NextAfter

NextAfter, though not a nonprofit organization itself, works alongside nonprofits to research why their donors give and help them reach more people and generate more giving. Though the company is small, it has a data team larger than that of many organizations, comprising the CTO and two data analysts.

The company pores over data from sources such as Google Analytics, HubSpot, and Facebook Ads to not only view how their clients' online fundraising programs are performing but why donors give. Data Analyst Kristen Allcorn says keeping data fresh and timely for analysis was one of the company's challenges.

NextAfter tried several ETL alternatives. Since at the heart of what they do is optimizations through A/B testing, they ran a side-by-side test and looked at the data returned by each platform, the amount of work required to administer and maintain the software, and the quality of the support team. Stitch was their top choice.

"We were really impressed with Stitch's support team as well as the thought process that goes into the build of connectors," Allcorn says. "I can see the developers are looking at it from the point of view of customers' use cases and listening to what they need."

Before NextAfter began using Stitch they did the bulk of their analysis by manually exporting data and feeding it into Excel spreadsheets. Today the company replicates data to a Google BigQuery data warehouse and reports on it using Google Data Studio. "Stitch saves us a ton of time. Having a standard process to put the data in the warehouse and then feeding that data to a dashboard gives us more time to dig and uncover the story the data is telling us," Allcorn says.