Making the most of Employer Champions

 

Project summary

To ensure the Employer Champion programme is adding value, is cost effective and is the best use of Science Council resources. 

Project description

One of the Science Council’s key roles is to maintain and improve standards and accountability in the science workforce by providing professional registration. Registration is provided in partnership with “Licensed Bodies”: organisations like The OR Society which provide a professional home for scientists. 

Through its “Employer Champions” programme, the Science Council supports large employers to help their scientific staff to navigate the busy landscape of professional membership organisations and the rigorous application process through to professional registration. The Science Council now wants to understand: does its provision meet the needs of employers, how effective is the programme in achieving its aims, and how might it be improved.

The volunteer would be asked to work with the charity to:

- Firm up on what information needs to be collected from the key stakeholders, through interview or survey. Stakeholders include Employer Champions and prospective Employer Champions, Licensed Bodies, and individual ‘Registrant Champions’ (employees who are themselves registered scientists and help others to register)

- Conduct interviews or surveys

- Evaluate the findings and discuss their implications.

The platform used by the Science Council for candidates to apply for registration, the Common Application Process, is itself currently being reviewed as part of a Pro Bono project, and we expect some overlap and liaison between the two projects. 

The volunteer(s) should be experienced in structuring and carrying out interviews/ surveys, and using fairly small amounts of semi-structured data to develop robust, valid conclusions.

How will this project benefit the organisation?

The professional registration programme is one of the most important components of the Science Council charitable objectives and public benefit, and building the number of registrants is a crucial part of its mission. Because of this, the business model of the Science Council is dependent on numbers of registrants, so maintaining registration levels is key to sustainability. The Employer Champion programme is one of the more resource-intensive ways of attracting registrants, so understanding how cost-effective it is and whether this can be improved will be of enormous importance not just in improving efficiencies but also in helping achieve the overall goal. 

Location

Remote

Commitment

This may be a project that will suit two or more volunteers working as a team, though it can also be undertaken by an individual.

Desired project start date

The client would like the work to be run in parallel with the project on the CAP, so that any findings can be coordinated. This means starting as early as possible.

Desired project completion date

June/July 2023

If you are interested but not able to comply with these dates, please get in touch anyway to discuss options.

Apply

If you feel you are able to offer your assistance please complete the application form and return along with your CV to ProBonoOR@theorsociety.com by Monday 1 May 2023.

The OR Society fully supports equal opportunities.

Information about the organisation

For further information about the Science Council, please visit https://sciencecouncil.org/

Information about Pro Bono OR

For further information about the Pro Bono OR scheme, please visit: www.theorsociety.com/Probono  or email ProBonoOR@theorsociety.com

Review and improvement of key processes and workloads

Project summary

Saola Foundation is relatively new and needs to identify opportunities to improve its work processes to ensure resources are used effectively.  

Project description

Saola Foundation is a relatively young organization, having been formed in 2020. A strategic development theme for 2023 is “efficiency and wellbeing in the work place”, recognising that, with a small staff team, it is important to ensure best use is made of staff time and to protect against staff burn out. The CEO believes now is a good time to identify and review Saola’s key business processes and to analyse where and how staff spend their time. The aim of this project is to identify opportunities for improvement that would, for example, reduce individuals admin-based works loads (for all technical and development staff) and free-up more time for fundraising activities and reduce the overhead of internal processes. 

Key stages in the project are likely to be as follows (subject to agreement between Saola and the volunteer): 

• Project initiation (background and objectives) 
• Identification of key business processes & prioritisation of those in scope for this project (via 1-1s or workshop) 
• Process analysis, including staff time/resource usage 
• Development of improvement options and recommendations 
• Reporting and presentation to CEO/Board 
• Evaluation of success  

How will this project benefit the organisation?

Discovered by science only in 1992, the Saola was perhaps the most spectacular zoological find of the 20th century. It is now probably the world’s most endangered terrestrial mammal. The race to save Saola is one of the highest priority conservation challenges of our time, requiring an unprecedented level of global support and cooperation. 

The Saola Foundation team is a small, deeply committed group of field conservationists and this project is a real opportunity to help the team “step up a gear” in the way they work together. 

