Doing good at doing O.R. #ORblog

As part of Pro Bono O.R. I like to seek feedback from both the volunteers and the organisations to find out how the projects are going.  The scheme has received overwhelmingly positive support since launching in September 2013 and I wanted to take this opportunity to share the latest endorsements.

Thank you to Simon Glenister for the feedback on the #ProBonoOR project carried out for Noise Solution on behalf of The OR Society: 'The commitment shown to the idea of the project was excellent. The volunteer did a really good job of understanding what was required. He produced some excellent work, that looked visually great and has been instrumental in me being able to demonstrate clearly the impacts that we are achieving with Noise Solution'.  

The project case study slide will be posted soon - watch this space!

Two Pro Bono O.R. volunteers started supporting Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) back in 2014, giving independent & expert advice on the commission & use of poverty models. Thank you to Chris Goulden for the feedback on the support you've received so far: 'I've been extremely pleased with the O.R. input'. 

Lastly, thank you to NAVCA who promoted Pro Bono O.R. in their latest publication, sharing an example of how Pro Bono O.R. helped Harrogate & Rippon CVS 'to get a robust picture of the costs of running the well being service and any issues to be addressed in the light of forthcoming finding cuts and contract changes' 

Pro Bono O.R. provides free support to third sector organisations across the UK, helping them to make operational improvements e.g. 

• Strategic planning/review  
• Impact measurement 
• Process improvement 
• Data analysis 
• Business planning 
• Efficiency improvement 
• Options appraisal

To find out how your third sector organisation could receive free support please contact: felicity.mcleister@theorsociety.com

To sign up to become a volunteer please Pro Bono O.R.

Third Sector event: Services to Young People (write up & presentations)

Author: Jeff Jones

O.R. SOCIETY “THIRD SECTOR” SPECIAL INTEREST GROUP

SERVICES TO YOUNG PEOPLE

The “Third sector” Special Interest Group held its Spring Seminar on the 23^rd April, at the London School of Economics.

The topic was pro-bono consultancy, carried out by OR Society members, to charities involved in providing support to children. The Seminar was notable for its range of topics: from strategic planning to detailed help to individuals; from poverty models for the whole country, to services in the London Borough of Camden. The Seminar was well attended by both OR analysts and charities, the lecture theatre being completely full; and it was followed by a reception of drinks and snacks in a nearby room which provided a lively networking opportunity.

The first speakers were Malcolm Fenby and Joanna Ziff, who had worked together pro-bono for the Childhood Trust. They started by emphasising the size of the problem of poverty in London. More than 600,000 children in London live in severe poverty, two in five of the UK’s children living in poverty are living in London, and London has the fourth highest rate of child poverty among the world’s richest cities.

The Childhood Trust is an umbrella organisation, that passes on funds to 28 charities ( 2012–13 figures) operating in London. It funds projects in all London boroughs. The project was aimed at providing better data to the Trust, to enable them to target resources on those projects that have the greatest positive impact on alleviating child poverty in London. The project team proposed the development of an Impact Report incorporating infographics to illustrate key statistics. It was proposed that where data availability was sufficient, appropriate charts and graphs would also be included in the report.

Following consultation with The Childhood Trust staff, the project team designed a questionnaire to send out to all 24 recipients of funding via the 2013-14 Big Give. The questionnaire was designed in Survey Monkey and sent out from The Childhood Trust to maximise the response rate. The questionnaire response rate was a good 58%.

From this the suggested desired outcomes were:

• Partner charities to think in terms of measurement (indicators) when thinking about Impact.
• The standard of Impact measurement (conducted by partner charities) to be raised to that of the best (of the existing measurement).
• A standard set of Impact Measurement tools (measures and methods) are identified that can be used by many charity partners (possibly grouped by activity).

The Trustees were invited to endorse these outcomes.

   

The next speaker was Rose Drummond, working for Elfrida Rathbone Camden (ERC), a charity supporting young disabled people living in the London Borough of Camden, their carers and families in need. It is a small charity involved in a diverse range of projects:

• Advocacy – for families of young carers
• Life skills courses - for young disabled people to bridge the gap from adolescence to adulthood
• Support and advice – for families with a range of problems. Debt and welfare advice, family relationships, parenting, children’s emotional problems, education.

There is a diverse range of funders for different projects, and each project had its own monitoring and evaluation framework.

