Data and measurement

Measuring without stress: GA4, cookie consent and a simple dashboard for small organisations

Many charities and small businesses have Google Analytics installed and never open it. Here is how to set up measurement with cookie consent done properly, plus a one-page dashboard that answers the questions that matter.

26 October 2026 · 4 min read

It happens all the time: someone installed Google Analytics a few years ago, nobody knows the password, and when the board asks whether the campaign worked, the answer is a shrug. Measuring does not have to be a specialist job. With a few simple decisions, a charity or small business can see what works, stay within GDPR and spend 15 minutes a month on the numbers.

Start with your questions

GA4 tracks hundreds of things. Most of them do not matter to a small organisation. Before touching any setting, write down the questions your team actually asks. For example:

• How many people donated, or asked for a quote, this month?
• Where did they come from: Google, Instagram, the newsletter, another site?
• Which pages lead the most people to take that step?
• Did last month's campaign bring more visits and more sign-ups?

If a metric does not help answer one of these, you can ignore it without guilt.

GA4 in 3 steps

1. Sort out access

The Google Analytics account should belong to the organisation, not to a volunteer or a former agency. Use an organisation email as administrator and give read-only access to anyone who only needs to see the numbers.

2. Mark the events that count

In GA4, important actions are called key events. Pick 2 or 3: the contact form being sent, the thank you page after a donation, a newsletter sign-up, a tap on the phone button. More than that spreads your attention thin.

3. Label your campaigns

When you share a link in the newsletter, on Instagram or on a poster with a QR code, add UTM parameters. These are tags at the end of the address that tell GA4 where the visit came from. A shared spreadsheet of the links you use avoids mix-ups between "Instagram" and "instagram".

Cookie consent, done properly

Google Analytics uses non-essential cookies, so it needs the visitor's consent before they are switched on. In practice, your cookie banner should:

• Show "Accept" and "Reject" with equal weight, on the first screen.
• Not load Analytics before the visitor chooses.
• Explain in 2 lines what the cookies are for and link to the privacy policy.
• Let people change their mind later, with a link in the footer.

To connect the banner to GA4, use Google's Consent Mode. When someone rejects, GA4 stores no cookies and the reports show modelled numbers. Expect this: with an honest banner, some visitors will reject, and your numbers will look lower than before. The site has not lost visitors, the data has simply become more accurate.

A one-page dashboard

GA4's reports put a lot of people off. The fix is a single page in Looker Studio, which is free and connects straight to GA4, showing only what answers your questions:

1. At the top, 3 big numbers: visits, key events and the month's conversion rate, compared with the previous month.
2. In the middle, a bar chart of key events by source.
3. At the bottom, a table of the 10 pages that lead to those events most often.

Share the link with the board and schedule an automatic email on the first day of each month. That way nobody has to log in to GA4.

The 15 minute monthly routine

Measuring only helps if it leads to decisions. Once a month, open the dashboard and answer 3 questions in writing, in a shared note: what went up, what went down and what we will try next month. After a year you have a record of what worked, useful for reports to funders and for your next grant application.

If your team uses an AI assistant, you can paste in the monthly summary and ask for a first reading. It helps spot patterns, but the team is the one that knows the context: the campaign that flopped, the event that brought people in.

A few numbers, looked at regularly, are worth more than a full report nobody opens.

Where to start

If today you cannot say how many people your website leads to get in touch, donate or sign up, start by writing down your questions and sorting out access. The rest can be set up in an afternoon or two. If you would rather have someone handle the setup, the cookie banner and the dashboard, and show your team how to read it, we can talk through what your organisation needs to know in a short conversation.

Frequently asked questions