NBC Universal Social Hackathon project for Per Scholas
- Run exploratory analysis and patterns identification on Per Scholas Dataset
- Identify opportunities to automate the information gathering (Ex. Linkedin, Google, Facebook APIs...)
- Define sets of actions to improve the information gathering and engagement of alumni and suggest system to improve connection between staff and alumni
EDA notebook here
Nonprofit partner: Per Scholas
Per Scholas is a national nonprofit that drives positive and proven social change in communities across the country. Through rigorous and tuition-free technology training and professional development, we prepare motivated and curious adults who are unemployed or underemployed for successful careers as IT professionals, and we create on-ramps to businesses in need of their talents. Today we provide our solutions in six cities across the country: Atlanta, GA; Greater Cincinnati, OH; Columbus, OH; Dallas, TX; the National Capital Region; and New York. To date, Per Scholas has trained 6,000 individuals, helping them build lasting, life changing skills and careers in technology.
Social impact challenge question:
Per Scholas has a large alumni network and many modes of "grassroots" communication that our office uses to stay in touch with our graduates. It is important to be able to effectively engage and track the progress of our New York alumni to record and report out on program outcomes to our funders, community based partners and future students.
Currently, the "grassroots" modes of communication with our alumni network is very "piecemeal" and includes phone calls and personal outreach email from our staff. Our challenge is to identify and create a tool that will allow our staff and our alumni to remain connected to one another. Keeping alumni connected using a single tool would allow us to more easily track their progress and success. If they have changed jobs, received a promotion, re-upped their skills we want to know about it! Using our program data and visualizing the multiple touch points we have with alumni, can we devise a better system or tool that would increase their engagement with the organization and the network? This "engagement tool" could have incentives or interactive features to create enjoyable modes of communication allowing alumni to update and track others progress. Similar to a university network, Per Scholas sees amazing value in building out the capacity of our alumni body. In addition, the tool could be used for staff to have easier access to graduates progress to more easily record and report out on their success.