Leveraging the Tools of Data Analytics to Support Local Community Voluntary Services

The Borough of Southwark, located south of the River Thames in London, is home to some of the city’s most notable monuments. Despite its historical past, Southwark has experienced a heightened amount of income deprivation compared with the average London neighborhood. Community Southwark (CS), the area’s local Council for Voluntary Services, acts as the umbrella body for the voluntary and community sector, ensuring a more integrated and holistic approach to community support efforts. By supporting charities, community groups and individuals through capacity building, volunteering and social action, CS enables the community to take steps forward and improve from within.

Situation

CS’s reporting teams spent many hours issuing monthly reports based on outdated processes, where reporting teams were manually taking data from accounting software and producing sets of spreadsheet-based reports. The time spent on reporting detracted from CS’s community impact work. CS approached FTI Consulting’s Data and Analytics team within the Forensic & Litigation Consulting segment in London, including Senior Managing Director Richard Chalk and Director Kyle Goedhals, to seek their expertise in updating their data management processes. The team took an approach that would avoid an over-engineering data process and fit CS’s needs while promoting future independence with reporting.

“I’m very pleased to say that the work of FTI Consulting will save a lot of my time and produce error-free reports in the future.” — Vani Niranjan, Community Southwark, Finance Manager

Our Role

Taking time to understand existing processes and the charity’s needs, FTI Consulting:

Scoped out other data and software solutions that could replace CS’s existing systems that meet the charity’s needs, budget and skillset
Provided demos to CS to ensure their comfort with potential data tools
Automated manual data entry in Excel through Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) scripts to both automate importing data into spreadsheets and create forecasting and budgeting reports based on the imported data in the click of a single button
Educated CS staff through training sessions to ensure self-sufficiency with the new reporting structure as well as other office tools that improve day-to-day operations

Our Impact

FTI Consulting spent approximately 40 hours on the project.
The completed project significantly reduced the amount of time CS spends on monthly reporting, allowing employees to dedicate more time to community impact projects.
Additionally, the educational training sessions improved overall internal operations which potentially impact other areas of the service within the charity.