As a social-sector leader, do you ever wish you had a crystal ball? My most recent nonprofit CEO role began on March 13, 2020, the day the professional theatre company I was hired to lead was forced to close for the pandemic. Yes, you read that correctly, I accepted the position five hours before the pandemic shut us down. We didn’t produce live programming again for 18 months. Talk about needing a crystal ball!
In my role, there were countless scenarios at play for keeping people safe, while figuring out how to advance our mission, and ensure a future for the 35-year-old organization in uncharted territory. I’m happy to report that we accomplished those goals, and the theatre just completed its 41st season. There were many hectic days and sleepless nights when I needed greater clarity in what I believed to be the best path forward.
While I value the power of leveraging data and measurement, and I had a mountain of data to wade through, I’m not a data scientist. I longed for someone to help me extract the most relevant data from our CRM, organize and analyze it, and support me with predictive modeling and forecasting. However, with a tight budget, small team, and lots of uncertainty about where future funding would come from, I continued trying to muddle through on my own.
During a recent kick-off meeting with a new client, I met an Executive Director feeling the same way I had felt, “we must demonstrate the impact of our statewide programs. We have lots of data in a variety of spreadsheets and systems, and for 13 years, I’ve been the one trying to analyze the data to help us make a stronger case.” In short, I heard him saying, “Help me!”
In the few months I’ve been supporting and learning from the MRC team of professional data scientists, I now realize I needed a consistent system/process for managing and leveraging our data at the theatre. We had systems in place to support our marketing efforts, systems for our production teams, and a system for fundraising. However, there was no system for making sense of our data as a tool for supporting all the other systems and guiding future planning. Sound familiar?
There is a shift happening across the sector as leaders explore the benefits of fractional staffing. Fractional staffing is a smart, practical way for nonprofits to get the leadership and subject matter expertise they need without taking on the weight of another part- or full-time position. More organizations are leaning on fractional CEOs or interim executive support during transitions, fractional development professionals to stabilize fundraising, and fractional COOs or operations leaders to strengthen systems behind the scenes. Fractional performance management fits right into that same strategy—bringing specialized data capacity to your team in a way that’s flexible, affordable, and built around your real-world constraints.
MRC can serve as your fractional data management partner by providing professional, trusted, and consistent support for collecting, organizing and analyzing your organization’s data; while helping you put the data into practice by clarifying and communicating the ways your programs and services change actions, outcomes and lives.
Here are just a few of the benefits of hiring a Fractional Performance Manager to help take your organization to the next level:
- Cost-effective: Access to experienced, performance data experts without committing to a full-time role.
- Stronger, faster decisions: Use performance data to improve, prioritize, or scale what’s working, while allowing you to stop spending energy on what’s not.
- Clearer impact communication: Translate your results and impact into messages funders, boards, and donors can understand and support.
- Improved agility and innovation: Respond to change with data-informed scenarios instead of “best guesses” under pressure.
- Lighten the load for you and your team: Freedom to focus on mission delivery while your data gets the consistent attention it deserves.
I know why I joined MRC. I’m here to help leaders who are thinking, or maybe yelling, “help me!” I understand how heavy it feels to make high-stakes decisions efficiently, and to wonder if the answers are buried somewhere in the data, if I only had the capacity to find them. You don’t have to carry that burden alone. With the right fractional support, you can mine what you already have, fill the most important gaps, and move forward with the critical work of changing lives and circumstances with more clarity and confidence.
Our practice paper, Benefits of Hiring a Fractional Performance Manager, breaks down how nonprofits can overcome these barriers and gain consistent, expert support in data collection, analysis, and impact communication. Inside, you’ll learn how a Fractional Performance Manager helps organizations tap into top-tier expertise, make smarter program decisions, and communicate impact more effectively—all at a fraction of the cost of a full-time hire. If you’re ready to strengthen your measurement strategy and elevate your organization’s impact, download the practice paper today.