Location

Remote

Commitment

Estimated volunteer commitment: 4-5 days. 

Desired project start date

April/May 2023

Desired project completion date

End of August 2023

Apply

If you feel you are able to offer your assistance please complete the application form and return along with your CV to ProBonoOR@theorsociety.com by Monday 24 April 2023.

The OR Society fully supports equal opportunities.

Information about the organisation

For further information about the Saola Foundation, please visit https://www.saolafoundation.org/  

You can also learn more about the Saola here: https://www.saolafoundation.org/saola-status/

Information about Pro Bono OR

For further information about the Pro Bono OR scheme, please visit: www.theorsociety.com/Probono  or email ProBonoOR@theorsociety.com

Operational improvements to empower an anti-poverty charity to help more people

Project summary

To analyse North Bristol Advice Centre’s client journeys for opportunities to improve operations efficiency, focusing on time wasted on unanswered calls. 

Project description

NBAC aim to combat poverty and promote social justice by providing free and independent advice and support in North Bristol and South Gloucestershire.

In the last year, they have seen a sharp 20% increase in the volume of enquiries and the amount of debt seen has tripled. NBAC’s services are needed now more than ever.

The aim of this project is to translate client journey and call log data, with a focus on decreasing the volume of call-backs that go unanswered, to answer questions such as:

- Is there a best/worst time of day to call clients?

- What is the average length of ‘different level’ of phone calls, such as triage and casework? This would involve using multiple databases: clients' phone numbers can be extracted; phone numbers are recorded on phone system therefore clients/client profiles can be paired to calls, clients can be categorised by issue/level of service received and client profile based on length of phone calls can be created.

- What are the most active days/times for incoming calls to reception?

How will this project benefit the organisation?

Operational improvements that make better use of resources will allow NBAC to help even more people combat poverty.

The outputs will also inform NBAC’s 2025 strategic plan which aims to achieve funding for the further development of community support.

Location

Flexible - remote or in person depending on volunteer location. NBAC is based in Lockleaze, Bristol.

Commitment

To be agreed between volunteer and organisation when completing project proposal.

Desired project start date

May 2023

Desired project completion date

There is no specific target date, or deadline, so dates can be arranged to suit the volunteer.

Apply

If you feel you are able to offer your assistance please complete the application form and return along with your CV to ProBonoOR@theorsociety.com by Monday 10 April 2023.

The OR Society fully supports equal opportunities.

Information about the organisation

For further information about the North Bristol Advice Centre, please visit https://northbristoladvice.org.uk/

Information about Pro Bono OR

For further information about the Pro Bono OR scheme, please visit: www.theorsociety.com/Probono  or email ProBonoOR@theorsociety.com

Charity Excellence Framework: what lies beneath

Project summary

Critically review a large database and how its data is used, to advise on whether the system, the data aggregation and outputs are doing what is intended, and suggest improvements. 

Project description

The Charity Excellence Framework is a free resource for charities, with around 36,000 charities currently signed up as users. It enables charities to assess themselves on a set of criteria relating to key dimensions of their operations (eg fundraising, governance, communications) in order to help prioritise action for improvement; and it provides links to thousands of free resources that they might wish to use to help them with those actions.  

More information about how this works is here.

The charity self-assessments are held on a database, which currently has 350,000 data points. The primary output is the dashboard for each individual charity, which helps them view their own data. However CEF has a ‘master dashboard’ aggregating all the data and is planning to enable multiple versions of master dashboards that can support policy-makers and umbrella bodies who are responsible for decisions covering the whole charity sector. 

CEF would now like: 

• A critical review of the system, to see if there are an issues and advise on possible improvements (this is at the level of logic, process and data analytics, not coding). 
• Advice on how best to aggregate and explain the data so that it provides valid, reliable and useful output that can be safely used by any external organisation. 
• The volunteer should have the competence to undertake database review and to advise on analytics relating to large volumes of data, and be experienced in designing analytical output that will meet the needs of the end user. 

How will this project benefit the organisation?

The project will either (a) give CEF the confidence that they can make the master dashboard available to all comers without risk of misleading; or (b) demonstrate what changes need to be made before this can happen. 

Location

Remote

Commitment

CEF will be pleased to have however much external expert input is available, whether hours or days or a long-term peer-support commitment. 

