The Data You Already Have Matters More Than the Data You Can Buy

Every mission-driven leader I talk to is being offered more data. Demographic files for your zip code. Lists of households likely to move, marry, or give. And now AI tools that promise to tell you who in your community is ready to hear from you.

I run a data company, so you might expect me to tell you to buy it all. I won’t. The data you use, and how you use it, says something about the kind of organization you are.

A line worth drawing

A few years ago the Wall Street Journal reported on churches using personal data and online activity to aim ads at people who might be in crisis: a marriage in trouble, depression or anxiety, a struggle with addiction.

I understand the reasoning. Find people who may need help, reach them, and everyone wins. I have said before that mission-driven organizations and businesses are more alike than different. This is the place where I draw a hard line between them.

Our role is to welcome the people who come to us with care and connection. When we target strangers based on what they might be going through, we skip the relationship and go straight to growth. Reaching someone in their most vulnerable moment because a dataset flagged them is not the same as meeting a need. It is marketing, and people can tell the difference.

No organization is the expert in everything a person might need. Sometimes the most caring thing we can do is connect someone to a trained professional or another organization, with no growth goal attached.

More data is not more clarity

There is a practical problem too. Many organizations buy data because they have heard that data matters and are not sure what they need. So they guess.

It is like needing one half-inch socket wrench and being sold the 172-piece set. Organizations end up with thousands of attributes about people they have never met, often the same attributes from several providers, and no clearer picture than before.

If you do not know what question you are trying to answer, no amount of data will help.

Signals before datasets

The data that matters most is data you already have, or could have: how the people in front of you take part in your work. A first visit. A program completed. A sign-up to volunteer. Joining a group. A request for help.

I call these signals. Each one is a moment when a person chose to take a step. Put together, they show you where people are connecting and where they are quietly slipping away. No purchased list can tell you that, because it is not about your people.

Using your own data this way is not selling anyone anything. It is holding up a mirror. Every mission-driven organization is called to serve its community, and very few are willing to ask how well they are doing that work. Are we caring for people the way we say we should?

A question for your leadership team

Before you buy a dataset, or connect an AI tool to one, ask two things. What are we trying to understand? And would we be comfortable explaining to the people on that list how we got their names and why?

You have been entrusted with the people already in your care. Start there.

Have a question your team keeps coming back to? Bring it to us.