October 2023, Melbourne
Introducing The Push
Over the past few months, the Good Data Institute partnered with The Push, an inspiring charity organisation that has supported millions of young people with access to contemporary music programs and events across 3 decades.
They achieve this through a variety of programs and events, such as their All-Ages Tour, FReeZA program, training workshops, music industry mentoring programs and staging all-ages concerts at festivals like Sydney VIVID Festival, Moomba and St Kilda Festival. These programs not only provide young people with access to safe, all-ages live music experiences – but provide a pathway into the music industry through learning practical skills in event management, song writing, music production, branding, marketing and more.
The Push and GDI
The Push approached GDI with a few problem statements: how can we effectively measure and improve upon their Diversity, Inclusion and Equity statistics? How do their participation rates compare against minority and underrepresented populations in Australia? How can The Push ensure that they are helping those who may not have had opportunities in the past?
Working with Josh Kane (Head of Operations, The Push), GDI Fellow Sam Caldwell assembled a top gun volunteer team with Berta Karaim (AI Analyst, Monash University) and Kane Lo, (Solutions Architect, Salesforce) to break down the problem.
The Project
Across the 4 months, the project ran through 3 distinct phases:
1) Sourcing the data
The first challenge was establishing a reliable baseline of data to compare against the Australian Population. Thankfully, Berta’s experience in reporting on DE&I data in the past proved invaluable here. Utilising a dataset published by the ABS as part of their 2019 census, GDI was able to obtain granular population data.
This solved for our reference comparison. As for The Push’s engagement data, we were able to use their CRM which they were using as their participant database and event attendance history system. A previous integration which sent surveys to their participants via SurveyMonkey was already integrated and ingested into their CRM, which made things much easier for us!
2) Transformation and Visualisation
Organisations love a dashboard, and there are endless vendors all offering their own product as the gold standard. It’s always a fine balance for GDI to establish a platform that is both low cost and low maintenance, as we understand that NFP organisations prefer to focus on their main causes. We ultimately landed on Looker Studio, a free tool that gave a “good enough” experience to visualise the data, whilst still providing functionality that allows for further interrogation and deep diving by the viewer.
From a Transformation perspective, we were able to leverage out of the box functionality from within Salesforce to provide us with aggregated or conditional data parameters in-system. This provided the extra benefit that all logic flowed from the single system, rather than through an intermediary platform or layer.
3) Future-proofing the solution
GDI’s priority was not just to simply provide a solution for today, but to ensure that the solution remained scalable and robust. Options were tabled to ensure that The Push were comfortable with refreshing reference data within the CRM, as well as ongoing participant data for their future campaigns.
Handover to The Push
Ultimately, the project was completed in time for The Push to present these findings as part of their annual board review. Feedback was positive, with commentary that these insights were crucial for The Push to make strategic decisions with respect to their geographic focus, as well as provide the visibility to ensure their funding pipeline could remain strong in future years.
When compared to what the ABS tells us about representation of Culturally and Linguistically Diverse in the general population – The Push had noticed an underrepresentation within their demographics data.
Diving into the data and comparing it to their own research, The Push recognised that this is likely due to young people not actively identifying with the phrase “Culturally and Linguistically Diverse” or “CALD” – and that the reports are not as accurate as they could be.
Informed by this knowledge, they can now adjust how they ask questions around cultural identity in efforts to get a better overview of their audiences and participants.
Author:
Kane Lo (GDI Fellow)
About GDI:
The Good Data Institute (established 2019) is a registered not-for-profit organisation (ABN: 6664087941) that aims to give not-for-profits access to data analytics (D&A) support & tools. Our mission is to be the bridge between the not-for-profit world and the world of data analytics practitioners wishing to do social good. Using D&A, we identify, share, and help implement the most effective means for growing NFP people, organisations, and their impact.
What a great project. I love it!