Reflections on The Cart Shed's 4-year data maturity journey

Interview with Katie Eastaugh, Chief Executive at The Cart Shed

The Cart Shed is a charity based in Herefordshire. They use enriching and engaging woodland activities such as woodcraft, coppice craft and horticulture to empower people to self-manage their mental and physical health in a sustainable way. People can be referred to their service by their GP or support worker, or they can self-refer. Courses are funded by grants and donations.

Katie Eastaugh is The Cart Shed’s Chief Executive. Over the last four years, she has taken the organisation on a data maturity journey that saw them not only implement a digital improvement programme, but also completely rethink their reason for being.

A seed is planted

The seed for Katie’s interest in data maturity was planted during a conference for not-for-profits, where she heard the story of how data had helped revive a bird population in the United States. By plotting migration patterns, researchers had found that small changes to farming practices could help the birds and, within a short space of time, were able to help bring the population back from the brink of extinction. The illustration of the potential power of data struck a chord with Katie, though initially she felt that the learning couldn’t be applied to a small charity like The Cart Shed.

When a trustee of the charity began to also develop an interest in the power of data, however, the niggling thought could no longer be ignored. In 2018, The Cart Shed successfully applied for a grant from NPC to fund a year of impact management support and a new customer relationship management (CRM) system.

They chose Data Orchard to provide the impact management support, knowing they felt unclear about their impact and how to measure it, unable to use (and sometimes unable to access) data to help decision-making, and frustrated at their outdated (occasionally non-existent) systems for collecting data. Katie says:

“Until this point, we were a small team of five people. We managed our data on a variety of unwieldy spreadsheets, paper notes, and, in large part, in people’s heads. It was a risky position to be in, because if we lost a member of staff, we would also lose a lot of their retained knowledge.”

First step: a deep dive

One of the first steps on the journey was a deep dive into all the digital tools and systems. This confirmed what they already knew about the inadequacy of their systems and also highlighted data security concerns:

“As a small organisation, we hadn’t had lots of training on data security. We were doing lots of the right things, but, if push came to shove, we would have struggled to evidence our procedures. Realising how much of an issue this was was a real eye opener.”

Armed with the full assessment of what they needed, Data Orchard supported them with applying for another grant - this time for a digital upgrade. Winning this grant allowed them to purchase new computer systems, including laptops for all the team, where, until that point, many were using their own devices.

Second step: A theory of change

After dealing with the practical equipment needs, the next major task was more challenging. In order to measure their impact, the team needed to answer some fundamental questions about who they work with, why, and what outcomes they hoped to achieve.

Developing this ‘theory of change’ led to some hard discussions:

“We’d never really sat down and had these conversations as a team, and it uncovered some really strong opinions about the type of people we should and shouldn’t work with. Questions like ‘should we work with people with addictions?’, or ‘should we offer ‘leisure’ courses to people that just want to pay to learn about gardening?’, ended up leading to some really heated debates. It was a difficult process to go through, but what was great about it was that we were being guided through it, and were able to come out in the end with mutual agreement in a really positive way. Ultimately, it helped us really simplify and solidify our statement about what we do and who we work with.”

Their simplified statement was that they would work with anyone that was willing to engage with their services, and had an identifiable outcome. And those outcomes were also worked through as part of the process:

“It helped give us a sense of purpose that was describable. We could see the impact we have on people, but particularly for me - as a fundraiser - it’s really valuable to be able to describe that clearly and succinctly.”

A long CRM implementation

The next challenge was implementing the CRM system they had chosen. This proved more difficult than they expected. Like many charities that have a variety of funding streams, they found the CRM was more geared towards fundraising by donations, and didn’t accommodate some of their complexities out of the box.

“At our core, what we do is very simple. We work outdoors, with the natural environment, to improve people’s mental health and wellbeing. Yet, we’re also quite complex when you look at the range of conditions, impacts those conditions can have, funding streams, and so on.”

Matching their needs to the system, combined with the pandemic that hit soon after, meant their CRM implementation project took 2.5 years to complete. With the support of a new office manager with previous CRM experience, they are now able to rejoice in their new-found ability to keep their data in one place, and begin to interrogate what it means.

Keeping tabs on progress

To kick off their data maturity journey in 2018, The Cart Shed completed a baseline data maturity assessment. Since then, they’ve completed yearly assessments, and have recently completed their fifth.

Katie sees the value of the process primarily as a management tool:

“A lot of impact management is about understanding where the organisation is and making decisions about where you’re going based on accurate data. The tool has helped with that kind of prioritisation and decision-making. But, of course management is also about bringing the team with you, so everyone understands the thought process. I think, after four years, the results of our data maturity assessments are really supporting this. It gives us a reference to show how far we’ve come, with all the effort we’ve put in.”

The results themselves show an interesting journey. For the first few assessments, their overall data maturity progressed slowly, but in their latest assessment has seen a jump. Katie likens this to the self-assessment questionnaires that their clients complete:

“For the first assessment, we probably thought we were doing better than we were. It’s very similar to our clients, who have become very used to masking their mental health issues when they first come to us. When we see their scores drop, we actually see this as a good thing, because they’re starting to be more honest about how they’re doing. Similarly, as we started to grow our knowledge and understanding of data maturity, we had a different assessment of where we were.”

Looking at the latest assessment, what jumps out clearly is the extent to which the team now uses data to influence their services. This, despite feeling that the average time they spend on ‘data’ hasn’t drastically changed. This is very much in line with the experience of other not-for-profits in our State of the Sector - Data Maturity in the Not-for-Profit Sector 2021 report.

2020 (20% average staff time on data)

2022 (30% average staff time on data)

Katie reflects this picture, feeling the easier access to data, and clearer understanding of who they can help, leads to more confidence in making decisions on services. In some cases, this includes having challenging discussions - based on the data - with service users around why The Cart Shed may no longer be right for them. Looking back over their journey, she also says that it has made them a more robust organisation:

“We wouldn’t have survived the pandemic as well as we did if we hadn’t been through this journey. The digital upgrade meant that, when lockdown hit, everyone in the team had their own laptop already and we were able to continue working efficiently, with all our data being safely backed up. As well as that, the impact management process we’d been through really gave us the confidence to know that we had a clear focus, and, as a team, we could cope with organisational change and adapt to the changing situation.”

Taking it to the next level

The next step for The Cart Shed is one that Katie hopes will further align the wider team with the vision for a more data-mature organisation. Thanks to a Lloyd’s Bank Foundation grant, their next project will see them developing dashboards so the whole team have a better view of their data.

“What we want to be able to do next is track the theory of change in real time using our data. We now have all the data in one place, but it’s in a raw form and needs analysis. Dashboards will allow us to drill down into the issues that impact the people we support, and hopefully, bring everything to life much more for the wider team.”

Katie also says that they intend to continue doing yearly data maturity assessments to track their progress.

If you’d like to know more detail about Data Orchard’s impact management project with The Cart Shed during 2018-19 you can read about it here.