This project’s aim was to develop a measurement framework at top organisational level that would bring together the diverse range of projects. From their detailed background research, Rose’s team realised it was unclear what outcomes to measure - the projects were too diverse to simply combine existing outcome frameworks. So they chose the Charities Evaluation Service template to structure the framework – a flexible step-by-step guide to defining outcomes, indicators, collection methods and frequency.

The main method to find an agreed value system was a facilitated 3 hour workshop to agree key outcomes, involving 12 people representing ERC charity exec/trustees, service users and staff/volunteers. This was a key success of the project – a unique opportunity to hear from all these groups and get buy-in, agreement and joint ownership.

The workshop agreed that the main priorities were:

      Improved mental health
Increased opportunity to access employment, volunteering, training
Increased access to support and social networks
Reduced risks, and
Cultural shift - the community benefiting from the contribution of disabled people.

This enabled Rose’s team to design an indicator framework which was usable by all projects.

The next speaker was Sue Merchant, an ex-president of the OR society. She had been working for AYME, the Association of Young people with ME. This is a charity which supports young people (up to 26 yrs) who have Myalgic Encephalopathy (Chronic fatigue syndrome).

AYME. The charity:-

• ·         Provides telephone and on-line support to sufferers/families
• ·         Provides help booklets on the condition
• ·         Produces a newsletter
• ·         Raises awareness of the condition nationally
• ·         Helps educate professionals on the condition, and
• ·         Employs sufferers as volunteers.

The task was to facilitate a half day workshop of trustees and CEO to help produce a new strategic plan. The problems were that there would be limited time with the client, the workshop date was perilously close, the knowledge level of trustees was variable, and the AGM immediately preceded the workshop, so a full half day was unlikely.

After an initial investigation, Sue sorted all the ideas for improvement (so far collected) into groups and typed up under these headings for circulation at the workshop:

• ·         Increase staff/volunteer capacity
• ·         Enhance member services
• ·         Improve awareness of ME and AYME
• ·         Increase number of members
• ·         Increase income
• ·         Improve communication internally.

The workshop was divided into two groups- each discussing half of the ideas, seeing if there was anything to add,  and 

• annotate with symbols: smiley faces, £ and clouds 
• sort ideas into symbol charts and present back to the other group 
• prioritise actions – green dots on each of the charts
• agree action plan for next steps
• Trustees to look later at budget and resources to adjust list.

The client found this analysis very useful, and subsequently used it to devise their new strategy.

The final speaker was Dave Buxton, the founder of dseConsulting.  Dave explained that he encourages his staff to spend 2 weeks a year doing pro-bono work in the charity sector, to broaden their experience. He talked about his recent work for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, looking at the causes of poverty. J

RF had previously tried to model poverty using system dynamics, which is a high level method dealing with aggregate data on the numbers in poverty, and the flows in and out, and the causality. This proved not to be very successful, and so a more detailed and bottom-up approach was required.

Dave introduced the technique in which he specialises, which is Agent Based Modelling. ABM, in this case, involves detailed models of a range of household types; for each, building in the likely behavioural response to changing external signals. These can then be aggregated up to national level figures, but it is structured as a bottom up approach. The specific question investigated was, given a child (say a 5 year old), what is the chances, given various future changes, that he/she will be in poverty in 20 years’ time?  These complex models can thus be used to investigate the effects of different future trends, and different policies. So far it has shown some unexpected results. For example that school expenditure and housing were not major factors, but that home life and teacher quality were important.

Finally the Chairperson (me) thanked everyone for coming. And in particular the five excellent speakers, and Felicity McLeister – the O.R. Pro Bono Project Manager, for doing all the work while Jeff took the praise. And especially Henrietta Burr, from the LSE management department, for the fantastic support she gave throughout.

The presentations can be found on The OR Society website, in the Document Repository; and a video, including interviews with the speakers, will be put onto YouTube.

Jeff Jones

Note: if you are unable to access the presentations via the Document Repository I have requested the slides be uploads onto the Pro Bono O.R. webpage under 'Latest news' so please look out for them there shortly.

Free Seminar: How O.R.is helping provide services to young people

O.R. SOCIETY THIRD SECTOR SPECIAL INTEREST GROUP

Spring seminar

SERVICES TO YOUNG PEOPLE

 

Date/time:       Thursday 23^rd April 2015

 Registration from 14:30
 Talks 15.00 to 17:00 followed by wine and nibbles

Location:       Room 1.07

                        New Academic Building

                        London School of Economics

                        54 Lincoln’s Inn Fields, London

                        WC2A 3LT

Cost:                FREE

There are many thousands of charities providing services to young people, aiming to ensure that no matter how vulnerable they are, or what risks and deprivations they face, they will have the chance to enjoy their childhoods and have a safe and happy future.

