At the end of September, we’re saying a sad farewell to our wonderful Data and Research Officer, Molly as she reaches the end of her fixed term contract and embarks on a new adventure. Molly took some time to reflect on her time at VONNE, what she’s learned and the importance of understanding your organisational data.
Molly, can you believe that 12 months have passed already! How have you found working at VONNE?
Working at VONNE has been a really positive and rewarding experience. Having joined the VCSE sector straight out of university I had a lot of opportunity to grow and learn and the team at VONNE have championed and supported this. I feel that my confidence in my own ability and contributions has improved massively, and it is really special to work in such a positive an interesting workplace so early on in my career.
Although I feel that I have known the team at VONNE for a lifetime and have had a very busy twelve months it has gone by in the blink of an eye, and I will be very sad to leave!
What first attracted you to working in the VCSE sector?
When I was looking for graduate roles, I was more incentivised to join organisations where I felt that I would be contributing to a ‘good’ cause. That sounds so basic! But I felt strongly that I didn’t want to put my name on something that didn’t align with my own values. I think it’s really important to know that your workplace has environmental values, recognises the importance of communities and values its employees and the VCSE sector in the North East is made up of hundreds of organisations who are advocates of these qualities!
What do you think has been your biggest achievement in your role?
Overall, probably improving the organisational understanding of our VONNE Member data. This has been a long-term project and has evolved through stages of data base cleansing, improving our policies around data, adapting the questions that we ask to gain information from members, improving the completeness of this data through a data refresh period, developing new reporting tools in order to extract this data and upskilling the wider team to show what we can do with this data. I feel like this was the main objective for my role and hopefully this will be a lasting improvement past my time at VONNE!
You were instrumental in helping develop our new website – how important was it to understand and use data throughout that process to influence the decision we made?
Before the project I had never truly appreciated the amount of thought and consideration that goes into redesigning a website. Having had a website which was over ten years old we made a lot of considerations towards ensuring that information shared represented what we do at VONNE, prioritising the accuracy and completeness of the data captured at certain points of the website and creating a positive user experience.
To do this significant time and effort went into prototyping data capture forms, asking organisationally where we are using data, what could we improve on and adding these conversations into their design and user testing with external participants. All feedback shared was carefully considered and influenced decisions that we made, we also surveyed website users through pop ups to gain their feedback and make lasting tweaks to web pages. The insight we gained from these processes was extremely valuable as there were lots of details that we hadn’t even considered, demonstrating the importance of gaining feedback from our members and stakeholders!
What top tips would you give to an organisation to understand and use their data effectively?
- Look at what you have and what you are currently asking your wider community- are you using all of this data to your advantage? Could you ask less and gain more from rephrasing and shortening your questions?
- Improving confidence with data organisationally- Are there people within the organisation who are more data confident, could they share processes and data tools to improve the wider team’s confidence with organisational data?
- Keep it simple! If you can’t explain what your data shows to another member of your team, you are likely overcomplicating things! Could you create a simple graph/ design a simple survey that would communicate answers to you more clearly?
Some of the key (FREE) tools that I have used at my time at VONNE:
- Surveys- Survey Monkey, Google Forms, JotForm, Type Form, Airtable
- Website Analytics- Google Analytics, HotJar
- Data visualisation tools- Flourish, Data Wrapper, Power BI (with a Microsoft 365 package)
- Information on the wider sector- FindthatCharity.uk Find that Charity, Third Sector Trends Voluntary Third-Sector Trends | Community Foundation , NCVO Almanac UK Civil Society Almanac 2022 | Home | NCVO , VCSE Barometer interactive dashboard https://www.ntu.ac.uk/research/groups-and-centres/projects/vcse-data-and-insights-national-observatory/vcse-barometer-survey .
- CRM- Civi CRM (open source but there are additional costs for support and development)
Finally, where do you see yourself in 5 years time, and would you consider coming back to the sector?
Wow that’s a big question! I think the sector needs more people who are willing and interested in championing data and I know there will be plenty of opportunity for this in the future. I am really interested in the user experience work that I have led in my role and I also have a keen interest in social research so if I was able to combine the two of these and contribute to a positive cause that would be my goal!
You can read more about Molly’s work at VONNE in her other blogs – Getting into the VCSE sector as a younger person https://www.vonne.org.uk/getting-vcse-sector-younger-person and VONNE Member and Stakeholder Survey 2022: What have we learnt? https://www.vonne.org.uk/vonne-member-and-stakeholder-survey-2022-what-have-we-learnt