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The Story
People in 17 countries gain the skills to thrive in meaningful jobs with support from Generation, a nonprofit dedicated to breaking down systemic barriers along the path from education to employment. Since its inception in 2014, Generation has brought life-changing careers — and sustained well-being — within reach for more than 77,000 graduates.
The fast-growing organization relies on Alteryx software to help assess Generation’s worldwide recruitment, screening, training, placement, and alumni follow-up activities with one central question in mind: Are we still doing the right things or not?
“If you have a social mission, the way you define that mission and prove that you are achieving it is through the data,” says Max Scarr, senior operations and data manager, Generation UK and Ireland. “With Alteryx, we can easily analyze where we are being most or least effective and apply what we learn to improve our programs or our decision-making.”
That awareness and adaptability helped the nonprofit retool its service delivery model over the past two years as COVID-19 shut down many workplaces while increasing demand for skilled employees in healthcare and other fields. Generation has used data-driven insights about the shifting demographic makeup of its learners and the evolving requirements of employers to keep its resources focused where they can make the greatest impact.
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We track data across the entire learner journey to make sure we are moving forward with our vision of transforming education-to-employment systems around the world. Alteryx helps us connect those dots and tell more compelling success stories to the partners that support us.
—Varun Kalra, Senior Business Analyst at Generation
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Generation’s workforce development programs span 38 professions across customer service and sales, technology, healthcare, industrial trades, and “green jobs” such as bicycle repair and solar panel installation. The organization serves young adults at the start of their employment journey as well as experienced workers seeking new skill sets for a successful career transition. It also consults with employers worldwide on changing how they evaluate, hire, and support workers who have faced systemic barriers to employment.
Source: generation.org/impact
Several years ago, Generation implemented Alteryx as a foundational piece of its data analytics and reporting environment with support from the Alteryx Tech for Good program, which provides free software licensing to nonprofit organizations around the globe. Generation has steadily expanded its use of Alteryx capabilities to automate the organization’s complex data collection, synthesis, and reporting activities — saving administrative time and costs while serving more learners in more countries.
“As a nonprofit, you are always strapped for resources,” says Brian Bradley, a fellow on the Learner Engagement Team. “Tools like Alteryx help us understand the data quickly. We can really scale our decision-making and programs to serve more people with what’s available from our sponsors and funders.”
The Impact
By automating the data preparation and analysis tasks that Bradley’s team used to perform manually, Alteryx saves an average of 25 to 55 hours of administrative work per week collectively across the Generation global team and network of 16 country locations. “That allows us to evaluate the data more closely and do analyses that we couldn’t make the time to do before,” Bradley says.
Another Alteryx workflow creates a summary report of various performance metrics, such as recruitment and attendance, in each learner cohort. Generation’s various departments use this information to make key decisions about where and how to move forward.
“Before they meet each Friday, our leads spend no more than a few minutes reviewing the results, instead of an hour or more looking in multiple documents,” says Varun Kalra, senior business analyst at Generation. “Alteryx gives us a visual way of interconnecting data and transforming it into evidence of how our programs are performing.”
As the nonprofit expands its offerings into more countries, adds Varun, the ease and flexibility of using Alteryx enables the program managers in each new location to immediately share data in virtually any format.
“Since we already have these processes and workflows set up in Alteryx, our country teams can start generating metrics without any need for additional coding,” he says. “Plus, the interface is much more user friendly than other data analytics platforms that we have looked at.”
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With Alteryx, the intelligence loop is always up to date. And using the dashboards we’ve created, our executives can often find what they need on their own. —Varun Kalra
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Soon after the global COVID-19 shutdowns began in March 2020, Generation’s post-graduation placement rate temporarily dipped to less than 40% amid widespread layoffs and hiring freezes in many industries. Along with shifting its workforce training programs online, Generation also surveyed thousands of past graduates to better understand how the pandemic was affecting their jobs.
Feeding those survey responses into Alteryx — along with related data from employers, government agencies, and other sources — helped guide the nonprofit in expanding its resources for alumni of various ages who were caught in the unemployment surge.
“That analysis showed us where we had opportunities to provide greater alumni support, from financial subsidies to additional online training and job placement assistance,” Varun says.
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Data is foundational to our mission of preparing people to thrive in life-changing careers, and Alteryx very much supports us along that journey. —Varun Kalra
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With each new group of learners, the efficiencies and insights fueled by Alteryx enable Generation to continue growing its impact.
Nonprofits: interested in learning more about the Alteryx Tech For Good program? Apply here
