problem? So I think it's something that several people are struggling with. Um, you know, you can you can talk about data standards all the time, but if there's no one keeping you accountable and no one saying, hey, this is really important, it's a priority for the organization, nothing's gonna change.

Carolyn Woodard:

Yeah. I have a friend who tells us an anecdote from a long time ago. So I don't even know if there are names attached to it anymore, but he was doing a project with a nonprofit, a large nonprofit organization to um implement a CRM, a big database. And this is like 20 years ago or so. So they rolled it out, you know, the executive director is their party, etc. And um, and he says, Oh, but I'm not putting my Rolodex in there. Like literally at this like announcement of like everyone's gonna use the CRM. This is our single source of truth. And he's like, Yeah, but not my Rolodex. I'm still using my Rolodex. And the the consultants were all just like kind of threw their hands up because they're like,

Jenn Walen:

Yeah. Counterproductive. It's it's it's yeah, it's got to be an organization-wide philosophy approach and behavior. Yeah, it really does.

Carolyn Woodard:

I know we've talked about a lot of the how hard it is and what the big challenges are, but could you talk a little bit about the beautiful things that happen when you have a single source of truth and you have kind of weekly check-ins and the data is all going where it's supposed to be going and it's the way it's supposed to be?

Jenn Walen:

Yeah, what's wonderful is you can actually empower your staff to generate accurate mailing lists from the system. They don't have to come to you uh to generate your list. They can go in and generate a list because the data is updated. Um,

Jenn Walen:

the other thing I think that's important from a leadership side is if you have accurate giving and grant data and financial activity, you can predict future behavior too. A lot of times, you know, we're coming up in it for us, we're coming up into budget season, and it is impossible to create a fiscal year budget if you don't know how you've done in the past and what the patterns are over multiple years. So predicting trends is really important. Boards love that kind of stuff too. Um,

Jenn Walen:

I think it also gives confidence to your staff. They feel good about their job because they can generate the resources they need to be effective. Um, if if your staff doesn't trust the database, they're gonna be frustrated. Um and and that that can create some tension, especially when there are requests for reports or there are requests for mailing lists. Um, it's about giving your staff the tools to help them do their job effectively.

Jenn Walen:

And having that one source of truth that everyone updates and uses, it makes everyone's job so much easier. And it gives gives them confidence that when they run a list, it's gonna be accurate. And no one wants to send out a mailing that's inaccurate. That is um, you know, we don't want any touches to our donors or our prospects to be a negative experience. So um I think giving confidence to your staff that they have the tools they need is really important. Um, it makes their job easier.

Carolyn Woodard:

Oh, I think about like the hours spent on the workarounds and fixing the list and making sure all the salutations are in there correctly. If you can get rid of that, like, wow, that's a big win.

Jenn Walen:

It is. It saves you an enormous amount of time.

Carolyn Woodard:

Do you have recommendations for people to take away from this podcast?

Jenn Walen:

I would say be consistent. Create standards and uphold it. Don't make exceptions, regardless of who it is. And

Jenn Walen:

I think a lot of kindness along the way is important. You know, this is not easy and there's going to be some cleanup that people have to do that they're not going to be happy about. I've had to do a ton of cleanup in our database and merging duplicates and removing inaccurate records. It's really important.

Jenn Walen:

And sometimes it's it's training your colleagues to say, hey, I noticed these profiles don't look right. Can you look at this? And that's that's a big step for them to say, hey, I know this is not accurate. I want you to look at it and let's get it fixed. So let's get people paying attention to the data. Be kind. Support your colleagues if they need you to sit down with them do that.

Jenn Walen:

I think, you know, people learn in multiple ways. And we have to present new behaviors in multiple ways as well. So I try to do that in a positive way.

Jenn Walen:

But I think I think the biggest tool for me has been having leadership behind me saying this is this is important. This is a priority and that gives my colleagues kind of the fuel to do it.

Jenn Walen:

So I would say just take it on. Get in there and clean up the data. It's so satisfying when you get your database in better shape. You're going to make everyone happy. It's going to take a while. I mean I've been doing this five and a half years and I'm still cleaning up you know it's you always find something to do but I think the rewards are great for doing the hard work.

Carolyn Woodard:

That leads to I guess my last question which is a little bit it's just on everyone's mind right now. And we've gotten this question many times like is there an AI tool that I can just have fix my data for me and put it all in the right fields and clean it all up and I can just like push the button and have the AI do it. And I know what my answer is but I'm wondering what your answer is when we get that question.

Jenn Walen:

I, you know, so we've implemented AI at the foundation in a very kind of structured way first with education because I think you can't implement AI unless you understand what it is and how it works. It's not complicated but you need to understand how it's designed to use it. I think there are opportunities to use AI to clean up data. Some of the how you use it is going to depend on your database. Some do have interfaces with AI that allow you to do that. And I know there's as many nonprofits as there are there's as many different databases. And so it does depend on the tools you have. But

Jenn Walen:

I would say AI is an opportunity to take away some of the data maintenance to take away some of that grunt work that takes so much time. But

Jenn Walen:

I would I would work with a consultant because while AI is useful and can be effective it is it needs to be used with caution there are biases and inherent challenges to using AI. And you also want to make sure that if you're putting your data in there that it's secure that they're not going to learn from your data. So you know we have employed a consultant to help us do this in a safe way. And I think I would suggest if not hiring a consultant at least working with someone that can kind of recommend a safe way to do it.

Carolyn Woodard:

Yeah I think that was going to be my answer is that often people seem to be looking for a way to take away what's hard about it and just give it to the AI and have the AI do it. And from what I've seen I mean just like output when you just even want it to write something for you like it's not able to know what you know about your database, about your departments, about what you need the data for. It could make recommendations, but I would never trust it to like put everything where it needs to go.

Jenn Walen:

Right. And honestly every output from AI needs to have a human review. And we actually require that at the foundation whatever you use it for if you want to draft an email just to get your thoughts organized it has to have your review and put in your voice before it goes out.

Jenn Walen:

I think I think you know AI can help us really save time but you just have to know what you're doing and be careful. And especially since we talked about confidentiality the security of our data those AI tools are grabbing everything that you put in there. So just be careful.

Carolyn Woodard:

Yeah yeah great advice

Carolyn Woodard:

well Jen I want to thank you so much for your time today and for sharing all of these insights and your expertise with this subject I think this is we get questions about data all the time about security about organization about if there's any quick fixes. So I appreciate you sharing this all with our audience. Thank you so much.

Jenn Walen:

Thank you Carolyn it was my pleasure