Let Your Data Lighten the Load
By: Allison Prieur
I recently met an executive director who shared what was on her mind. Her direct service staff were staying late, again, to finish their reporting. She knew her team chose this work to be in community, sitting with families, walking alongside survivors, and doing the relational work they believe in. That's what they were good at, but reporting had swallowed so much of their day that it spilled past five o'clock, into hours that were never supposed to belong to the job.
Her frustration wasn't really with the funder or the data. She wanted her team to be present in the rest of their lives. Instead, time meant for rest, family, and their own wellbeing was spent copying numbers from one spreadsheet into another.
If you lead a nonprofit, you probably recognize her. You might be her. She's a blend of many leaders I've talked to over the years, but the care is always real. In nonprofits, data work tends to become one more quiet responsibility, squeezed between crises, grant deadlines, and achieving your mission.
The load isn't shared evenly
For many small and mid-sized organizations, evaluation is something done to you rather than with you. A funder requires it. A template lands in your inbox. Someone on your already-stretched team becomes the unofficial data person on top of their actual job.
In a sector made up of mostly undercompensated women and gender-diverse people, this becomes unsustainable quickly. Women make up about 70 percent of Canada's nonprofit workforce, yet for every dollar the average Canadian worker earns, a woman working in a nonprofit is paid about 82 cents. For racialized nonprofit workers, a third of our sector, it's about 79 cents (Imagine Canada, People First, 2025). Those late evenings come at an even higher cost in this context, one that shows up when great staff leave the sector.
There's also an underlying concern: what if the story the data tells causes harm? Too many of us have seen reports that reduce communities to their hardest moments, or that quietly turn systemic failures into individual ones. Nobody wants to produce that. Some of our resistance to evaluation is actually integrity.
Turning measurement into movement
The biggest barrier I see isn't fear, though. It's capacity. Most organizations aren't avoiding data because they dread the answers. Leaders may not feel confident collecting it well or using it meaningfully, and they don't want to burden staff or participants with one more survey.
Here's the gentle flip side, though. When we can't see our own data, we also can't see where our time, energy, and money might be flowing toward things that don't add much value. Measurement helps us prioritize resources and tell the story of our work in ways that can strengthen trust, advocacy, and funding.
It lightens an emotional load, too. Nonprofit leaders and staff, although sometimes quietly, question the impact of their work. Evaluation, done well, can help turn uncertainty into opportunity you can act on. Naming and understanding a worry can reduce its hold.
So how do we use thoughtful evaluation as a leadership practice, not only a reporting function? How can it help you protect staff time, support decision making, and tell the story of your work on your terms?
Evaluation that gives more than it takes
The difference between evaluation that drains your organization and evaluation that steadies it comes down to a few design choices.
It's sized for your real capacity. That executive director with the tired team? When she and I sat down with her staff, we didn't add anything to anyone's plate. We went through every form, survey, and tracking sheet her organization used and asked one question of each: how does this help us make decisions? Anything that wasn't useful got cut. We found capacity for what remained inside the workday. The funder still got what they needed, and staff got out of the month-end hustle.
It starts from strengths. A deficit-framed evaluation goes hunting for gaps, and everyone can feel it. A strengths-based evaluation begins with what's working and asks how to build on it. This changes what people are willing to tell you. Staff who trust that the process is looking for assets, not ammunition, share honestly, and honest data is far more useful.
It runs on consent. Everyone touched by an evaluation deserves to know what's being asked, why, and what will happen with their answers. In practice, that means plain language, genuine choice, no penalty for opting out, and transparency about how responses will be used. When the purpose is clear, the process stops feeling like surveillance, and anxiety drops across the whole organization.
The questions belong to you and your community. A funder's questions matter, but they shouldn't be the only ones in the room. High-quality data changes your relationship with funders. When you can come to the table recommending metrics that tell a more compelling story about your work, you have more power in the conversation. Not every funder will bend, but strong data can help start more meaningful conversations, regardless of the size of your organization.
Before adding another metric or KPI, ask these three questions:
- How will this help us make decisions?
- Who will collect, analyze, and report on it, and do they have the skills and time to do it?
- How will we share back what we learn?
With clarity on each of these questions, you can focus on learning with intention.
Turning the lens toward our own people
Don't forget to turn your measurement lens inward, as well. Our sector has a long history of treating investment in staff as an expense to be managed, something that diverts money from the mission. What if the opposite is true? Nonprofit staff are routinely asked to subsidize their wages with passion, and the cost of that compounds over careers and across generations. Better compensation is critical. In the meantime, dignity can still show up in how people are scheduled, heard, supported, and trusted.
Evaluating our own workforce wellbeing, with the same rigour we bring to our programs, shows us where to act now as employers, within the resources we have. It also documents what we cannot fix alone, because funders, donors, and policymakers have responsibilities here too. And we don't have to choose between stories and statistics to make that case. Our staff's experiences, gathered with intention and care, become credible evidence, with the numbers standing behind them.
What does this look like in practice? In From Crisis to Collaboration, Sustainable Livelihoods Canada (https://slcanada.org/) has partnered with three Ontario gender-based violence organizations to study staff and organizational wellbeing to influence change. The partner organizations aren't only co-designing the research and system change efforts. They're also piloting practical changes to support their own staff's wellbeing. Ordinary changes are often ideal; what fits your existing capacity is more likely to last.
Then, the next right thing
When findings arrive, you don't need a transformation plan. You need the next right thing the findings point to: one small move, connected to your mission, that's realistic in your context. If you want somewhere to start this week, try asking your team a single question: what part of our data work costs you the most?
You also need to close the loop. Reflect back to your staff and participants what you heard. Name what's within your control and what isn't, what you'll act on now and what will be longer term. People don't expect you to solve everything today. What they want to know is that they were heard. When you show that with intention, people keep showing up, sharing honestly, and building with you.
Permission, together
You're allowed to benefit from your evaluation work, in ways that give evenings back instead of taking them. You're allowed to ask funders for reporting that matches your capacity, and to hold your own learning questions alongside the required ones. And you don't have to chase every dollar. You're allowed to be intentional about which funders you partner with, choosing the ones who respect your time, your capacity, and your expertise.
None of us will reshape the sector's old habits alone, and we don't have to. Start with one question. Set down one burden. Slow the hustle. Protect one evening. Share what you learn. Your data can give more than it takes. That's evaluation as care.
About the Author
Allison Prieur has spent more than twenty years in the nonprofit sector, the last ten as founder and principal of DARE Impact Consulting, where she supports small and mid-sized Canadian nonprofits with evaluation, strategy design, and capacity building using strengths-based and feminist approaches. A Credentialed Evaluator currently pursuing an Interdisciplinary PhD in Evaluation, Allison also serves as an evaluation associate with Sustainable Livelihoods Canada, including on the From Crisis to Collaboration project. Her practice brings together policy, social work, and a deep curiosity about how organizations learn. She offers leaders the kind of clarity that's hard to see from the inside, so they can make confident decisions rooted in human dignity. Allison lives in Tecumseh, Ontario, with her three kids, and believes life is better with questions. Find her at dareic.com or say hello on LinkedIn.