Using Automated Email Sequences to Welcome New Donors

Your attendance records show you who came. Your satisfaction survey tells you whether they liked your program. But you may still be wondering: What changed in your participants’ lives? What can they do now that they couldn’t do before? Which changes have lasted, and what still gets in the way?

These questions matter when you’re deciding how to improve a program, where to invest limited resources, or what to share with a funder. Answering them may require a different way of gathering evidence, including looking beyond the information you typically collect and considering other ways participants might communicate their experiences.

In our recent Nonprofit Hub webinar, Your Data Has a Story: A Practical Roadmap for Turning Evaluation Into IMPACT, we explored how to connect meaningful questions, intentional evidence, and better decisions. Here, we’re taking a closer look at the evidence itself: what we count as data, how we gather it, and whose experiences we might miss.

Your Impact Story Is Bigger Than Your Numbers

Surveys and spreadsheets are useful tools, but so are observations, images, and conversations, particularly when we ask people to choose, sort or rank options and invite them to explain those decisions to us. Bringing together different kinds of evidence by combining these methods can help us develop a more complete understanding of program outcomes and tell the full story of your impact.

Expanding your approach this way doesn’t have to mean adding a major evaluation project. Simply start by identifying something you want to understand about your program that could help inform a decision. Then consider what your existing data can tell you and what additional information you might need to answer that question

Imagine a nonprofit offering financial coaching to help families build financial stability. Staff want to understand: How are participants managing everyday expenses and unexpected costs six months after coaching? Tracking changes in savings and overdue bills could reveal part of the story. Understanding how families make financial decisions, what feels different at home, and where they still struggle could fill in important gaps.

A meaningful impact story emerges when we bring these different sources of information together, recognizing that what we count or track is only one form of evidence. We can also learn from what people say, do, create, and choose or prioritize.

Here are five ways to look for the evidence you need.

1. What we COUNT or TRACK

Participation records help describe your reach, while other routine program records can help identify patterns, track changes over time, and assess progress toward intended outcomes. To understand changes in people’s lives, look for information connected to the outcomes your program aims to support. Before collecting anything new, ask what your existing records could help you understand.

For the financial coaching program, intake and follow-up records might show changes in emergency savings or the number of bills paid on time. Looking across participants can reveal how common those changes are, whether they are sustained, and where progress is uneven.

Sometimes the information we need is already being collected; we simply haven’t considered how it might help answer a particular question about our work. At the same time, it’s important to recognize what these records often cannot tell us, such as why changes occurred or what they mean to the people experiencing them.

Try this: Review one routine record with a specific question in mind. What pattern do you notice? What can’t that record explain?

2. What people SAY

A brief conversation can help explain what sits behind a number. Interviews, reflections, stories, and informal feedback offer insight into what participants value, what gets in their way, and how they describe change.

This kind of qualitative data provides an important complement to numerical information, allowing us to explore the experiences and circumstances that may help explain patterns in the things we count and track.

The coaching team could ask, “Tell me about the last time an unexpected expense came up. What did you do, and how was that different?” A follow-up question, “What helped you handle it that way?” invites participants to describe the program’s role alongside other influences.

These conversations can reveal not only whether participants believe they have benefited from a program, but also which aspects of the experience were most meaningful, what challenges remain, and whether participants experienced changes the organization hadn’t anticipated.

Try this: Add one focused question to an existing check-in. With participants’ permission, record responses consistently so you can look for themes across conversations, including similarities and differences in participants’ experiences.

3. What people DO

Observations of participation, interactions, behaviors, and engagement can reveal aspects of program experiences and outcomes that might not emerge when we simply ask participants to describe them.

At the beginning and end of the coaching program, participants might be invited to work through a sample household budget that includes an unexpected expense. As participants complete the activity, staff could observe how they approach the challenge, identify essential expenses, consider different options, and adjust their plans. Using a simple checklist to document these observations would allow staff to compare participants’ demonstrated skills over time.

These observations provide evidence of participants’ ability to apply financial planning skills in a simulated situation, while follow-up conversations can help the organization understand whether and how those skills are being used in everyday life.

This provides evidence of whether participants can demonstrate stronger skills, while follow-up conversations can explore whether and how they use those skills at home.

It’s worth remembering that what someone demonstrates in a structured activity may differ from what they’re able to do in their everyday circumstances. Observational evidence can therefore be particularly valuable when considered alongside participants’ own accounts of how they apply what they’ve learned and the barriers they continue to encounter.

Try this: Identify one skill connected to a program goal and offer a consistent way for participants to demonstrate it over time. Use a simple checklist to document the skills demonstrated, adding notes where additional context would help explain what you observed.

4. What people CREATE

Drawings, photographs, maps, and written or recorded reflections can help people communicate experiences that are difficult to capture in a questionnaire. Creative approaches may be especially useful when we’re interested in understanding complex experiences, feelings, perceptions, or changes that participants find difficult to put into words. Visual and creative approaches can also make data collection more accessible by offering alternatives to conventional written or verbal responses, particularly for participants who face language or literacy barriers or simply prefer other ways of communicating.

