Data and Analytics for Philanthropy

Like any enterprise, a large philanthropic foundation depends on data – a lot of data – to support better decision making and maximize the impact of their investments.

Over a two-year period, I worked with people across the organization to understand, synthesize, and communicate complex, nuanced requirements.

Alongside analysts, data scientists, developers, and leaders, I worked to create prototypes and make rapid, iterative refinements informed by rigorous quantitative and qualitative user research. This work resulted in many powerful new capabilities being incorporated into the foundation’s analytics tools which in turn unlocked new, more efficient and effective processes across the enterprise.

Disciplines

User Research, Domain Research, Business Strategy, Experience Design, Data Visualization, Prototyping, Design Systems, Project Management, Implementation Support

A Future-focused Analytics Framework

Stakeholders at every level rely on dynamic Power BI reports to understand key aspects of the foundation’s work. Some of these reports are useful across many roles while others serve highly specialised audiences. Because these users are making complex, multidimensional decisions about a complex, multidimensional business using complex, multidimensional data, many of these tools fail to fulfill all of their needs. The gaps get filled tactically using local, ad-hoc tools and processes which tend to proliferate, often redundantly in different teams.

By creating a consistent, flexible framework for this suite of reports, we significantly decreased dependence on ad-hoc methods, increased the speed with which new reports, data, and capabilities can be incorporated, and improved the overall usability of these important tools. This resulted in increased efficiency, more trustworthy data, better communication, and increased morale.

Because change is the only constant, this framework was built with an eye toward incorporating emerging technologies including Microsoft’s AI-enabled Fabric and Copilot.

Prototyping and Testing

The word prototype can mean different things in different contexts. It can mean a low-fidelity proof of concept used to assess high-level viability of an idea with business stakeholders. It can mean a mid-fidelity, structural clickthrough used to assess the organization of information and tasks with end users. It can mean a high-fidelity artifact used to finesse a product’s “fit and finish” and provide detailed specification to development teams. It can even mean a product’s nascent code base that’s being built against one or more of the above.

Completing this work called for all these kinds of prototypes at their appropriate times.

A Comprehensive Design System

When conceived and implemented thoughtfully, an atomic design system can drive consistency, flexibility, scalability, speed of design and implementation, and ultimately, usability and productivity gains. I advocated for and oversaw the development of the foundation’s design system which included a meticulously constructed library of nested (atomic) Figma components, a SharePoint site documenting the why, what, and how of the system’s components and patterns, and Power BI templates to kick-start new development efforts.

Screenshots of the design system across different tools and platforms.

Amplifying Impact

When we’re deep in the weeds of creating large, complex things like data and analytics systems, it’s easy to lose sight of the “why” behind our work. One thing I really appreciated about this work was that my colleagues remained laser focused on the value this work brought to the foundation and the impact it is having around the world. I often use the 5 whys technique to dig down to the core of a challenge and I feel privileged to have been involved in something with such a noble why at its core.