The Challenge
Reclink Australia uses sport and recreation to support people doing it tough, running programs through community organisations across the country. Programs like that generate a lot of information: who, where, what, and how often, and that information is the evidence funders and the board want to see. But if the data is captured inconsistently or scattered across spreadsheets, reporting becomes a manual slog and the impact story is hard to tell with confidence.
Reclink needed a consistent way to capture program information and a clear way to report on it.
What Evocate Delivered
In 2020 Evocate delivered a program information form and Power BI reporting:
- Structured capture: built a program information form so program data is captured consistently at the source, in the Microsoft 365 environment Reclink already used
- Power BI connection: connected that data into Power BI, turning raw entries into clear, visual reporting
- Dashboards and reports: surfaced the numbers Reclink needs for funders, the board, and day-to-day decisions
Outcomes
Reclink captures program information in a consistent form rather than a patchwork of spreadsheets, so the data is reliable from the start. Power BI turns that data into reporting Reclink can actually use, for funding submissions, governance, and understanding which programs are reaching people. The effort of pulling reports together by hand drops away, replaced by dashboards that refresh as the data comes in.
Why This Matters
For a not-for-profit, evidence is funding. Being able to show, clearly and credibly, what your programs deliver is often what keeps them running. Standardising data capture and putting Power BI on top of it turns reporting from a burden into an asset. For mission-driven organisations sitting on data they cannot easily see, this is among the highest-value things the Microsoft platform can do, and it does not take a huge build to get there.
