Karma: What goes around comes around

GDI first met the founder of Good Karma Effect (Amy Churchouse) at a social entrepreneur’s meetup in Melbourne. We were particularly interested in working with GKE because of the impact they have on communities during periods of such uncertainty, such as this year with COVID-19. It was amazing to see how people were using the Good Karma Networks to help strangers in their community. For example, people were helping others collect groceries, share spare face masks, or just simply share positive stories.

Working with me on this project was Shakeel Lala (Melbourne Branch Co-Lead). We complemented each other very well because we brought different skill sets to the table, yet we were both were very passionate about the social cause. I spent much of the time working on the technical solution, while Shakeel worked closely with the client helping them to interpret the results.

It was satisfying to be able to turn such unstructured data from Facebook into an easily digestible dashboard that would allow the client to uncover insights on their own. However, one particularly interesting insight we found was seeing how COVID had drastically changed the way in which people engaged with their Good Karma Network. For example, we were able to demonstrate that people were using them more to share recommendations (local cafes to support) rather than giving things away.

We believe that there are two major learnings from this project for the GDI community:

a. Before starting on the project, carefully work through with your client what specific questions they want to solve/what output they are interested in. This helps to ensure that everyone involved is aligned with the output that GDI will be producing and ensures the project finishes in a timely manner.

b. For technical projects, it is important to consider whether this is a one-off analysis or if the client will want to replicate your work in the future. If they want it to be reproducible, everything will need to be well documented and you may need to ensure that any code can be run by the client.