Volunteer Segmenting our membership data to target our communications

What will you be doing?

Who we are, what we do, and what we need PIEPR manages a community of practice website for services tackling social exclusion, using a particular approach – the creation of psychologically informed environments’, or ‘PIEs’. The majority of our membership – approx. 1,500 individuals - currently work in homelessness services, or related fields. We hope now to recruit a volunteer with expertise in creating a database, and preferably with experience of the kind of consultation process needed to develop a database using customers’ views. Some prior knowledge of the issues that arise in homelessness and other such issued would be an advantage. But some sympathy with the issues is a requirement. The task: improving and expanding engagement The primary purpose of segmenting the membership database is to allow us in future to target all our communications, invitations etc more directly on the issues our members want us to address. This is then an opportunity to let current members know what new activities we plan, and get feedback on what their priorities are. We also wish to be ready and able to break into new sectors, such as social care and education; and when we do, we will need to be able to target communications immediately on the needs and wishes of a new cohort of members. This immediate segmenting and customer engagement task therefore has to be seen in the broader context of expanding our horizons. For this reason we see this as an extended customer engagement exercise, and not simply a technological task; so. Therefore we aim for an extended period of up to 3 months, with a time budget of roughly 2 hours a week of technical support time, in addition to our own. This extended period also allows us to get feedback on any new developments, in this context of wanting to expand the scope of our work beyond the existing membership and the particular sectors where the PIEs idea currently is active.

What are we looking for?

We hope now to recruit a volunteer with expertise in creating a database, and preferably with experience of the kind of consultation process needed to develop a database, using customers’ views. Some prior knowledge of the issues that arise in homelessness and other such issued would be an advantage. But some sympathy with the issues is a requirement. For this reason we see this as an extended customer engagement exercise, and not simply a technological task.  The ability to work responsively will be key to success.

What difference will you make?

The impact we expect from a well-segmented database will be to make our community more lively and better targeted on what our members need, in order for them to be able meet the needs of some of the most marginalised and precarious in our society.  Our members are typically both 'resource poor', and 'time poor'.  Because they are 'resource poor', we do not want to charge for membership - access to all our online resources is free (which is also why we have no funds to pay for this work.) But our members are also time poor; so we do not want to send mail outs to invite all members when there is a discussion that will be of particular interest to particular groups. For desperately busy people, that's almost spam - and we don't want to have to do that. Your efforts here can help us make the 'member forum' discussions we have more engaging, more effective; and this is what helps staff of these services to learn and get support from each other. That's what a community of practice is all about..