Data journey

10:35 - 11:00

Wednesday 12 May

Data in Service Design at Parkinson’s UK

A look at how we've been using data at Parkinson's UK to help re-design our information and support services. Parkinson's Connect is a service transformation project to design and develop an end-to-end service pathway that meets the information and support needs of the ever-growing number of people with Parkinson’s and their friends, family and carers. In this presentation we will talk through how we have used qualitative and quantitative data as part of a service design approach as we prepare to begin delivering the new service from September 2021. We will look at the successes and difficulties we have had using data in service design and explore our strategy for the future of data in service delivery at Parkinson's UK.

10:35 - 11:00

Wednesday 12 May

The impact of COVID on the third sector and how to improve your organisation’s response

What has been the impact of COVID on the third sector? How do organisations need to adapt? What help is available to redesign strategy, processes, operations, data collection and analysis? In this session The Charities Aid Foundation will discuss the impact COVID has had on the third sector and Pro Bono Operational Research will talk you through the types of support available to help you build back better. Come prepared to discuss key challenges you have encountered over this last year with our PBOR experts.

10:35 - 10:40  Welcome and Introduction to OR (Jane Parkin)

10:40 - 10:50  The impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on charities (Kate Hammond) and poll questions

10:50 - 10:55  PBOR Case Study - Home-start (Jane Parkin)

10:55 - 11:00  Pro Bono OR Scheme (Amy Hughes)

11:00 - 11:15  Discussion (Ashleigh Monks)

11:30 - 12:10

Wednesday 12 May

From novices to data-driven: Charity Digital’s journey

Charity Digital has been on a data journey this past year. Although the journey is still very much ongoing, they’ve matured from an organisation who rarely used data, to one that is now data-driven. They’ll take attendees through the stages of their data journey, and how each stage has helped to inform their data strategy. While they still have more to learn, they have lots to offer in their key takeaways and learnings so far!

11:30 - 11:55

Wednesday 12 May

Using data beyond impact assessment

Monitoring and Evaluation is critical to the sector and we need to keep learning on doing it better. However, we should also think about using data for other uses. Examples are using machine learning to power a knowledge sharing platform via text messages, and using data to improve decision making on funding. These are two examples that Claire will talk about, form their experiences at WeFarm and St Guy’s and Thomas’ Foundation.

12:15 - 12:40

Wednesday 12 May

Combining data using GIS (geographic information system mapping) for behaviour change insights at Sustrans

This session will provide an overview of how the Hands Up Scotland Survey (HUSS) and other data sources such as accident data, the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation, and traffic data are analysed and combined in GIS to provide detailed insights into where and how to deploy behaviour change interventions. The HUSS data set on children in Scotland's travel-to-school habits has been collected by Sustrans for 12 years and is now an Official Statistic of the Scottish Government.

12:15 - 12:40

Wednesday 12 May

How we used our data (both internally and externally, for good) during COVID at Citizens Advice

In this session, Citizens Advice discuss how they built a consolidated dashboard and set up regular data discussions to help their service tackle the COVID crisis internally. They’ll talk about what they learnt from this process, and from their work using social media influencing with their news and comms teams to help their external stakeholders and the government understand the ever-changing concerns of people during the pandemic.

14:25 - 15:05

Wednesday 12 May

Data Journey at Working Families

Working Families directly advise 2,000-3,000 parents each year, via  free phone and email helpline for working parents/carers, most of them in some way disadvantaged by income level, BAME background, profound caring responsibilities, etc.

But… there is a limit to how many people we can help as a charity.

This talk explores why we adapted to a new digital platform, and our digital data journey to this point

14:25 - 15:05

Wednesday 12 May

Minimum input to maximum output: a case study from Inter Care

This session will look at how to present output data of charitable organisations for fundraising purposes. We’ll showcase a project done with charity Inter Care, carried out with the support of the Royal Statistical Society’s pro bono initiative, Statisticians for Society. 

10:35 - 11:15

Tuesday 11 May

Undertaking a CRM transformation to improve data quality and insights at Teach First

Teach First is in the process of upgrading our CRM and undertaking a large scale business transformation, reviewing all processes, and most importantly data. As one of the first adopters of Salesforce, their data structure is not fit for purpose and limits the insights the organisation is able to generate. This session will cover Teach First’s experience in transforming its Salesforce, challenges faced and emerging lessons for any organisations in the process or about to undertake a similar transformation.

10:35 - 11:15

Tuesday 11 May

Data Maturity, The State of The Sector

In 2019 Data Orchard launched the world’s first online data maturity assessment for the not-for-profit sector. With over 600 validated users from every size, shape, and type of organisation; the tool’s designers can now start to share what the data tells us about the state of the sector’s data maturity. This session will reflect on: the strengths and weaknesses of the sector in relation to the seven key themes: Uses, Data, Analysis, Leadership, Culture, Tools, and Skills; surprises and curiosities in the findings; how the not-for-profit sector compares with the public and private sector; the impact the tool has had for those organisations that have used it so far; and future development plans.

