The Data Bridge: Connecting Practice, Management, Advocacy, Funding, and Governance in Social Service Nonprofits

Abstract

Nonprofit research is increasingly attentive to the complex dynamics and relationships that underpin the nonprofit ecosystem. Yet the role of frontline social work practice in both delivering key services and generating the data that supports wider organizational and institutional processes remains underexplored. To examine this dynamic, we present an institutional ethnographic case study of a common data collection tool used across the Australian homelessness sector. We empirically demonstrate how frontline social work practice generates data that underpin core operations across the nonprofit ecosystem. Our findings show that social workers are not only guided by data in their practice but actively shape the data produced through their use of collection tools. We further identify the challenges that arise when these data are expected to serve multiple purposes, particularly for their validity and utility across organizational and institutional contexts.