I worked at Colorado Homebuilding Academy which is a nonprofit that helps people get jobs in construction. Here’s how I helped this nonprofit gather essential data for funders by improving communication with students.
The problem
This nonprofit construction school needed to know if students got jobs after training so they could report their success to funders and help students who were struggling. But it was difficult to keep in touch after training.
I conducted research and designed solutions to improve communication with students. As a result:
We defined internal processes for onboarding students and collecting job data.
We gathered more of the data we needed to get funding. Data showing current employment status of graduates increased from 7% to 59% in the quarter after this project.
Research process
I surveyed 30 current students to understand how they felt about their onboarding process and how they prefer to share job data.
I conducted a few interviews with trainers and students to understand the whole student journey.
I analyzed past job data to find trends.
I added survey questions to the application to track the experience of future students.
Research findings
I mapped out the whole student journey and identified a couple key issues:
Students had no incentive to share their personal job data. When the nonprofit offered incentives in the past, amount of job data increased.
We had unclear roles and responsibilities at several key points in the student journey.
Redesigning internal processes
Since the pain points I identified had to do with process, I led an effort with other staff members to design a service blueprint (PDF).
We designed a way to incentivize students who share job data: Home Depot gift cards and extra career support.
We defined a schedule and methods for reaching out to students after training: every 3 months for a year via text, email, and phone.
We defined every task staff needed to complete throughout the journey and labeled who’s responsibility it was.
We designed a “warm hand-off” between the recruiter and trainers so that students had personal communication with staff throughout onboarding.
How I improved a crucial form
I also improved the form that students use to share their job data after training.
I removed questions that weren’t necessary and used survey logic to hide questions that aren’t applicable.
I improved survey copy to be more clear and concise.
I rebuilt the form in the nonprofit’s Customer Relationship Management tool to make it easier for staff to collect data.
The results
The service blueprint was used as a reference tool for operations meetings. The nonprofit was more organized and purposeful in communicating with students.
Their amount of data showing current employment status of graduates increased from 7% to 59% in the quarter after this project. This gave the nonprofit a better way to share their success with funders.
More importantly, the nonprofit was able to provide better support to their students and help them find jobs after training.