For today’s unions and progressive organizations, effective collection and utilization of data are essential to movement-building at scale and pace. Easier said than done, of course. Directors, managers, strategists, organizers, and data staff often grapple with the challenge of turning raw data into actionable insights.
That’s why we founded TCW Strategies in 2021. Join us as we go behind the scenes to share the critical work our purpose-driven team does to transform data into impactful insights.
This blog is your backstage pass to the transformative process that guides and shapes more effective strategies and deepens the impact of organizations like yours. We focus on transitioning data from a headache to an asset, so leaders, staff, and activists can focus on what they do best.
The Data Transformation Journey: From Raw Data to Actionable Insights
When we think about data transformation, we envision a meticulous process where raw data evolves into data-driven solutions and actionable insights. Our purpose-driven team, composed of seasoned experts, brings this process to life with our clients. Let’s take a closer look at the steps involved in turning raw data into impactful strategies:
Getting Started on the Right Foot
It has been our experience, as labor union campaign directors, organizing directors, and even from the private sector, that having the right people in the right spot is critical to launching a successful initiative or campaign. That’s especially true when taking on the challenge of modernizing a data program—success starts with having a team of experts who understand labor unions and progressive non-profits.
Getting started on the right foot takes understanding membership-driven organizations’ challenges, opportunities, and missions. Transforming data means understanding the challenges these organizations face and the culture around data.
We started this company to help organizations like yours mature and modernize their approach to data quickly. With TCW Strategies, this starts with the technical assessment.
We begin with a comprehensive assessment conducted by our client success team. This team is composed of progressive organizing and union campaign experts and data specialists.
The process involves examining both the technical and human aspects of data utilization—what are your data sources, where do they go, what teams are engaging with the data, and how are they using it? We want to focus on breaking down silos, understanding the culture, and how to align your data across the various departments within your organization.
The first step is understanding: Who uses data, and how?
Identifying Stakeholders and Initiatives
Next, it’s important to assemble the minds that matter most, determining the group of people who will sit down and figure out where you want to be, and what the challenges are to get from Point A to Point B. Who are your people?
Our approach involves identifying and engaging key stakeholders, defining broad initiatives, understanding goals, and determining the technical landscape. By identifying and addressing challenges and formulating strategic plans, we pave the way forward for a seamless data transformation.
Platform Deep Dive
Now, you need to get into the heartbeat of your data ecosystem. We explore and scope out all the ways you generate and collect data. This is a crucial step in our process—the deep dive into the platforms where data is generated and collected.
We assess whether plug-and-play solutions are viable or if custom solutions are needed. One of the challenges of working exclusively with unions and progressive non-profits is the diverse software collections. You aren’t likely to see the same CRMs you might see in other industries. We aim to integrate platforms effectively.
Roadmap to a Modern Data Stack
Finally, we develop a time-lined roadmap that includes a technical assessment with an architectural diagram, proposed solutions and addresses operational challenges. This roadmap guides organizations from their current data state to a modern data stack, enhancing targeting, efficacy, and goal tracking for membership-driven organizations.
Three Specialized & Adaptable Solutions
Once we determine your roadmap, we can move forward with solutions that address the technical and operational challenges that have been identified.
- Establishing one “Source of Truth” and Self-Service Dashboards : Utilizing Google Cloud Platform, we establish a Big Query home base for each client, ensuring all data pipelines feed into a tailored centralized warehouse, or your own “source of truth” so you can pivot when needed and peer deeper into your data. Gaining a 360-degree view of your data is a game changer, and we help bring that to life through crafting self-service dashboards—allowing you to easily integrate data into decision-making. And cut way down on staff hours dedicated to reporting!
- Messaging Impact Plus: Our client success team uses your modern data stack to monitor goals, design experiments, inform campaigns, and perform sophisticated analysis. We work closely with organizations to help them use the data solutions we build. We not only build it but also help you use it.
- Solidarity ScoreTM: We produce custom propensity scores, elevating any campaign’s ability to focus efforts and differentiate outreach strategies. The Solidarity ScoreTM empowers member-driven progressive organizations, like unions, to organize more effectively.
For context, labor unions, the country’s largest progressive group of organizations, still need to grow at a faster clip to keep up with the growth of the economy. Overall union density has dropped to 11.2%. Progressive organizations, like labor unions, need the ability to target their efforts more effectively, which is what our solutions do. It will not be enough to just engage and organize the people most likely to take action; we need everybody. Change will be made through organizing and mobilizing the most people possible. A modern approach to data will help unions do this.
Driving Change Through Data Strategies
Insights for Strategic Resource Allocation
We conducted a longitudinal experiment to determine the efficacy of a widely applied outreach tactic—organizing over the phone—for a national union and one of its affiliates. Our clients wanted to know if further investment in making one-on-one membership asks over the phone would help them meet their membership goals, and if so, was it the best option. Through applying different prescribed outreach methods to multiple cohorts and analyzing the results, we discovered that this tactic wasn’t as cost-effective as other outreach methods, providing the client with valuable insights for resource allocation.
What does this mean from a strategic standpoint? Insights like this empower our clients to determine the value of their investments and optimize resource allocation. You can shape your organization’s direction and initiatives by strategically allocating staff and resources, ensuring alignment with your goals.
Membership Growth Strategy, Illuminating the Path Forward
One of our clients needed a deep dive into membership trends to support their collective bargaining efforts. Our client needed to grow their membership quickly, and they had a lot of ground to cover. First, it was vital to determine what had historically been most effective at moving people to membership and where the opportunities were for increasing membership.
From there, we were able to determine target segments, enabling them to move forward with developing programs and outreach methods to bring those people into their union.
What does this mean from a strategic standpoint? By validating outreach methods and improving program strategies, we help our clients move from hunches to informed, precise actions.
Purpose-Driven Data Solutions
Our purpose-driven approach is ingrained in every step of the data transformation process. We bring our team’s unique blend of experience as progressive campaigners, union builders, and data professionals to bear for every client. We know the work, we believe in it, and, we’ve been committed to it from the beginning.
We are agile and dynamic which allows us to help our clients solve their data issues fast.
We are partners, we listen to our clients. We get what you do and what you need. We know what the data challenges are because we have been in your shoes. We are here to fix them and to do so cost-effectively. We are democratizing data analytics.
Final Thoughts
When it comes to campaigns, unions, and progressive non-profits, we know that the work is worth it. The current state of society is in desperate need of rebalancing, and the organizations centered in this fight need better data solutions in order to make their work more effective. Our core mission is to help unions and progressive membership-based organizations bring more people into their movement.
We provide our data and consulting services exclusively to unions and progressive non-profits because we know they’re essential to leveling the playing field with corporate America and the decision-makers in our federal, state, and local governments.
If you find yourself struggling with data challenges, let’s talk. Schedule an introductory meeting to explore how our dynamic data solutions can transform your organization’s data into impactful insights, ensuring a more productive future for your campaigns and initiatives.