11:30 - 12:10

Tuesday 11 May

Learning and adapting: How Street League uses data to improve decision-making

Charities have adapted and responded at pace to the challenges and changes caused by the covid pandemic. This means that leaders have had to take decisions under pressure and with limited information or certainty. Street League is a youth employment charity that changed the way it operated overnight. From the outset of the pandemic they changed its data collection and reporting procedures to ensure accurate and timely information was available to take decisions. This session will describe what they did, what they learned, and how they’re putting this at the heart of the organisation and its business plans going forward.

12:15 - 12:40

Tuesday 11 May

British Red Cross on Open source: why it matters in the social sector

What is open source and why it is important in the social sector? Mike will demonstrate British Red Cross’s adoption of a suite of open source tools, which analyse and publish data in the public domain under open source licenses. He’ll show the benefits this brought to the charity, including helping to secure grants and receive analytical contributions - and to the broader community, such as improving access to data, insights, and resources. You'll take away pragmatic steps to adopt an open source model in an organisation while addressing common barriers such as personal data and security concerns. Open source tools and dashboards including the Vulnerability Index and Resilience Index will be explored.

14:25 - 15:05

Tuesday 11 May

Using data at the Peabody Housing Association

Peabody’s Resident Wellbeing Project was set up in May 2020 in response to the Covid-19 outbreak and subsequent national lockdown. Peabody identified their most vulnerable residents and developed a plan to provide an immediate response to their needs during lockdown. The project has a series of deliverables which support Peabody residents in need. It began with a few very important pieces of data about each resident, and led to providing services via a well-architected and quickly designed data flow; locally based groups providing assistance with food; employment; advice regarding sources of help including government programmes; and even an app to facilitate a befriending programme.

14:25 - 14:50

Tuesday 11 May

Helping learners succeed: Improving University Success Through Predictive Modeling

According to a report by the National Student Clearinghouse, nearly half of all students entering college are at risk of leaving without earning a degree. John Jay College, located in New York City, inquired how existing student data and machine learning techniques could be combined to address challenges surrounding graduation completion rates. John Jay looked to DataKind to help answer these questions and develop a tool to support their efforts to improve graduation rates. Sponsored by the Mastercard Center for Inclusive Growth, with additional support from the Robin Hood Foundation, the DataKind team analyzed more than ten years of historical student data, identifying features associated with at risk students. The predictive model and insights were used to design effective interventions to reduce dropout, as well as a novel software application that allowed the John Jay administration to identify students at risk of drop out, so that the students can receive proactive outreach and support from the college. In its first year, the tool analyzed roughly 1,114 advanced credit students to identify students who were most at risk of stop-out or drop-out. Through targeted and strategic interventions, John Jay has already helped more than 800 of those students graduate over one year, or approximately 73%, compared to a projected graduation rate of 54% over two years for similar students without the tool and interventions. In support of this work, John Jay College received $800,000 for emergency grants and extra staff.

15:05 - 16:35

Tuesday 11 May

Shaping a more data wise London

What's the first word that springs to mind when you think of data? 'Scary' or 'zzz' were responses when we started our data literacy programme for small charities and community organisations in London. Many organisations also told us they used their data for impact reporting. But what about using data to adapt or create new activities and services for local people that need them? How do you start to ask questions of the data you have? Or compare it with complex and seemingly impenetrable external data sources? Datawise London aims to give charities and community organisations the knowledge and skills they need to better use data to shape service-delivery and influence change. In this session you'll gain insights from the workshops, tools and techniques we've created or adapted to motivate small organisations to develop their data capability. Starting with our replicable entry-level interactive workshop, Data Essentials. You'll also hear from two local charities on their data development journeys and experiences of taking part in our 8-month cohort of community organisations seeking to better use data to shape their future.

10:10 - 10:30

Monday 10 May

In-sights into data at Moorfields Eye Hospital

Alex Karet of Softwire will ask how Softwire and Moorfields Eye Hospital give medical researchers access to millions of patient scans without compromising patient confidentiality.

They will discuss how they combine these anonymised images with relevant clinical data, explaining their work producing a state-of-the-art research platform. They will highlight how this platform allows researchers to explore the available dataset without granting access to any identifiable patient records. They will mention their work balancing accessibility of the data with the information governance concerns working with personally identifiable health data. They will also explain how this helps produce datasets for HDRUK and the future of health data research in the UK.