This project may benefit from having a mix of volunteers with different experience around systems design and assurance, and analytics. When applying, please indicate what would suit you best, or call us to discuss. 

Desired project start date

Ideally as soon as possible, no firm deadlines.

Desired project completion date

Ideally as soon as possible, no firm deadlines.

Apply

If you feel you are able to offer your assistance please complete the application form and return along with your CV to ProBonoOR@theorsociety.com by Monday 6 March 2023.

The OR Society fully supports equal opportunities.

Information about the organisation

For further information about the Charity Excellence Framework, please visit https://www.charityexcellence.co.uk/

Information about Pro Bono OR

For further information about the Pro Bono OR scheme, please visit: www.theorsociety.com/Probono  or email ProBonoOR@theorsociety.com

Using data for insight, understanding and change

  

Project summary

Enabling Contact to make the most of their data to influence and improve services, campaigning, and fundraising.

Project description

Contact supports parents and families who care for a disabled child with a variety of services and through work directly with policy-makers. They hold a considerable amount of demographic data on service users (in particular: parent ethnicity; child age; and child disability/condition), which is not currently fully analysed. 

The volunteer(s) would be asked to work with the charity to:

- Prioritise the questions to be addressed by analysis

- Undertake suitable analysis, present the findings in an accessible way, and discuss their implications with the Monitoring and Evaluation team

- Provide tools and documentation so that some or all of the analysis can be undertaken routinely by the charity themselves in future years. 

Investigations may include, for example: 

- Which groups are currently under-reached by some or all of Contact’s services. This may help identify actions such as how best to design or market service to reach new users. (For example, one strategic aim is to reach families sooner, so the data on age of child will help understand how well different services attract younger families.)

- The needs of different user groups (there is coded data on issues raised by individuals, for example in helpline calls), and possibly inequalities in experience of public services, for example across different ethnic groups. This will help to inform campaigns; evidence future funding bids; and improve service design to meet needs of different groups.

- To identify research questions that cannot be answered by the data, but that Contact may want to investigate further e.g. through qualitative analysis.

The volunteer(s) should be experienced in planning and carrying out analytics to answer operational and strategic questions. Other desirable experience includes:

- Ensuring that some or all of the analysis can be reproduced by the charity on updated data in future years (depending on which tool(s) the analyst wishes to use, this might be code or documentation).

- Understanding and managing the risk that disaggregating data results in users being identifiable even though the data is anonymised. 

Geographical analysis of the data is not a priority for the client, but knowledge of GIS will be a nice-to-have additional skill.

How will this project benefit the organisation?

Contact aims to be the charity that families turn to for advice and support when they find their child has a disability, to drive social change, and to enable their user families to shape their work. They feels that at the moment the data is an under-utilised resource, and that this project will enable them to make the most of it, to inform the design and management of services, to influence decision-makers outside the organisation, and thus to improve the quality of lives of parents and families and their children.

Location

Remote

Commitment

The client would like to have at least part of the work completed by summer 2023, to feed into discussions of a new strategy.

This may be a project that will suit two or more volunteers working as a team, though it can also be undertaken by an individual.

Desired project start date

February or March 2023

Desired project completion date

Summer 2023

Apply

If you feel you are able to offer your assistance please complete the application form and return along with your CV to ProBonoOR@theorsociety.com by Monday 27 February 2023.

The OR Society fully supports equal opportunities.

Information about the organisation

For further information about Contact please visit https://contact.org.uk/

Information about Pro Bono OR

For further information about the Pro Bono OR scheme, please visit: www.theorsociety.com/Probono  or email ProBonoOR@theorsociety.com

Improving NSPCC’s Helpline

 

Project summary

Designing a discrete event simulation model to enable a helpline to provide good service levels across all channels. 

Project description

The NSPCC works to end child abuse and enable children to be safe and supported. Its helpline, for adults and professionals with concerns about a child, handles live calls, call-backs, emails and direct messages; but the system that manages the helpline is not sophisticated enough to support planning for this variety of channels. The NSPCC would like a discrete event simulation model of the helpline’s processes, to enable them better to match staff levels to varying workload, improve service levels, and explore ‘what-if’ scenarios to deal with different resourcing patterns and changes in demand. 

