Brighton Center's Center for Employment Training is gaining insight into the efficacy of its programs through the help of volunteer data analysts. Brighton Center plans to use the data analysis to improve outcomes in community outreach.
Volunteer data analysts from Fifth Third Bank are donating their time and skills to help Brighton Center's Center for Employment Training. The Center was seeking better ways to gather information about clients to determine which of their 41 programs perform the best and how they can expand their outreach to more members of the community. A group of seven volunteers worked hundreds of hours gathering and analyzing data and showing the Brighton Center staff how they can improve outcomes.
Madison Smith, data analyst for Fifth Third Bank, leads a team of volunteers from Fifth Third. Smith had used her skills during graduate school to help non profits, and wanted to continue that focus of volunteerism while pursuing her career. Along with six fellow employees, Smith is lending her talents to Brighton Center as a way to give back to the community. The project was formed in 2019 as Brighton Center was seeking assistance in designing a database to collect and track data about its clients. All told, the team spent over 200 hours analyzing data and helping Brighton Center staff to understand how to best use the data.
Brighton Center has been able to use the analysis to discover how specific programs help families and to identify where it can do better. The data helps to understand in which areas most families live and to identify if racial disparities are observable in any of the program outcomes. For example, initial findings show that Black families and older families have a greater likelihood of achieving goals. Findings also indicate that 91% of clients that have met their goals have also received financial coaching. This type of data analysis can allow Brighton Center to focus on programs with high levels of impact, enabling it to help more families, more efficiently.
Data was collected in 2019 and since then, the volunteer team has focused on analysis and interpretation. The team intends to continue to dig deeper into the data while developing a platform for staff members at Brighton Center to use to enter additional data and continue the analysis process internally.