10:35 - 11:30

Monday 10 May

Analysing grant data to shape funder responses to crisis at London Funders

The London Community Response is a collaboration of 67 funders. By May 2021 they will have completed five waves of Covid funding, from crisis response to renewal, and distributed around £55m to community organisations in London. London Funders used the data from this to interrogate who the funding is reaching, in particular whether it supported smaller, ‘led-by’ organisations. Working alongside funders and equity partners, they developed tools to monitor and understand how well they were achieving this throughout. The data was used to shape how the London Community Response is designed and delivered. London Funders hope this will inspire change to wider funder approaches.
11:45 - 12:25

Monday 10 May

Equality, Diversity and Inclusion - A data driven journey from emh

Emh Group is a large social housing and care organisation based in the East Midlands of England with properties also in Yorkshire, the West Midlands and the South West, with 1,100 employees and circa 20,000 homes and commercial properties.  Diversity is one of their core values. In 2019 they agreed an Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Strategy to ensure equality, diversity and inclusion becomes part of the DNA of the business. One of their first steps was to understand the existing data they held on equality, diversity and inclusion, assess its quality and come up with a plan to improve it. They asked Data Orchard to help them with this work.

In this session we will share our process and learning from the data analysis project, and a year on, what happened and what’s changed at emh.  Data themes will include: merging internal datasets, exploring the external data landscape, changing culture and language (and categories) for equality and diversity characteristics, pay gap analysis and data literacy.

11:45 - 12:25

Monday 10 May

The data journey at Christians Against Poverty

Hear from Christians Against Poverty (CAP), a national debt counselling charity who have been on some big journeys using internal data to make data-based decisions, improve operational efficiency, and inform their growth strategy. They've also had a good time using this data to get leadership on board, and seen some big changes as a result. They're now exploring designing a management information dashboards and, by the time of the event, they hope to share their initial learning about writing a data strategy. Join Martin Cowles, Senior Project Manager in the Research, Development and Innovation department, to hear about CAP’s data journey!

12:30 - 12:55

Monday 10 May

Using data for quality, performance and assurance at Change Grow Live

Change Grow Live talk about their work as the biggest drug and alcohol service provider in England. Using data to make a difference has helped the organisation grow from a tiny volunteer-led group to supporting over 100,000 people every year. Key to this is a data strategy that has transformed how the organisation uses data, having an impact on service users, those on the first line, and leaders. They moved from Excel-style reporting to use of a data visualisation tool which continues to form an essential part of organisation’s response to the challenges of Covid-19.

12:30 - 12:55

Monday 10 May

Using Data at Teach First

Teach First is a charity set up to address educational inequality. Teach First has been in operation for 19 years and over that time helped train and develop over 15,000 school teachers and leaders serving disadvantaged communities. In this session they will talk about Teach First’s journey of using data to inform both strategic and operational decision making. They will discuss their current approach including how they have used data in our shift to virtual delivery during the pandemic and future plans. Join Jonathan Tan, Head of Data and Performance and Daria Kuznetsova, Executive Director, to learn about their journey so far - including some of the challenges faced (plenty!) and how they have overcome them.

12:30 - 12:55

Monday 10 May

The approach to data at Esmée Fairbairn Foundation

Josh Cockcroft at Esmée Fairbairn Foundation will talk us through internal data use, including what data they collect and why - and their ambitions for the future. They'll also talk about their work with social investment data, as well as the Foundation's approach to supporting grantees data needs.

14:40 - 15:20

Monday 10 May

From Paper to Power Suite – Taking off on a digital and data journey at London’s Air Ambulance

To use data, you need to collect data. For London’s Air Ambulance helipad daily operations, that meant moving from equipment and vehicle checklists on paper, to data-driven digital checklists built in Microsoft’s Power Apps. LAA’s move to Microsoft’s dataverse and ‘no-code’ tools is designed not only to save team time, but also to build data on checklist completions and issues – leading to reporting and insights to help patient care. In this workshop, LAA will discuss technical benefits and shortcomings of the Microsoft suite (especially for non-experts), and the sociotechnical issues and human factors involved in integrating the existing processes of specialist teams of clinicians, pilots, and fire crew with digital tools and data innovation.

14:40 - 15:20

Monday 10 May

Leveraging data insights to better support users

Creating an actionable feedback loop with your service users doesn't have to be complicated. In this session, charity Carefree will show you how to use no code tools to join up live user feedback with your operations and track the impact of the improvements you make. No Code tools featured will include: Front App, Herald HQ, Linear and Databox. Carefree is a multi-award winning digital charity that leverages easy to use, flexible technology to match unpaid carers referred by social sector organisations with gifted short breaks.

15:35 - 16:30

Monday 10 May

Community mapping in Tanzania: a local solution towards SDG monitoring

Crowd2Map is a volunteer project that for five years has been mapping rural Tanzania into OpenStreetMap in order to support community development and better protect girls from FGM (female genital mutilation). Our Digital Champion network is now mapping access to water and health facilities at a village level. This workshop will outline the lessons learnt so far, share how they developed their methodology, and conclude with a practical mapping session.