The Grantmakers for Effective Organizations (GEO) annual conference is taking place in San Francisco this week. Words like impact, resilience, information-sharing, best practices, collaboration, risk, and capacity-building punctuate the presentations and conversations that follow.

Many of the challenges facing nonprofits and their funders – service fragmentation, lack of coordination with other nonprofits and impact measurement – can be addressed by common digital technology platforms in use today. Just think, within a 50-mile radius of where GEO is meeting, billions of dollars of private equity and venture funds are being invested in digital technologies to build alternative models for literally everything.

How do we make digital tools and data-driven decision-making a capacity-building priority for the nonprofit sector? How can we make the digital transformation of the nonprofit sector a safer bet for philanthropists? Grantmakers and grantees alike will tell you that funding digital technology infrastructure isn’t compelling. They’ll tell you it’s risky. They’ll tell you it's disruptive. The ROI is hard to measure for small organizations.

Increasingly, digital technology disruption is viewed as an opportunity for innovation and growth. Why? Because data is everywhere. For example, long before Facebook, healthcare companies were collecting our data. They have tons of it, enough of it still on paper in manila folders to fill entire buildings.

As consumers, every day we enjoy the benefits of the private sector’s investment in the digital transformation of the U.S. retail economy. Not every sector if the economy is as nimble or risk-tolerant.  It took an act of Congress - 2009’s Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act (HITECH) – and nearly $20 billion in government funding to get the healthcare sector to adopt electronic health records (EHRs). Now, 95% of hospitals in the U.S. have an EHR. The desire to be even more data-driven and digitally-enabled is creating isometric pressure on the healthcare sector to bring even more data together.

It’s not just about capturing, curating and protecting data. Are we collecting and paying attention to and sharing the right data? How can we use the data nonprofits already have to connect the dots, to save lives and enhance the well-being of our communities, and our nation?

Both funders and grantees bear some responsibility for a lack of investment in digital strategy and capabilities to improve impact. Why does this matter to grantmakers today? Here’s one example – philanthropy is a critical funder of many health and social service providers in our communities. There's no digital revolution sweeping through the nonprofit organizations that support many vulnerable patients and families in their daily living settings. The digital transformation of healthcare providers and services is placing some of our most vulnerable neighbors, and the community-based organizations they rely upon, on the wrong side of a NEW digital divide. And when it comes to health, that lack of access can be a matter of life and death.

In the end, this idea isn’t just about data or platforms; it’s about using technology to amplify our mission – our humanity – in service of the common good.

Is it time for a data literacy campaign for the nonprofit sector?