2014 VolunteerMatch Client Summit Best Practice Cafe Demonstrating your employee volunteer program's impact internally and externally is critical to its success. While the industry as whole is still looking for ways to get beyond traditional metrics, some companies are taking it upon themselves to identify outcomes that reflect their priorities. They are also looking for new ways to quantify the engagement and impact of their employees so that they can better tell their stories to leadership, employees, nonprofit partners, and the community. Join Jake Sanches, internal metrics and analytics guru at Palantir Technologies, to discuss VolunteerMatch's recent metrics benchmarking project. We'll review our findings and key takeaways, cover industry trends across key metric benchmarks, and discuss metrics analysis in finer detail and how it can be leveraged to drive improved programmatic and reporting approaches. Jake will also provide recommendations and demonstrate examples of ways to increase your use and presentation of data in your communications.

2. 2
Best Practice Café
REanalyze: What is your
EVP Data Saying?
Speaker:
Jake Sanches
Leverager
Palantir Technologies

3. 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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4. #VMCS14

5. 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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6. Data Driven Decision Making
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7. Data Driven Decision Making
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/americas-best-burrito/
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8. Data Driven Decision Making
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9. EVPs: Unlocking Value in Your
Data
• Data: Driving this generation of Employee
Volunteer Programs
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10. Benchmarking Metrics Project
Survey July 2014
• Top Metrics : What Respondents Want
– Total Hours
– Total # of Employees
– Participation Rates
– ROI $ Value
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11. Benchmarking Metrics Project
Survey
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45
Employee Engagement (e.g, Hours
volunteered, signups, # of volunteers)
Benchmarking with other companies
(by size, by industry)
Impact by Cause (e.g. Hunger, STEM,
Children & Youth)
Site Utilization (e.g., Unique visitors,
page views, account registrations)
Nonprofit Engagement (e.g., # of
signups by nonprofit, # of hours…
Absolutely critical
Very useful
Useful
Somewhat useful
Not useful
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12. Benchmarking Metrics Project
Survey
% of employees who have tracked hours
% of employees who are unique…
Total $ value of volunteer hours
Avg hours volunteered per employee
% of employees who have signed up for…
$ value of volunteer hours per employee
Top 5-10 employee volunteers who have…
New vs. existing volunteers
Total signups, hours or unique volunteers…
% of unique volunteers by group (e.g.,…
Hours volunteered on company time vs.…
Total external guests (#, signups, or hours…
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45
Top skills utilized by employee volunteers
Absolutely critical
Very useful
Useful
Somewhat useful
Not useful
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13. Benchmarking Metrics Project
Survey
• What Metrics Matter to You?
Metric Area (Weighted Rank Order) Top Metrics
1. % of employees who have tracked hours
2. % of employees who are unique volunteers
3. Avg. hours volunteered per employee
4. Total $ value of volunteer hours
5. % of employees who have signed up for an opportunity
6. S value of volunteer hours per employee
1. Hours per cause
2. Total $ value of volunteer hours by cause
3. # volunteers per cause
1. # of total projects
2. % of people who activated their account from employee population
3. % of unique visitors from employee population
1. Hours volunteered per organization
2. Top 5-10 organizations by signups, hours or unique volunteers
3. # of nonprofits reached
Employee Engagement
Causes
Site Utilization & Engagement
Nonprofit Engagement
(Benchmarking)
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14. 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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15. 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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16. 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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17. 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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18. Palantir Technologies
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19. Dashboards
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20. Understanding Trends
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21. Understanding Trends:
Powerful Context
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22. Understanding Trends: Diving In
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23. Drawing Conclusions from Data:
Caution!
http://plottablejs.org/examples/linechartaxes/
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24. 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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e

25. 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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26. 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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27. Visualizing Trends
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28. Benchmarking Metrics
• How am I doing?
– Compared to my industry
– Compared to companies of similar size
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29. Visualizing Trends
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30. 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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31. 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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32. 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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33. 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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34. 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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35. 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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36. Thank you!
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37. For more information about the
VolunteerMatch Client Summit:
37
solutions.volunteermatch.org/summit
clientsummit@volunteermatch.org