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Best Practice Café

REanalyze: What is your EVP Data Saying?

Speaker:Jake SanchesLeveragerPalantir Technologies

Me: Data Nerd

• Cognitive Neuroscience @ Washington University in St. Louis

• Predictive Modeling @ Mattersight Corporation (Chicago)• Customer Satisfaction• Customer Attrition• Fraud Detection

• Palantir Technologies– Recruiting Analytics– People Analytics

(Employee Survey, Organizational & Attrition Modeling)

– Product Analytics

• “Data-oriented person”– Excel Wizard Level 45, SQL, Python, R, Tableau

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Goals of This Session

1. Using data to drive decision making– Fall in like with data!

2. Review the 2014 Benchmarking Survey

3. Thinking about your EVP data differently

4. Demonstrating Impact to Different Audiences: Communicating Data

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Data Driven Decision Making

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Data Driven Decision Making

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/americas-best-burrito/ 

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Data Driven Decision Making

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EVPs: Unlocking Value in Your Data

• Data: Driving this generation of Employee Volunteer Programs

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Benchmarking Metrics Project Survey July 2014

• Top Metrics : What Respondents Want– Total Hours– Total # of Employees– Participation Rates– ROI $ Value

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Benchmarking Metrics Project Survey

Nonprofit Engagement (e.g., # of signups by nonprofit, # of hours tracked by nonprofit)

Site Utilization (e.g., Unique visitors, page views, account registrations)

Impact by Cause (e.g. Hunger, STEM, Children & Youth)

Benchmarking with other companies (by size, by industry)

Employee Engagement (e.g, Hours volunteered, signups, # of volunteers)

0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45

Absolutely criticalVery usefulUseful     Somewhat usefulNot useful 

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Benchmarking Metrics Project Survey

Total external guests (#, signups, or hours of people other than employees)

Top skills utilized by employee volunteers

Total signups, hours or unique volunteers by group (e.g., manager level, department, city, etc.)

Top 5-10 employee volunteers who have tracked hours the most

% of employees who have signed up for an opportunity

Total $ value of volunteer hours

% of employees who have tracked hours

0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45

Absolutely criticalVery usefulUseful     Somewhat usefulNot useful 

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Benchmarking Metrics Project Survey

• What Metrics Matter to You?

Metric Area (Weighted Rank Order) Top Metrics

1.     % of employees who have tracked hours2.     % of employees who are unique volunteers3.     Avg. hours volunteered per employee4.     Total $ value of volunteer hours5.     % of employees who have signed up for an opportunity6.     S value of volunteer hours per employee

1.     Hours per cause2.     Total $ value of volunteer hours by cause3.     # volunteers per cause1.     # of total projects2.     % of people who activated their account from employee population3.     % of unique visitors from employee population1.     Hours volunteered per organization2.     Top 5-10 organizations by signups, hours or unique volunteers3.     # of nonprofits reached

Causes

Site Utilization & Engagement

Employee Engagement

Nonprofit Engagement

(Benchmarking)

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Measuring Your Program: Demonstrating Impact

• Where are we?• Where do we need to go?• How do we get there?• How are we doing on our way there?

Data : Significant driver of development

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What is your EVP Data Saying?

• To answer: How are we doing today, what can I do to increase the value of my program?

• Demonstrating your impact is hard. Stories are great, but they do not provide the highest-level structured picture for your program

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Balance of Data & Communication

• What can you do?– Determine 3-5 metrics that work for you

• Start with simple metrics

– Report consistently• Always use a visualization over a stat in a line of an email or

document• *Not compelling for single-item metrics.

– Review– Generate plan based on current situation– Revisit plan at regular check ins, metrics in hand

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Presenting Data Visually

• Numbers are great. Show me trends

“The greatest value of a picture is when it forces us to notice what we never expected to see.”John Tukey, American Mathematician

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Palantir Technologies

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Dashboards

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Understanding Trends

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Understanding Trends: Powerful Context

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Understanding Trends: Diving In

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Drawing Conclusions from Data: Caution!

http://plottablejs.org/examples/linechartaxes/ 

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Choosing the Right Metrics

• Total hours / employees vs. Distribution of hours/employees – Answers: Am I getting new employees into the program? – % of hours by employee experience, tenure – Drive

targeted employee groups

• Comparisons by Location, Division– Answers: Where are my rock stars? Who can I leverage

to increase engagement of others around them? – % distribution of volunteer activities, hours

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Choosing the Right Metrics

• Stickiness: – Depth metrics:

• Avg. Hours / Activity / employee• Avg. Activities / Employee• Depends on your goals!

• Site Utilization : # Signups vs. Conversions– % of people who logged in that ended up

volunteering (Current Benchmark: Connection rate)

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Choosing the Right Metrics

• What Impact did we make on the community?– Histogram Distribution of Causes, Organizations

• Hours Total, Avg. Hours an employee volunteers / cause• Percentage of Total• Unique # Employees / % of Total Volunteering Employees

• Actions to drive: – How do we continue to make an impact and grow the

program?• Target employee population by specific cause, nonprofits that

are/have been popular• Context: Time of year, yearly trends (i.e. Children & Youth around

the holidays) to drive opportunities

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Visualizing Trends

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Benchmarking Metrics

• How am I doing?– Compared to my industry– Compared to companies of similar size

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Visualizing Trends

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Unique New Metrics to Consider

• Who are your most important volunteers?• Skills gained through volunteering• What happens after a special event—how

do the metrics change: Avg. # of activities signed up in the 30-days following a special event

…and much more!

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Communicating About Your Program

Audience Data

Employees Impact: Causes, Organizations Helped

Leadership Value of the program, growth, total hours—translate to $ value

Investors and the Public Impact on the community: who and quantify how much

Nonprofits Contribution: How many employees, how many hours

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Communications

• To Employees & public marketing: Getting and retaining new talent– Millenials & corporate impact– Chegg Research: Students respect companies that

exercise commerce with conscience, with 88% reporting "it is important for companies to give back to the community" and 80% reporting "it is important for me to buy from companies that have responsible business practices.“

• Chegg 2013 "Undercover With College Students" study

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Communications: Keep it simple

In times like these when unemployment rates are up to 13%, income has fallen by 5% and suicide rates are climbing I get so angry that the government is wasting money on things like collection of statistics!• From Hans Rosling’s The Joy of Stats

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Jake’s Tips for Communicating Data

• Email Updates/Newsletters: Paste graphs / charts, don’t attach!

• High level summary up front, on top / top left• If data doesn’t look good: Acknowledge it! Write a plan

to address. • Time series = line graphs• Proportions vs. Raw Counts• No more than 6 colors in a graph – and only by

categorical comparisons (i.e., location)– Red: Most important (badness)

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VolunteerMatch: Leading the Way

New Metrics Reports: What to Expect• New tools to re-conceive data presentation • Easier to find high-level data• More visually appealing• Interactive Web Dashboard• Live right within your VM site

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Thank you!

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For more information about the VolunteerMatch Client

Summit:

solutions.volunteermatch.org/summit

clientsummit@volunteermatch.org