Blog Insights
Spotlight: The Forum One Data and Analytics Team
Digital strategy runs on data. Without robust data and analytics, any organization’s strategy is just a series of guesses. While it’s easier than ever to access data—every digital action, from website clicks to member signups produces a trackable trail—knowing how to use the data is a different story. Often, our mission-driven partners are swimming in data, but need support to create systems that analyze and provide meaningful direction from that data. Knowing what not to measure can be as important as measuring at all. That’s where our Data and Analytics Team comes in.
What the data and analytics team does
Forum One’s data and analytics team sits within our Strategy team and supports projects at a variety of intersecting points.
Strategy and development
In the early stages, we investigate meaningful measurement. What are the organization’s goals? What kinds of data would inform progress on those goals? Does the organization already track this data? How reliable is it? What new types of data collection might serve them better? We look to develop data and analytics practices that are both ideal and practical, with an eye for plans that are sustainable and suited for the scale of a given project.
Visualization and dashboard setup
Often, we’re helping make sense of data. This includes the creation of visualizations that interpret user data with meaningful, actionable takeaways, for presentations, board meetings, and strategic planning. With many partners we help establish real-time dashboards for tools like Google Analytics, creating an initial scope of data collection that organizations can manage and analyze independently.
Long-term partnership
In some cases we’re part of an internal team, helping to maintain or run reports or evolve data practices over time. We even provide surge capacity for organizations building out teams or who are in the hiring process, when data operations need to keep running without full staffing.
Meet the data and analytics team
We are a small but mighty team of analysts and senior analysts, working closely with others at Forum One in strategy, UX, and design. With a variety of specialized skills in advanced modeling, machine learning, python, and more, I’m proud to say we’re often looking forward to proposing solutions for partners that advance their goals strategically. We’re able to understand client needs and find approaches that fit.
What does it take to succeed on our team?
Analysts need to be curious; we pride ourselves on asking questions and continuously learning. We’re building both our skills and our industry knowledge, keeping abreast of changes to standards and new possibilities in data analytics for mission-driven organizations, often from the for-profit world.
At the same time, at Forum One it’s important to understand the organizations we work with. Job-seekers with experience working in-house with nonprofits or in the public sector can bring additional perspectives and relevant knowledge.
We also love to develop overlapping and complementary skills with other aspects of digital strategy. We gain from cross-pollination with UX specialists, who may themselves be trained on visualization software or relevant tools, with the broader strategy team, who may learn to interpret social media data to create strategy recommendations, and with engineering, whose technical skills can aid in custom analysis platforms.
The Forum One data and analytics team is growing! Keep watch at our careers page to learn more.