Data Insights Help NHPCO Improve Renewals
and Online Community

As the nation’s largest membership organization for providers and professionals who care for people affected by serious and life-limiting illnesses, NHPCO collects a ton of data. Unfortunately, that data lives in different systems that don’t talk to each other. They knew they needed to tie together all their disparate data sources for deeper insight into their association. Their original solution was built on top of Tableau, creating complexities that made it hard to pull data for decision-making without a data analyst on staff. While they were able to run reports from their AMS, the data only highlighted a single point in time and the system didn’t provide the flexibility to show trends over time, nor could it merge data from other sources. Ultimately, NHPCO chose to partner with Association Analytics and their analytics platform, Acumen, for its ability to cull data from all their systems into one place to better understand their members. In addition, they knew Association Analytics was the right partner because of their expertise in data analytics as well as the association industry.

Fixing Bad Data & Improving Membership Renewals

One of the benefits of implementing Acumen for NHPCO was that it provided them the opportunity to understand where their data gaps were. “Since we don’t have a data analyst on staff, there were some quirks about our data that slowed us down initially. Association Analytics helped us identify where we had poor data and showed us how to focus on the right data so we could fix our gaps,” says Andy Duncan, NHPCO’s Senior Director of Membership.

Prior to Acumen, if NHPCO wanted to pull basic membership reports, they had to run queries that took a lot of time and didn’t deliver the data in a useful way. Now, they can quickly and easily view membership data in just a few clicks, which saves the membership team valuable time to be used towards other strategic goals.

“Association Analytics helped us identify where we had poor data and showed us how to focus on the right data so we could fix our gaps.” – Andy Duncan, NHPCO’s Senior Director of Membership

Team Exercise Builds Engagement in Acumen

NHPCO had some key challenges they looked to Acumen to address:

  • staff had limited awareness of the activity going on in its online communities

  • only a few employees participated in monitored discussions

  • many lacked the time or access to reporting to understand member activity within its online communities

NHPCO also wanted people from all areas of the organization to engage with Acumen. To help conquer both challenges, they launched a team building exercise. NHPCO grouped employees from different areas of the association and asked them to explore answers to various questions about their online communities with live data from Acumen.

Using the data visualizations inside Acumen, teams were able to compare more and less active groups. This led them to explore if there was something the more active groups were doing that could be replicated in less active groups to increase engagement.

During this team exercise, teams learned that community leaves were slightly higher than joins, possibly because discussion posts were repetitious or didn’t invite a response. They found that similar discussions were happening among different communities, but overall activity was more concentrated to a few communities where members are highly engaged. They also noticed members continually asked questions that had already been answered. NHPCO developed an action plan that included:

  • inviting engaged members of active communities to become more involved with the organization

  • Evaluating whether or not to sunset some communities

  • Teaching staff to write posts that are more likely to generate a response

  • Creating FAQs, tip sheets and webinars to address the most frequently asked questions and topics of interest

Andy recalls, “some of our staff weren’t very engaged with our online communities, so this made it perfect for exploration. With no training on Acumen, we gave our groups 30 minutes to explore the data. Then, they had to present their findings, state how the data supported what they saw and make recommendations for what we could improve. It was fantastic. Most of our staff found Acumen really easy to use and it helped raise awareness of features of the product. Plus, the recommendations that came out of the exercise were invaluable.”

“It was great because we were able to use the exercise to break down internal silos. We found when teams aren’t biased to their own areas of responsibility, new ideas emerge. From my perspective, this created a culture of open data sharing, which will ultimately make us stronger.”

Andy DuncanAndy Duncan, NHPCO's Senior Director of Membership

Leveraging the Experts at Association Analytics

While Acumen offers hundreds of out-of-the-box dashboards that answer most of an association’s typical questions, occasionally custom reports may be needed for something unique to an organization. This was the case with NHPCO who wanted to quickly see deferred revenue, so they engaged Association Analytics to build a custom reporting dashboard.

Duncan states, “I would have loved to take the time to figure out how to build what I needed, but my focus needs to be on membership. Having the experts at A2 do what they do best lets me stay focused on what I do best. And even if we did have the expertise in house, as the degree of difficulty increases, having someone who really understands how the application is built, is a more effective use of resources. Our developer at Association Analytics is great at interpreting what I’m looking for and translating it to make it work on the technical side.”

Partnering with Association Analytics

It wasn’t just Acumen’s ability to showcase trends over time that led to NHPCO’s decision to engage with Association Analytics. Andy says, “there are other products out there but what stood out is the talent at Association Analytics. They have people who’ve worked in all aspects of associations. They get that associations have unique data challenges and that many underinvest in our tech stacks. Associations really need a partner that understands our technical needs and knows how to work with us.

Association Analytics has the expertise and experience within the association world and the command of the technology. They also have the relationships that can get you through the places that technology won’t. Acumen is a solid tool; it’s built on solid technology that continues to grow and evolve, and that’s good.”

Case Study - Data Insights Help NHPCO Improve Renewals & Online Community

National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization

Founded in 1978, the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization (NHPCO) is the nation’s largest membership organization for providers and professionals who care for people affected by serious and life-limiting illness. Its broad community of members includes local hospice and palliative care providers, networks serving large regions of the United States, and individual professionals. National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization

NATIONAL HOSPICE AND PALLIATIVE CARE ORGANIZATION

WWW.NHPCO.ORG

ANDY DUNCAN

SENIOR DIRECTOR OF MEMBERSHIP

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