12 Skills Fundraisers Need for What Comes Next: #4 Data & Tech Literacy

In the immortal words of Inigo Montoya, "Let me explain. No, there is too much, let me sum up."

We're on Day 4 of the 12 Days of Skills fundraisers need for the new year. Rather than projections of what might be or could be, we're focusing on what fundraisers can do and can control to face the challen . . .er, opportunities of the new year.

So far we've covered:

• Curiosity

• Grounded Confidence

• Discernment

Today we move into everybody's favorite: Data and Tech Literacy.

Nothing clears a room faster at a fundraising conference than offering a session on data. I take that back - ethics. Sessions on ethics are notoriously poorly attended. Data comes in a close second.

What Data/Tech Literacy Is and Isn't

This is not a post about becoming a data scientist. No one's asking you to code. There will be no pop quiz. And no, you do not need to “leverage AI” by the end of this paragraph.

(You can unclench your shoulders now.)

Data and technology have a special way of making very capable fundraisers feel suddenly under-qualified, usually because the conversation around them is dominated complexity, tech-speak, and vague concepts that feel out of reach.

Which is ironic, because confidence without comprehension is exactly the problem this skill is meant to solve.

Literacy is not mastery

When we talk about literacy, we often confuse it with expertise.

Being literate does not mean you can build the thing. It means you can read, interpret, and question it without panic.

You don’t need to be a mechanic to drive a car. But you do need to know what the warning lights mean, and when someone is trying to sell you blinker fluid.

Data and tech literacy work the same way. It’s not about knowing everything. It’s about knowing enough to participate intelligently and make decisions without surrendering your judgment.

Why this suddenly feels overwhelming

Data and technology didn’t ease their way into fundraising. They showed up like a marching band.

CRMs. Dashboards. Attribution models. Predictive scoring. Automation. AI. Optimization. Personalization at scale.

Each one promised to make things simpler. Collectively, they made a lot of people feel behind.

And right on cue, the should-heads arrived.

You should know your data better.

You should be using this tool.

You should automate that.

You should already understand how this works.

Data and tech literacy are how you step out of that spiral — not by knowing everything, but by refusing to be intimidated by it.

A Brief Statistical Interlude

Three statisticians went out hunting and came across a large deer. The first fired and missed by three feet to the left. The second fired and missed by three feet to the right. The third didn’t fire at all, but shouted in triumph,“On average, we got it!”

In other words, data can be precise without being accurate. Correct without being useful. True without being true enough.

Literacy is knowing the difference.

Data Doesn’t Tell The truth. It Tells A Truth.

This is one of the most important things fundraisers can learn.

Data is not an absolute. It's subjective.

It reflects what we chose to measure, how we defined success, whose behavior we tracked, and what we quietly excluded along the way. It doesn’t speak for itself; it speaks through interpretation.

Which means data literacy isn’t about obeying numbers. It’s about asking better questions of them.

What does this metric actually represent?

What does it hide?

What behavior produced it?

What decision(s) do I make or double-down on because of it.

And, at the risk of sounding just like one of those should-heads and shoulding all over everything, it's why you "should" measure more than just total dollars raised. If you only measure the forest by the canopy of green leaves, you miss what's happening at the roots and on the forest floor.

Technology Is Never Neutral

This part doesn’t get said often enough.

Every tool encodes values.

What it optimizes. What it makes easy. What it ignores. What it quietly discourages.

A system built for efficiency behaves differently than one built for relationship. A platform designed for scale makes different tradeoffs than one designed for care.

You don’t need to reject technology to notice this. You just need to be literate enough to ask, What is this tool really helping us prioritize?

That question alone can save a lot of regret.

That's a fair amount of high-falutin' language trying to convey a relatively simple concept, but one that can convey a huge mind-shift in regards to data and tech.

Think of it this way: every piece of data and every platform or database, in fundraising, has one primary goal - maintain and support a relationship with a donor.

And how that relationship is maintained is a direct reflection of what you value as an organization and as a fundraiser. If your CRM is just there for gift entry, it's a transaction database not a support of relationships.

If your email software is just a communications platform to drive brand, it's not a conversation enabler to share impact with your donors.

I could go on, but take a hard look at your values and what's important and ask yourself if your data and technology are in line . . .

This Is About Ethics, Not Just Competence

When fundraisers don’t understand the tools they use, donors often bear the cost.

Over-solicitation.Inappropriate targeting. Creepy personalization. Eroded trust.

You don’t avoid those harms by avoiding technology. You avoid them by understanding it well enough to use it responsibly.

Data and tech literacy are how technology stays in service of generosity — not the other way around.

You Don’t Have To Love Data To Be Literate

This is especially important for the non-data people.

You don’t have to enjoy spreadsheets. You don’t have to be “numbers-driven.” You don’t have to become someone else.

You just have to stay curious enough to ask what you’re actually looking at — and brave enough to say when something doesn’t make sense.

Literacy isn’t passion. It’s participation.

How Fundraisers Actually Build This Skill

Not through mastery. Through practice.

By learning which questions endure even as tools change. By asking for explanations in plain language. By tracing numbers back to human behavior. By reading dashboards skeptically instead of reverently. By pairing data with story so neither becomes brittle.

There is a measurable ROI to data and technology management. I promise you - PROMISE YOU - that cleaner data yields higher fundraising results and well-functioning tech makes fundraising easier.

Start by doing the little things. Rudimentary basics in your CRM. Setting up dashboards for every user and holding them accountable - yourself, too. De-dupling and standardization of data (these are now EASY to do and cheaply, too.). Fix the things you can.

Fluency Beats Fear

Data and tech literacy don’t replace human judgment. They support it.

They allow you to participate in conversations without intimidation, to push back when something feels off, and to choose tools intentionally instead of reactively.

In a field increasingly shaped by algorithms and automation, that kind of fluency matters.

Not so we can be perfect.

But so we don’t shout “On average, we got it!” while missing the point entirely.