How can O.R. help these organisations? Is there anything special about the nature of the analytical or decision-making support needed when the service users are young people? What can we learn from the experiences of O.R. interventions?

This seminar will include a series of talks by O.R. professionals who are working pro-bono for charities supporting young people. The charities involved include The Childhood Trust, Elfrida Rathbone, and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. The talks will be followed by a general discussion of special issues affecting young people.

To book your place please visit: Eventbrite: Services to Young People

Please note this event is free but places are limited.

For further information please contact:   felicity.mcleister@theorsociety.com

                                   

Press release from decisionLab (Pro Bono volunteers at decisionLab helping make the world a better palce)

Press release from decisionLab: see how the OR consultancy firm are supporting Pro Bono O.R. by undertaking projects with Marie Curie and Joseph Rowntree Foundation.

decisionLab problem solvers

making the world a better place

Where other supporters might run a marathon, shave a leg or bake a cake, decisionLab consultants are applying their problem solving skills pro bono, directly to the issues tackled by some of the UK’s best known charities.

Major corporations and government departments have long understood the benefits of better decision-making underpinned by Operational Research (OR).  Sometimes known as management science, OR uses maths, data analytics and computer science to help understand complex business problems and provide tools which improve decision making.

Specialist OR consultancy decisionLab has been instrumental in improving outcomes, and profits, in sectors ranging from aerospace to utilities.

Now decisionLab problem solvers are making better outcomes accessible to the third sector.  First to benefit are the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and Marie Curie Cancer Care.

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation undertakes research into the root causes of poverty and effective ways to reduce social and economic inequalities.  decisionLab Director David Buxton, one the UK's leading authorities on Agent Based Modelling and Simulation, is advising the endowed foundation on adopting this OR technique, which takes into account individual behaviours, to improve its research.

Chris Goulden, Head of the Poverty Team at the Joseph Rowntree Foundation told us that “Although we already use sophisticated quantitative research techniques, ABMS is new to us and, with David’s support we want to understand if this approach can deliver more accurate research into the long term implications of government policy designed to tackling its effect.”

Marie Curie is the leading charity providing care to people with a terminal illness in their own homes or in one of its nine hospices. The charity is also a leader in research into the best ways of caring for people with a terminal illness. The Great Daffodil Appeal is the charity’s annual flagship fundraising campaign and all money raised allows Marie Curie Nurses to provide more free care to people at a time when they need it most.

decisionLab director Liz Archibald and modeller Kevis Pachos are now working to improve the logistical planning of the Great Daffodil Appeal campaigns for 2015 and 2016.

Tracey Murray, Head of Fundraising Campaigns for Marie Curie, said: “We rely on our biggest annual fundraising campaign to help us deliver services to people who are terminally ill and support for their families at a very difficult time.  We constantly review the way we deliver the appeal and with decisionLab’s help we’re looking at cost savings and operational efficiencies which will deliver an even bigger return on our investment so we can support more people with a terminal illness and their families.” 

The three decisionLab founders, Liz Archibald, David Buxton and Kate Swatridge, make no secret of their ethical leanings.  And they are building philanthropy into the DNA of their fledgling business by offering every employee up to five extra days each year to work on charitable projects.  

Now, as a growing firm, they’re stepping up their commitment to make the world a better place through the OR Society’s Pro Bono programme.  David told us that “Conscious that being good at what we do means we have a role in creating wealth for commercial institutions, we want to commit our time and expertise to improving the income and effectiveness of charitable organisations too. Kate herself is currently on sabbatical contributing her expertise to projects in Africa and more sustainable farming initiatives.”

It’s not just the charities, and those who rely on them, who benefit from the increased expertise and capacity decisionLab contributes, Liz added “Our volunteer problem solvers get to put their analytical skills into practice in more diverse situations and develop their knowledge of different kinds of organisations with disparate operational challenges.  We see it as an enriching experience which enhances the skills we offer to corporate as well as charity clients.  We also get to educate a wider audience about Operational Research and increase awareness of our profession.  Everyone benefits.”