Our blog
Posted on
April 18, 2024
What is a Data Warehouse and is it the right option for your organization?
In today's data-driven world, organizations are inundated with information from diverse sources. Effectively harnessing this data can be a daunting task, leading many organizations to turn to data warehousing solutions. But what exactly is a Data Warehouse, and what are the advantages and disadvantages of adopting one?
Sustaining Data Governance: The Crucial Role of Tools and Technology
Posted on
March 15, 2024
Tools and Technology in the Execute and Build Phase
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February 16, 2024
Tools and Technology in the Planning Phase
Posted on
January 26, 2024
Posted on
September 22, 2021
Our Impact Blueprint Can Save You Time, Money, and Heartache on Your Next Data Project
Your current data system(s) don’t do everything you need. Maybe your data is all over the place. Maybe everyone is complaining that the one you have is too hard to use, doesn’t create the reports you need, or has terrible customer support. Whatever the reason, you and your staff are spending way too much time battling a system that should be making your life easier instead of harder. Are you tired of spending hours on the phone with customer support? Fishing around for days just trying to get the right information? Answering 20 questions a day from people who can’t get the system to work for them? Spending hours cleaning the same data over and over in Excel?
Posted on
November 29, 2020
Never Endure Another Data Migration
We need a new data system. The stuff of dreams and nightmares. Whether you arent storing the right data in your system, or you cant get what you want out of it, you either have considered a new data system, or you were in the process of implementing one. So you got everyone on board, figured out what you needed out of a data system, did an inventory of your current systems, lined up the funding, and now its taking twice as long and costing twice as much as you planned.
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November 17, 2020
Data Visualization Design Tip: Using a Style Guide
Everybody Needs Style. Why You Need a Style Guide for Your Data Visualization. We are big fans of efficiency at Inciter. We like to make our lives easier, and we LOVE to make your lives easier. If you are doing any kind of data visualization, this post will save you time and a lot of annoyance. And who doesn’t love to improve their data visualization design? What is a Style Guide?
Posted on
October 29, 2020
Understanding Data Integration
We need a new data system. The stuff of dreams and nightmares. Whether you arent storing the right data in your system, or you cant get what you want out of it, you either have considered a new data system, or you were in the process of implementing one. Decide how to spend your technology budget is always hard. And moving to a new system will inevitably involve a huge cost because migrating your existing data to a new system is very labor-intensive.
Posted on
September 9, 2020
Alternatives To Microsoft Access Databases
Microsoft’s Access has dominated custom solutions for managing data and prototyping databases since it was unveiled in 1992. While it has been the de facto custom database for many Microsoft customers for almost 3 decades, it has not aged well in the era of “the cloud.”
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August 5, 2020
Why Nonprofits Fail to Make the Most of Their Donors
**You love your donors and you want them to love you. ** You craft amazing campaigns. Powerful messages, moving stories, carefully constructed asks. You believe in your mission and you are very good at connecting with others who do, too. But you arent getting the donations that you need, and you keep losing donors. Its like your donations are a leaky bucket. You work harder and harder, create more campaigns, reach out to more people, but you cant keep the donors youve got or raise as much as you need to.
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August 3, 2020
Tools to Make Data Cleaning Easier
Cleaning, wrangling, munging, preparation, validation, ETL, transformation, ELT these are all different names for making data more useful. Whether youre doing one-off analysis, scheduled reports analytics, or integrating two different data systems or applications, when you work with data, data cleaning is an important part of almost all data processes. Data cleaning is taking data as-is and changing the content, structure or format to be more useful. Removing blank rows and deleting invalid addresses are examples of data cleaning.
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July 20, 2020
Evaluating Accessibility and Inclusion
Over the past several months, Inciter has been pleased to work on a project with a summer camp network. The goal of the network is to enhance accessibility and inclusion for campers and staff with disabilities by providing capital improvements, professional development, staff training, research, and evaluation to both participating camps and the field at-large. In many ways the project is similar to the other program evaluations that we work on with organizations, foundations, and agencies - large and small.
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July 6, 2020
5 Mistakes That Kill Survey Data (and How to Avoid Them)
Whether you are getting feedback from program participants, members, donors or other stakeholders, an online survey can be the easiest and most efficient way to do it. Of course, online surveys are not a one size fits all solution for collecting data to answer your burning questions, but they can be a cost effective method to gather certain data for your organization. No matter your field or audience, you have to follow some best practices if you want to make use of your data.
Let’s work together!
Most nonprofits spend days putting together reports for board meetings and funders. The Inciter team brings together data from many sources to create easy and effortless reports. Our clients go from spending days on their reports, to just minutes.