This month, we spoke to Ronan Harris. As our Senior Evidence & Insights Officer, Ronan ensures our organisation is evidence-led, monitors our impact and direct the analysis of our data.
What brought you to LandAid in the first place?
I had just finished a master’s in philosophy which I loved, but I was tired of stroking my chin wondering how to make the world a better place – I wanted to actually make a practical difference.
LandAid’s strategic position – within the property sector, supporting youth homelessness projects across the UK – really excited me. I first joined LandAid as a Supporter Care Assistant, where I found I could contribute best through projects such as analysing our fundraiser data, helping us to better understand our supporters. When the Evidence & Insight role was first discussed around three years ago, I felt this was where my analytical background could make the most difference – so I applied and the rest, as they say, is history.
What’s your role, how do you help end youth homelessness?
My role works across LandAid to ensure we are evidence-led. I do this in a number of ways, all of them supporting our mission to end youth homelessness.
Firstly, I’m on hand to complete all number of ad hoc projects to meet team needs across the organisation, such as producing the dollar handles that help to illustrate the impact a donation can have.
Secondly, I make sure our central database (Salesforce) is fit for purpose, working with teams to identify clear business processes and working with our cornerstone partner Open Box to make sure the system works for these processes. Anybody who has experienced either side of a well-functioning CRM knows the importance of high-quality and readily accessible data.
And last but certainly not least, I work closely with the Grants and Strategic Programmes teams to monitor our impact. Directing and analysing the data we collect, I’m able to demonstrate our impact to supporters, identify our strengths and weaknesses so we can respond accordingly, and model our future impact so we can plan ahead.
What’s one project or moment that made you feel proud to work at LandAid?
Being involved in the development of our current five-year strategy was a great experience. LandAid brought together figures from across the charity and property sector, all focussed on how we could have the most impact on young people experiencing homelessness and all making valuable contributions to the direction we were setting for ourselves.
I was particularly engaged with asking how we would measure impact – what would success look like? We received an essential contribution from a panel of young people with lived experience of homelessness, from St Basils’ Youth Voice, who identified the outcomes they considered foundational to rebuilding their lives and thriving beyond homelessness. These outcomes became central to our impact framework for the current strategy.
What’s one challenge LandAid faces in this work that you think more people should know about?
As the evidence guy, I reckon I need to highlight the problem of data quality. This is something that lots of sectors face – high-quality data is hard to gather and even harder to use effectively.
Centrepoint do amazing work gathering data on the number of young people presenting to local authorities with housing needs (over 100k each year), but its hard to tell how many young people are missed by these stats entirely, never presenting to a local authority and perhaps not even turning to any other institution for support.
At LandAid, led by our brilliant and driven trustee, Dan Hughes, we’ve spearheaded cross-sector groups focussed on improving data-sharing and developing innovative solutions to some of the many problems around gathering, combining and effectively using data. You can help by sharing any data or data sources that you think might help to better understand or build solutions to youth homelessness.