Working with what you have

Data & Evidence

Where documents and evidence live, linked to the program, grant or goal they support, so a claim can be traced to something.

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What it is for
Linking is the part people skip
The readiness question

What it is for

Data & Evidence answers what do we know, and more usefully, how do we know it. A document here can be linked to the programs, grants, and strategic goals it supports, so a claim in a report has something behind it.

The Data and Evidence page listing documents with their evidence type and what each is linked to — The Data & Evidence workspace, where a document can be linked to what it evidences.

Linking is the part people skip

An uploaded file in a folder is storage. The same file linked to the program it evidences and the grant that funded it is evidence. The second takes about ten extra seconds and is the difference between an audit that goes well and one that does not.

Link to the grant when a document was produced for a funder or funded by one.
Link to the program when it evidences what a program did or achieved.
Version things that change. Superseding a document rather than overwriting it keeps what you actually submitted in March.
Keep the source, not just the summary. The spreadsheet behind the number is what somebody will ask for.

The readiness question

The Data and Evidence Readiness Diagnostic asks whether your information is inventoried, accurate, evidenced, governed, and actually used to make decisions. The last of those is the one most organizations fail, and it is not a technology problem.