Data and Decision Making: Same Organization, Different Perceptions

Perceptions of how organizations use data to make decisions differ greatly among staff in nonprofit organizations who are in a position to use data to make decisions and between those staff and staff at a funder that provides technical assistance to improve data driven decision making (DDDM). These differences suggest that building an organization’s reliance on DDDM must begin by building a common understanding about what activities are—or are not—being undertaken and that results from research on DDDM using information from only one respondent in an organization might not be reliable.