How to Spot Trends Before Everyone Else

Staying on top of changes in your field is vital for effective planning and execution. To make smart decisions, organizations need to look both outward and inward, and understand the broader context in which they operate – including what’s in and out of their control. Shifts in funding, policy, technology, community needs, and more will impact your work. If you’re not actively scanning for those changes, you risk strategic blind spots and missed opportunities.

You’re likely already doing some of the traditional (and important) ways to stay informed, such as:

• Subscribing to industry newsletters

• Setting Google Alerts

• Following thought leaders on social media

• Attending conferences and professional gatherings

• Discussing trends with staff, board members, and peers

These tools are valuable, but they often surface broad national trends and lagging indicators. If you want to increase your leading insights (click here to learn more about leading vs. lagging), it’s worth trying a few unique and effective activities to spot emerging signals earlier and with more relevance to your work.

Here are three of my favorite low-cost, high-value approaches you may not already be using:

🕵️‍♀️ Create “trend scouts” within your organization

What it is: Recruit a small group of people (staff, interns, board members, or other volunteers) with an eye on a specific area important to your strategy (e.g. state funding, digital learning, policy changes). Their job is to regularly scan for relevant developments and report back. It’s a more distributed way to do intelligence gathering.

Why it’s helpful: You tap into existing organizational energy and expertise. Trend scouts bring fresh insights, help detect weak signals, and require minimal cost (it’s mostly their time and some light-touch management).

How to get started:

• Identify 2-3 people with interest and relevant expertise.

• Give them a clear, narrow focus area to track.

• Provide a simple format (e.g. identify 3 headlines and 1 takeaway for your org.).

• Add “emerging trends” to your board and staff meeting agendas.
  

What to do today: Pick one domain and ask a board member or staff member to track it for the next month. Share their insights at the next team meeting.

🎙 Follow community voices and niche influencers (the good kind)

What it is: Podcasters, Substack writers, independent journalists, educators, and community leaders often surface real-time shifts in sentiment or practice, before they show up in formal reports. These are often the voices closest to the ground.

Why it’s helpful: These influential folks shape and reflect back how specific communities talk, act, and organize. If you’re paying attention, this offers early indicators of unmet community needs, shifting priorities, and how local culture is changing. For example: - A community organizer’s TikTok about rising evictions in a specific neighborhood might signal housing instability before it appears in city homelessness data or the news. If it becomes a pattern, it could help your org plan services or advocate more effectively. - A nonprofit staffer’s LinkedIn post about burnout and high turnover in small orgs might highlight a broader workforce trend before it appears in national surveys, but is already impacting your peers.

How to get started:

• Follow 10-15 relevant voices across social platforms (it’s hard to keep track of much more).

• Ask peers who else they follow, then build a shared list.

• Use hashtags or alerts to spot patterns, like “we’re seeing more…” or “a big shift lately…”

• Make trend sharing a regular agenda item at staff and 1-on-1 meetings.
  

What to do today: Pick one relevant subsector (e.g. youth mental health) and identify 5 people actively sharing ideas or observations in that space. Start following them and tracking the themes they raise.

📊 Host a mini data insights sprint

What it is: A 2-4 hour informal session where a small team (staff, interns, board members) explores an internal dataset to extract 1-3 actionable insights on a question that’s top of mind for the organization. It doesn’t require complicated tools, and you can use the platforms you’re already familiar with (Excel, Google, Salesforce, etc.).

Why it’s helpful: Most organizations sit on useful data that never gets used. A focused sprint lets you ask simple but strategic questions like:

• What’s changing in our volunteer sign-up patterns?

• Which programs are showing growth or decline?

• In what months do donations usually dip?
  

How to run it:

1. Pick a clear and simple question (e.g. “When do most donors give?”).

2. Export a simple dataset (remove personal info).

3. Invite a small team of 3-5 interested team members to explore and discuss the data.

4. Dedicate time for insight sharing and capturing what’s been learned.

5. Apply what you learn in future planning meetings.
   

What to do today: Choose one upcoming planning session to include a 1-hour data sprint using existing program or fundraising data. Do this before any strategic planning process.

🔚 Final Thoughts

All of these methods don’t require large investments or deep expertise; the cost is primarily the dedicated staff and volunteer time. But they help you build a culture of interest and curiosity, tap into new insights, and strengthen your team’s ability to navigate change. Most importantly, they shift your organization from reactive to proactive – so you move from just keeping up to looking ahead. 

If you’d like help putting any of these approaches into practice, or building a simple system for trend-spotting that fits your strategy and bandwidth, let’s schedule a call.

Thanks for reading,

Dan