What does a car need that a nonprofit also needs? Dashboards!

A dashboard is a way to measure your progress toward a goal, and a great way to engage your key donors, board members, and volunteers in staying connected with your progress. A traditional use for dashboards is to keep your board and staff on track, like these from Jeanne Bell and Jan Masaoka over at blueavocado.org, and to celebrate successes or keep an eye on trouble spots.

Dashboards can also be used to publicly measure your fundraising progress in real time, like this one at Forge. Or, they can be customer service dashboards, like the local hospital that has the estimated emergency room wait time constantly updated on signage and its website, with the slogan "Minutes Matter."

Dashboards can even be used to recruit volunteers. For instance, I know of a local Habitat for Humanity and a local Meals on Wheels organization that use Twitter in real-time to recruit for volunteer vacancies when they are building homes or need drivers. "We still need 10 volunteers for Saturday who know how to wield a hammer" or "We have a vacant route on Wednesday at lunch time. Can you give up your lunch hour this week?" They also post updates when the routes are filled or they've got new volunteers signing up.

Be creative! In what ways could you use dashboards to keep your audiences updated and engaged in real-time about your progress?