Toolkit
Your go-to resource for building data capacity and turning data into a powerful asset for your nonprofit.
Developed through Blueprint’s Practitioner Data Initiative, this toolkit is grounded in real-world challenges and experiences, offering clear, actionable steps that any organization can follow—no matter where they are on their data journey.
Understand your data landscape: Identify gaps and opportunities to improve how you collect, manage, and analyze data that supports your programs.
Define and measure outcomes: Track progress and use data to communicate your impact and successes to funders and stakeholders.
Foster a data-driven culture: Strengthen your organization’s data culture and empower your team to use data to confidently make decisions.
Tools for planning your impact measurement
Define your impact, identify key questions, and lay the groundwork for data collection.
Impact Story
A visual template designed to help nonprofit organizations holistically map the journey clients experience from program participation and activities to ultimate impact. Think of it as a roadmap that connects daily work of your nonprofit to a bigger mission.
Learning Agenda
A structured template designed to help nonprofit organizations develop focused, strategic questions that guide their data collection and evaluation efforts. Helps identify knowledge gaps and illuminate program effectiveness and broader impact, enabling data-driven storytelling and continuous improvement.
Tools for understanding your data landscape
Document your existing data assets and analyze your workflows.
Data Inventory
A spreadsheet that helps you comprehensively document and organize your organization's data assets. It acts as a central hub of information about your data, clearly outlining its definition, location, usage, and more.
User Story Mapping
A practical exercise that helps your organization visually represent the flow of work within a process. This tool provides a blank template for creating your own process map and includes a completed example to guide you through the exercise.
Tools for data and project governance
Clarify decision-making roles, responsibilities, and standards to strengthen both project execution and data use.
Project Governance Guide
A guide to help organizations establish a robust framework for managing projects, with templates for creating a project charter, governance glossary, and an outline of roles and responsibilities. These components work together to ensure effective decision-making and accountability throughout the project lifecycle.
Data Governance
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Tools for system selection and adoption
Define your data system's goals and scope, and develop a change management strategy to support organizational transformation.
Data System Scoping Tool
A tool designed to help organizations outline their goals (e.g., success factors), scope, and requirements for a data system before selecting a platform or engaging a vendor. Scoping the system upfront ensures that the data system and vendor selection process is aligned with your organization’s unique needs.
Change Management Toolkit
A toolkit designed to help organizations plan, assess, and manage the changes required for a project. It focuses on evaluating readiness for change, analyzing its potential impact across different areas of the organization to ensure a smooth transition through each phase of the change process.