State of the sector

Each year we produce new analysis into what data from the thousands of people using our data maturity assessment tells us about data maturity in the nonprofit sector

Data maturity is an organisation’s journey towards improvement and increased capability in using data. Data Orchard created a framework model which describes data maturity on a five-stage journey. This progresses from ‘Unaware’ through to ‘Mastering’ across seven key themes: Uses, Data, Analysis, Leadership, Culture, Tools, and Skills.

In October 2019 we launched a free online Data Maturity Assessment tool which enables organisations to measure where they are on the five-stage journey to data maturity. There is a free version for individual users, an organisation version for multiple users, and a cohort version for multiple organisations.

Since then our tool has been used by thousands of people (currently almost 12,000) from all kinds of organisations and sectors, and from all over the world. This has given us a wealth of data about the state of data maturity in different sectors and subsectors.

Each year we produce new analysis into the latest data and what it tells us about levels of data maturity in the UK's nonprofit sector. Whilst commercial organisations are included for sector comparisons, our reports primarily present findings on data from validated nonprofit (non-commercial) organisations. These include: non-governmental organisations (NGOs) like charities, social enterprises, cooperatives, public sector organisations, social housing providers, and universities.