Independent Sector: a quick case study
Independent Sector is the leadership forum for charities, foundations, and corporate giving programs committed to advancing the common good in America and around the world. Their nonpartisan coalition of approximately 600 organizations leads, strengthens and mobilizes the charitable community in order to fulfill their mission. Their constituents include some of the world’s leading non-profit organizations like the Gates Foundation and the Kellogg Foundation.
They rely on high-quality information about elected officials and their relationships to those officials. The first step–figuring out “who knows whom and how”–takes months and sometimes even years. With the help of JUTE, it takes just a few minutes to find a “pathway” from Independent Sector (IS) to key members of Congress. (Please note: the names have been changed, out of respect for the privacy of IS and their constituents.)
Jute found strong relationship pathways from Independent Sector to an Elected Official. This saves IS months of time in the “information discovery process.”
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Details
IS became our client in Summer 2009. In the fall, our Nexus team rolled into Washington DC for an on-site project to help the IS executive team convert their slow, social process of discovering people in their networks who hold established relationships with elected officials into an efficient business process. This allows them to spend their time actually building relationships, not just figuring out what the most beneficial ones are.
This conversion, when complete, will lead to a massive improvement in efficiency for IS and help to uncover the wealth of “relationship capital” that the IS team, board members & member organizations maintain. After just one week, the results were impressive.
Elizabeth Kohm, Vice President of Resource Development, described the change as, “being able to go from 0-60 in five seconds, instead of five months.”
When we arrived on site, we had a few concrete goals:
- Start with 6 data sets with over 200k records & mash them up into “database nirvana”*
- Find “pathways” of established relationships from the IS team to a specific elected official
- Generate reports that can be used by the executive team and board at IS
- Get to work, accessing the information and requesting introductions along those relationship pathways
In the end, the IS project was a success. This was a “prototype” project where we focused on a single elected official. We found 18 “pathways” from the IS team to that member of Congress. Our expectation is that among those 18 pathways, there will be many individuals who can, at the least, provide IS information about that elected official, and hopefully, one or two who have some influence with that official and can help IS educate and advocate for the non-profit and philanthropic community.
Can JUTE do the same thing for my organization?
Yep. That’s what we do. Contact Sean McDonald to learn how we can help you.
*A term coined by Patricia Read, Sr. VP of Public Policy and Gov’t Affairs at IS.
Guide to importing data in JUTE NRM Prototype
This video will walk you through the entire process. If you’re more of a self-starter, follow the steps below and consult the video if you need help.
Create a new Network and choose a template.
There are three standard templates in JUTE NRM PROTOTYPE: two for political data (one with full names, one with parsed names) and a Basic Network template. The Basic Network includes only people and businesses, as well as four standard relationship types (Professional, Personal, Family, Civic).
(If you are uploading data into an existing network, open that network, then go to Overview > Import Contacts & Paths.)
Creating Custom Network Templates
You can customize any network document by opening the network, then going to Setup. From here you can add new types of contacts and relationships (or “paths”) and create new fields.
Copying existing Network Templates
You can copy a Network Template when you are creating a new network by using the “Use an existing network as the base” option in the Create a New Network wizard. There is a bug in this dialog that requires you to click the option for “Use an existing network…” then choose the network you want to copy, then in order to advance, you have to click the “Start from a standard network type” button again, then click the “Use an existing network” button again.
Add initial data
From CSV
If you are using the Create a New Network wizard, in step 4 you will be asked to add data into your newly created Network Document. Option 3 is to add a CSV file. When you follow this option, you will be taken to the JUTE DATA IMPORTER, a nifty little tool we built to help you import data into a network format.
The first step is to select a file to import.
Click the “Select” button, then “Upload a New File” and “Browse.” If you have uploaded other CSV files, they will be in your file cabinet below. Once you have chosen a CSV file, choose if from the CSV file folder below (double-click the folder to open it), then select your CSV file and click “select.”
Next, choose the appropriate import settings.
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- “First row is a header row” means that your CSV file has a header row on it. This is used in the “detect data structure” feature and keeps JUTE from importing your headers as nodes and links.
- “Detect data structure” automatically places fields in the field of the matching name to the header row in the data set. If you are importing large or complicated networks, this is an extremely time-saving tool. Note: In PROTOTYPE, this function only works for nodes, not for links. This is a buggy script and will not always work 100%, but it is still very helpful.
- “Merge Duplicates” will automatically merge dupes across the entire network document. By default, JUTE will rely on the field that is identified as the “label” in the Network Template to de-dupe. While some other processing takes place, it is not reliable. If you need to assign a unique id, that is possible. Email Sean to ask how.
Once you click upload, you’ll use a visual interface to “drag & drop” data from the spreadsheet fields into the appropriate node and link fields. This will create a “logic” for structuring the network.
You’ll start by assigning the appropriate fields to the nodes. Then, hold CTRL (CMD on Mac) and click one node, then draw a relationship to another node. This will create a relationship field and you can drag & drop the appropriate data into those relationships as well. Click “Continue” and your import should happen in 10-60 seconds, depending on the size of data.
(This part should be pretty intuitive. Watch the video if you struggle with it.)
There is a limit on how many nodes & links JUTE NRM PROTOTYPE can handle in each Network Document. While there is no “magic number” where importing stops working, there is a limit. That limit will be impacted by the degree of interconnectivity in a data set. A simple data set may allow you to upload up to 8,000 nodes (this is the most we’ve uploaded successfully) and a complex data set may stop working at 2,000 nodes.
You can sometimes “cheat” this limit by parsing your data into multiple CSV’s, but no guarantees that this will work.
