The Royal Dutch Guide Dog Foundation

Giving as many people with disabilities as possible a better life with a professionally trained assistance dog: that is what The Royal Dutch Guide Dog Foundation (KNGF) is all about. In the context of the annual CSR project MotionTogether, Motion10, an HSO company, chose to help KNGF realise their growth ambitions. From the very first meeting, Operations Manager Miranda van Mook was pleasantly surprised: “Wow, I thought, can I really think in terms that big? Is all of this possible?”

Doubling the number of new client-dog combinations within 10 years: that is what The Royal Dutch Guide Dog Foundation is aiming for. “You can only achieve such a solid growth target if you make strategic decisions based on up-to-date and reliable management information,” says Miranda van Mook. “Everything depends on the right coordination between breeding and training dogs, training dog trainers and the money required for this, which largely comes from donors. We already had a data-driven strategy that should enable the desired growth, but we lacked the ability to quickly and properly convert the available data into strategic management information. That would require a significant IT investment, while of course, we prefer to spend every euro donated on breeding and preparing assistance dogs for our clients.”

Managed Cloud Solution

For The Royal Dutch Guide Dog Foundation, being selected as the MotionTogether 2021 project meant that - starting with fundraising and communication - it can apply a datadriven approach, without having to use donor money for IT. In his capacity of scrum master, Richard Rossen has managed the team of consultants from Data & Analytics during the project. “Like other years, we approached the MotionTogether 2021 project in the same way as our other projects,” says Richard. “That means that together with the customer, we work towards the desired IT innovation. We use PitWall; our approach to a Managed Cloud solution for our customers, using clear steps.”

For team members Tom van Velzen and Jeroen Schreuder, the KNGF project was an excellent opportunity to put many of the hard and soft skills recently learned into practice. After their studies, the two young professionals followed an internal training course at the Data & Analytics unit as MotionTalent Consultants. Coached and supervised by Richard Rossen and other experienced consultants, they added value for the customer with great enthusiasm and know-how. Tom van Velzen: “In this project, we were able to apply our acquired knowledge in a real life case, and it’s great to see that whatever was still a bit theoretical during your studies, turns out to work so well in practice. That an organization like The Royal Dutch Guide Dog Foundation can really come closer to its goal, because we make it possible to steer on the basis of available data.”

Valuable insights and control information

Colleague Jeroen Schreuder explains the challenge for the project team: “Donors are the largest source of income for KNGF, so that is what the control information must be about. For example, if you notice that people are willing to donate a bit more in the fourth quarter, you’ll be able to get the most out of that with a targeted campaign. If you notice that many donors leave after about five years and that this usually happens in January, you are now, with that information in hand, able to steer the Marketing department in time to try to keep these donors. If you expect some significant legacies in the next five years, perhaps you could start making certain investments now. KNGF previously did not grasp all marketing opportunities, because they were unable to properly and timely combine the available data from their CRM Salesforce and Google Analytics into valuable insights and management information. Thanks to our Power BI reporting, they now have a tool that increases their chances of achieving their growth target.”