The volunteer(s) will need to spend some time understanding the current system, how the helpline works, and what data is available, before designing a model that can be used to start answering the questions. It will probably be appropriate to design a fairly simple model first, and (depending on time available) work with the NSPCC staff to adapt and develop it to ensure it can answer the most important questions. 

The senior sponsor of the project is an experienced OR and data science professional, who will be able to provide direction but will not be able to spend much time on the project. The volunteer will be asked to work closely enough with the data professionals and operations staff at NSPCC to ensure shared ownership and skills transfer by the end of the project. 

The volunteer should have some experience in discrete event simulation; or, if a team takes this on, at least one member should be experienced in DES and able to lead the model development. Ideally they will also have experience in participatory modelling, enabling not just the managers but the staff who provide the service to explore model insights and input into the analysis. 

How will this project benefit the organisation?

The Helpline is a crucial communications channel for the NSPCC to be there when children, young people and adults concerned about them are most in need. By enabling NSPCC to meet its service level targets, and to be resilient to variation in demand, this project will increase the flow of information and help prevent children falling through the cracks. 

Location

Remote

Commitment

This is potentially a large project, and will suit a team of people working together, or a single volunteer who is willing to give several weeks (spread over several months). Alternatively, it can be ‘chunked’, with the first part of the project being to develop a rapid prototype, and subsequent parts involving refining and using the model. When applying, please indicate what would suit you best, or call us to discuss.

Desired project start date

The current system is unsatisfactory so NSPCC would like to start as soon as possible. However, there is no specific target date, or deadline, so dates can be arranged to suit the volunteer.

Desired project completion date

There is no specific target date, or deadline, so dates can be arranged to suit the volunteer.

Apply

If you feel you are able to offer your assistance please complete the application form and return along with your CV to ProBonoOR@theorsociety.com by Monday 16 January 2023.

The OR Society fully supports equal opportunities.

Information about the organisation

For further information about the NSPCC please visit https://www.nspcc.org.uk/

Information about Pro Bono OR

For further information about the Pro Bono OR scheme, please visit: www.theorsociety.com/Probono  or email ProBonoOR@theorsociety.com

Improving impact and positive outcomes for a child bereavement charity

Project summary

To enable the charity, the Harvey Hext Trust, to collect data that will help them in successful grant applications and in targeting areas for support. 

Project description

Work with the client in designing a database that will satisfy all desired outcomes. Hand over database together with any training/supporting documentation that is required. After one month’s trial, liaise with client, examine how database has performed so far, make any amendments necessary and demonstrate to client how to obtain any desired outputs.

The technical requirements are simple: a knowledge of databases. This project would benefit a junior analyst with technical expertise but who would like experience in dealing with a client and seeing a project through from start to end. 

How will this project benefit the organisation?

It will enable them to collect data and to identify which areas of the country the memory boxes are being sent to and which hospitals/hospices are actively referring them to families. This in turn will support grant applications/corporate support and positive outcomes.  It will enable the charity to provide impact information and target areas of the country that need more intervention.

Location

Flexible - remote or in person depending on volunteer location. The Harvey Hext Trust is based in Bristol.

Commitment

Time commitment to be determined by volunteer when completing detailed project proposal with the client.

Desired project start date

As soon as possible.

Desired project completion date

3 months from the start date.

Apply

If you feel you are able to offer your assistance please complete the application form and return along with your CV to ProBonoOR@theorsociety.com by Wednesday 7 December 2022.

The OR Society fully supports equal opportunities.

Information about the organisation

The Harvey Hext Trust is a charity supplying bespoke personalised wooden memory boxes to children who have lost a sibling.

When you lose a child there is often very little support for the bereaved sibling. The memory boxes are a very simple, but effective way of helping a sibling remember their brother or sister and preserve their very precious and personal memories. The boxes can be an important part of therapy to encourage children to show emotions and to talk about their bereavement.

For further information about the Harvey Hext Trust please visit harveyhexttrust.com

Information about Pro Bono OR

For further information about the Pro Bono OR scheme, please visit: www.theorsociety.com/Probono  or email ProBonoOR@theorsociety.com