In our financial coaching example, participants might be invited to select photographs from a collection of images that represent their relationship with money before participating in the program and how they feel about managing their finances today. Rather than interpreting participants’ images or creations on their behalf, we can invite them to explain what they’ve selected or created, what it represents, and why particular elements are meaningful to them.

Try this: Offer a visual or creative prompt alongside a spoken or written option. Invite participants to explain their images/creations in their own words, recognizing that different people will find different ways of sharing comfortable and accessible.

5. What people CHOOSE or PRIORITIZE

The choices people make, including what they select, sort, rank, or identify as most important, can provide valuable insight into their needs, preferences, and priorities. Asking participants to make choices among different options can help us understand not only what matters most to them, but also how their priorities may differ from what we assume they need.

For example, our financial coaching program might invite participants to prioritize the financial challenges they most want help addressing, such as managing debt, building emergency savings, improving their credit, or developing a household budget. Participants could sort cards representing these challenges into categories such as immediate priorities, longer-term goals, and areas where they don’t currently need assistance, and explain which matter most and why.

These choices provide insight into participants’ needs and priorities, while the explanations help us understand the experiences and circumstances behind their selections. Sorting and ranking activities can be incorporated into interviews, questionnaires, or hands-on exercises, making them adaptable to different program settings and participant needs.

Try this: Invite participants to identify their priorities before presenting a list of options, and include opportunities for them to explain their choices. Consider how the information could help you adapt your programs or services to better respond to participants’ needs.

Make Sure Your Approach Fits

None of these five categories of evidence is inherently better than another, and collecting more kinds of information doesn’t necessarily mean we’ll develop a better understanding of our programs. The goal is to choose approaches that are appropriate for the questions we’re asking and the people we’re hoping to learn from.

A creative activity becomes useful evaluation when you have a clear plan for gathering and interpreting the information. Before trying a new approach, consider:

• PURPOSE: Will this help answer our question and inform a decision?
• PEOPLE: Can the people we need to hear from participate? Consider language, literacy, disability access, trust, and time.
• QUALITY: Will we collect and record information consistently enough for the decision we’re making?
• CAPACITY: Who will gather the information, review it, and bring it back to the team?
• USE: When will we discuss the findings, and what could we change because of them?

These considerations help ensure that our data collection efforts are manageable and meaningful, rather than simply adding activities that place additional demands on staff and participants.

Pay particular attention to who is missing. An impact story based only on people who completed coaching and responded to follow-up may overlook families who struggled or found the program less useful. Plan ways to hear from those who left early, too. Explain how you’ll use what people share, make participation voluntary, and get permission before sharing identifiable stories or images publicly.

Sometimes a simple conversation or a fresh look at existing records may provide exactly what we need, while other questions may call for more structured data collection or a combination of approaches. What matters is that our methods are well suited to our questions and that the information we gather can contribute to a meaningful understanding of our work.

Bring the Clues Together

Let’s return to the financial coaching example. Imagine follow-up records show that more families have emergency savings, conversations show changes in how they describe handling unexpected expenses, their image selections indicate positive shifts in how they feel about managing finances. Meanwhile, a prioritization activity shows that families priorities are mostly aligned with the programs’ focus areas but identifies areas for future program development.

Together, these different sources of evidence provide a fuller picture of the changes participants are experiencing, how coaching may have contributed to those changes, and what topics or areas programming should focus on. Each offers a different perspective, allowing the organization to understand not only the progress participants have made, but also the challenges that remain and the priorities that matter most to them.

Look for disagreements across sources, too. Participants may demonstrate stronger budgeting skills while still struggling to cover essential expenses. That finding belongs in the impact story and could guide additional support or referrals. A few enthusiastic comments may not reflect everyone’s experience, and evidence of change does not, by itself, establish that the program caused it. Be clear about what your evidence supports and what remains uncertain.

These findings are no less important than the successes we hope to demonstrate. When we’re willing to examine unexpected results, recognize differences in participants’ experiences, and question our assumptions, evaluation becomes an opportunity to learn about both the strengths and limitations of our programs.

Funders can help by asking which decisions organizations need evidence for and supporting the time required to gather and use the data. A candid account of a challenge, the evidence behind it, and the adjustment underway can make reporting more useful to everyone involved.

For your next team meeting, choose one unanswered question and one decision it could inform. Review what you already know, identify whose perspective is missing, and try one manageable way to fill the gap. Then return to participants with what you heard and what you plan to do.

The value of gathering different kinds of evidence lies not only in the more complete picture it allows us to develop, but also in what we choose to do with that understanding. When we use what we’ve learned to question assumptions, inform decisions, and make changes that better serve our communities, gathering evidence becomes an integral part of strengthening the work itself.

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