Using Data to Change the World: How DoSomething.Org Does It

With the release of the book, Measuring the Networked Nonprofit: Using Data to Change the World, I'm looking forward to participating in the conversation about how nonprofits can use measurement, data, and learning to for social change.

Big Data is a theme I'm seeing discussed this past month in both the for-profit and nonprofit sectors. It refers to large datasets that requires powerful software tools to capture, store, search, sharing, analysis, visualization and sense-making – or what DJ Patel calls "Data Jutjitsu." I love this stuff, but it could become a shiny object or distraction for nonprofits that have yet learned how to "jutjitsu"  the small data sets they are collecting internally.

Here's a terrific round up of posts about "big data for small nonprofits" from the good folks at Wild Apricot. But I think jumping into a process: "Gather, Analyze, and Act" without defining success (or failure) on the front end might lead to wasted time.

• Define results
• Identify research to formulate a hypothesis
• Identify key performance indicators (KPIs)
• Gather data
• Jutjitsu data
• Make decisions based on data

How DoSomething.Org Does It

DoSomething Dashboard

DoSomething.org has a big social change goal: To harness teenage energy and unleash it through national campaigns on causes teens care about. The call to action is always something that has a real impact and does not require money, an adult, or a car. Their measurable goal is to get 5 million active teen members engaged in social change campaigns by 2015. They use social media, mobile, and data strategically selected and use to reach that goal.

A recent example is their "Pregnancy Text" campaign featured on their quarterly dashboard. This clever sex education campaign is an updated version of the teen pregnancy education program where young people carried eggs around and pretend they are babies.

It was a text campaign where teens opted-in to receive texts on their mobile phones from the "baby." Once they joined (and they could share it with their friends), they received regular annoying text messages at all hours from the "baby"  that poops, cries, and needs their immediate attention.

The team at DoSomething.org uses data to base the program design, key performance indicators, and a hypothesis to be tested.

They looked at  survey data from the National Campaign: nearly 9 in 10 (87%) young people surveyed also say that it would be much easier for teens to delay sexual activity and avoid teen pregnancy if they were able to have more open, honest conversations about these topics with their parents and/or friends. So, success of this campaign would be mean that participants talk with their family or friends about the issue and delay sexual activity.

The basic design had those who signed up challenge their friends to take care of a text baby either by:

1. Going to the DoSomething website and selecting 5 friends to challenge
2. After receiving a text from DoSomething (sent to DoSomething's 300,000 mobile subscribers) would opt to challenge friends after reading a quick stat on US teen pregnancy. 

Participants that accepted the challenge would then start receiving texts the following morning from the text-baby. After completing the challenge user were prompted to send it to their own friends.

DoSomething.org also followed up with 5,000 of the users with a text-based survey to measure impact.

Once defining success and identifying the right data collect, here are some of the insights they gleaned according to Nancy Lublin, CEO of DoSomething and Jeffrey Bladt:

• SMS as a platform: They are monitoring engagement per communication channel and it has revealed SMS to be 30 times more powerful for getting their users to take action as compared to email.
• Challenging 5 friends: They tested various group sizes for SMS experience and have found the a group of 6 (1 alpha inviting friends) leads to the highest overall engagement.
• Research Based Messaging: The general messaging for the campaign was based on survey findings that found

1. Big scare tactics (for example, getting pregnant = not going to college) we not as effective as highlighting how being a teen parent changes daily life (for example, can't go to the movies because babysitter cancelled);
2. CDC report that found: "The impact of strong pregnancy prevention messages directed to teenagers has been credited with the [recent] teen birth rates decline."

• A/B Testing: They pre-tested different messages and frequency of sending the messages to smaller test groups of  teens to optimize the number of messages the baby would send during the day, as well as the content. They ended up doubling the frequency and rewording several interactions as well as building in a response system (so the baby would respond if the teen texted an unsolicited response). The insights from these tests pushed up engagement and likelihood of forwarding at the end.
• Impact: They did a survey to measure this. 1 in 2 teens said that participating in the Pregnancy Text campaign made it more likely that they would talk about the issue of teen pregnancy with their family and friends.

As you can see from the above insights, DoSomething just not gather and analyze topline data:

• 101,444 people took part in the campaign with 100,000 text-babies delivered.
• 171,000 unsolicited incoming messages, or 1 every 20 seconds for the duration of the campaign. During the initial launch period (first two weeks), a new text message was received every 10 seconds.
• For every one direct sign-up, DoSomething gained 2.3 additional sign-ups from forward-to-a-friend functionality. The viral coefficient was between 0.60 and 0.70 for the campaign.
• 1 in 4 (24%) of teens could not finish a day with their text-baby (texted a stop word to the baby).

I heard Todd Park, Chief Technology Officer at the White House, speak about Big Data at the Mashable Social Good Summit say, "Data by itself is useless. I can't feed my baby daughter data, as much as I'd love to because I love data. It's only useful if you apply it to create an actual public benefit."

You can't do that unless identify your results, collect the right data, and generate insights.

How is your nonprofit using data to change the world? Share in the comments below.

This post was authored by Beth Kanter, co-author of the new book Measuring the Networked Nonprofit: Using Data to Change the World, and creator of Beth's Blog, where she writes how networked nonprofits leverage networks and data for social change.