For many of you a new year marks the start of a new annual planning cycle. Hopefully with a donor-focused and data-driven strategy as the basis of your fundraising program. And based on a firm planning and projection process. You want to know where all those investments are going, right? I have collected 18 great ‘data quotes’ for you. Useful in any discussion about data-driven fundraising.

1. What gets measured gets managed. - Peter Drucker

2. Data that sit unused are no different from data that were never collected in the first place. - Doug Fisher

3. Without data you are just another person with an opinion. - W. Edwards Deming

4. Data will talk to you if you’re willing to listen. - Jim Bergeson

5. Computers are incredibly fast, accurate and stupid; humans are incredibly slow, inaccurate and brilliant; together they are powerful beyond imagination. - Albert Einstein.

6. The goal is to turn data into information, and information into insight. - Carly Fiorina

7. We are surrounded by data, but starved for insights. - Jay Baer

8. Where there is data smoke, there is business fire. - Thomas Redman

9. Marketing without data is like driving with your eyes closed. - Dan Zarella

10. At the end of the day, the numbers don't lie. - Marcus Lemonis

11. It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. - Arthur Conan Doyle

12. In God we trust. All others must bring data. - W. Edwards Deming

13. You can’t improve what you don’t measure. - Peter Drucker

14. You can have data without information, but you cannot have information without data. - Daniel Keys Moran

15. If we have data, let’s look at data. If all we have are opinions, let’s go with mine. - Jim Barksdale

16. It’s easy to lie with statistics. It’s hard to tell the truth without statistics. - Andrejs Dunkels

17. Data is not information, information is not knowledge, knowledge is not understanding, understanding is not wisdom. - Clifford Stoll

18. Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards. - Søren Kierkegaard