If you encounter problems uploading…
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- If you are using OpenOffice, you need to save the CSV in a special way. When you save it, choose the “Edit filter settings” option and uncheck the “Save cell content as shown” box.
- Sometimes problems will come up if you add / delete a lot of nodes or links in the visual importer step. The solution is to just try again and not make as many mistakes.
- Jute will often have trouble adding more data to an existing network when there is already 3,000+ nodes in that network.
- You can email Sean if you have a hangup. He’ll help if he can..
From Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail / MS Live mail and AOL / AIM
THIS FEATURE IS CURRENTLY SO BUGGY THAT IT BARELY WORKS.
Sorry. You can try but it probably won’t work.
Visual Data Input
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- Add a relationship at any time by holding down CTRL (CMD on a Mac) and clicking on one contact then drawing a new relationship and clicking on the other contact.
- To add contacts (nodes) inside of the Network Document, click the “Add Contacts & Paths” button. Drag & drop the appropriate node type.
- There is a “Batch” mode for both Contacts or Relationships. Once you enable a Batch mode, you can drag & drop as many as you’d like to have. When you click “Save and Exit” you will be walked through a wizard to fill in additional information.
Editing information
You can edit information from the Profile view of any node or link. Just click on the field and edit away.
API
JUTE NRM PROTOTYPE does have a RESTful API. Email Sean to learn more.
Professional Network Analysis
It would be nearly impossible for you to make sense of all the data that’s available on the people you know, hope to know and need to know.
It’s impossible for almost everyone. The vast sums of data available on all kinds of things can be overwhelming. But the benefits of harnessing that data are innumerable. From better operations to a strategy that can truly build and sustain a competitive edge for your company, the information that you have comes from the data can leverage.
Data analysis has played a vital role in business for several generations, but there has never before been so much data available on individuals, businesses and their relationships.
Visualize your own network. Free trial. Get started now.
This data comes from a diverse number of sources that range from internal databases and CRM services to data sets compiled by professional researchers and journalists. You can also acquire data on demand. (Read more about our data services.)
Professional Network Analysis is a technology that’s becoming a business process.
When you have huge amounts of data, you don’t set aside time to review it all. You get smart about it and let the software do the hard work.
Jute NRM is a professional network analysis tool that performs several key functions to turn valuable data into information that is relevant to you and useable. The benefits of using this technology are:
- Utilizing more data in your decision-making
- Reducing the amount of work that goes into collecting data and information
- Identify trends, opportunities and risks you could never find without analysis
- Increasing the value of your existing data
- Reducing the extent to which you “don’t even know what you don’t know”
- Enhancing your ability to communicate complicated sets of information to people
Jute NRM was built to perform professional network analysis. If you need these benefits in your business, contact us to find out how to integrate professional network analysis into your business processes.
How can we help?
Case study
The team behind the Firefox browser and Thunderbird email client has started heavily promoting their Mozilla Service Week, which is coming this fall. Among the projects they suggest that their fan base–largely technologists–take on in local communities are:
- They teach senior citizens how to use the Web.
- They show a non-profit how to use social networking to grow its base of supporters.
- They help install a wireless network at a school.
- They create Web how-to materials for a library’s computer cluster.
- They refurbish hardware for a local computer center.
- They update a non-profit organization’s website.
It’s a great project and I encourage anyone reading this to get involved.
(I’ll point out that, Mozilla does plenty to make the world a better place by creating an open browser and making it successful and widely-adopted. This initiative won’t come close to that level of impact, but it is noble.)
The big picture
This is a great segue to one of the defining questions of our age: who will teach the millions of Americans and billions of people around the world how to put the best technologies of our time to use in their own lives? There are lots of follow-up questions here, including: who is responsible for doing so? should all technologies be designed in a way that they are “intuitive enough” for anyone to use them? should the end user play a role in maintaining the technology or is it OK to have a driver/mechanic (user/expert) relationship with core technologies like a person’s computer? This list goes on and on…
How can we help?
The question for a startup like Jute Networks is: how can we help ensure that all people have access to technologies that make their lives better?
We help most by making our company successful. Jute NRM is a truly innovative user interface for complex relationships data. The better the interface, the more valuable that information is to a broader audience. In a world with more data than our greatest minds know what to do with, data visualization’s great promise is to increase all people’s ability to at least understand data that impacts their lives and potentially make better decisions that increase their quality of life.
From an action-oriented perspective, we’ve got to start finding clients that really need our help to fulfill their missions. Large non-profits, innovative startups…any operation that lives and dies by its relationships. In a perfect world, our clients will be dedicated being the change we want to see in the world (to paraphrase Gandhi). We believe in a progressive approach to business, government and stewardship of the earth. We believe that entrepreneurship and technological innovation offer great promise to create a more perfect union, domestically and the world round.
If you need to get more value out of complex relationship data and your organization seems like a fit, contact me, Sean McDonald, today.
Professional Network Visualization
If a picture’s worth 1000 words, what’s data visualization worth?
You may not realize it, but you rely on data visualization every day. In the morning, when you watch the weather forecast, millions of pieces of information about weather of a vast, geographic are are consolidated into one simple image. You could never process the data for the weather in your region in a single day, but you process and act on the radar image (a visualization of that data) in just a few seconds.
Visualize your own network. Free trial. Get started now.
Networks of professional relationships are especially complex sets of data. The data comes from several sources and involves many overlapping relationships. In many cases, the data involved–even after our Professional Network Analysis process crunches it–is so rich and complex, it would take hundreds of pages to print it.
But with out Professional Network Visualization platform, you can make sense of it in just seconds.
Want to see some examples? Contact us and we’ll give you a tour.
You can also visit the “Business Networks” gallery at www.VisualComplexity.com.