Episode 1: From Paper Impossible to Digital Extraordinary

Rev. Donna Smith-Pupillo will show you how it is possible for a nonprofit to go from the “Stone Ages” (as she called it!) to capturing everything you need to calculate the full impact of your work. 

Deaconess Nurse Ministry provides mental, physical, and spiritual health services, education, and advocacy to churches and various organizations in effort to create communities of wholistic wellness. In the past, the 25 or so nurse providers would track the care they provided, and the outcomes achieved from that care, on paper forms. It was nearly impossible to understand at a program-level what worked well and where investment could maximize outcomes. So Rev. Donna set out to move the organization into a digital, data-driven organization.

Rev. Donna Smith-Pupillo is the Executive Director of Deaconess Nurse Ministry. She discusses her journey from paper data collection to homegrown databases to finally using Social Solutions as a third-party vendor to standardize the collection, analysis, and reporting of front-line work with patients and clients.

An Action For You

While you might not be ready to take on the full transformation that Rev. Donna walked us through, you still can put some of her key approaches into play today. Take a team approach when reviewing information on outcomes. It’s not, “You failed!” but rather, “We both want to do X well, are we there yet? If not, how can we do better?”