Importance of Our Data

    Written by Melissa Retzsch, Director of Development

At the beginning of March, our annual impact report hit inboxes, inviting our community to see the difference that your donations, volunteering, and overall support have helped accomplish in 2022. We feel it’s important for us to take a moment and explain the significance of collecting data to support our organization.

The Magdalen House collects and analyzes data to ultimately help as many alcoholic women as possible. The metrics that we review allow us to continuously improve our programs, provide the best quality of care, and strategize for future success. Our staff comes together as an organization every year to develop an annual plan, strategic plan, and a logic model to prepare for the agency’s continued growth. These plans use the data that we track to help us set action items that lay the groundwork for each department for how we aim to reach realistic and attainable, yet ambitious goals. Then we use those goals to guide the creation of a tactical plan which dictates every action that needs to be taken to reach those goals.

For instance, in 2022, our Outreach team began streamlining the process for finding and interacting with new and established partnerships to ensure that we are able to support the women of Maggie’s and educate the community on the disease of alcoholism as best as possible. This led to 48 new partnerships in one year. Our Volunteer team began work towards increasing opportunities for the broader community and streamlined our newsletter messaging to better engage our volunteers; this increased our volunteer hours logged to 24,653 for the year.

To improve and grow our First Step, Next Step and Community programs, we track metrics such as monthly and annual screenings, admissions, annual completion rates, monthly capacities, meeting and volunteer attendance, and satisfaction levels at the end of each program. Not only does this data assist us in projecting our program operations, but it also helps us determine the client’s overall success rate.

Not only does this data assist us in projecting our program operations, but it also helps us determine the client’s overall success rate.

Furthermore, we track data to help us tell our community’s story. By doing so, we are able to showcase the need for our services, how our organization supports this need, and how we are transforming women’s lives in the long term.

…we are able to showcase the need for our services, how our organization supports this need, and how we are transforming women’s lives in the long term.

It is because of our dedication to data that we are able to continue serving women like Mandy Turnbaugh. “The love and support shown by staff and the sisterhood at Maggie’s is unlike anything I have or could experience anywhere else,” Turnbaugh shares. “I am grateful beyond words for this opportunity and will forever be grateful!”

The love and support shown by staff and the sisterhood at Maggie’s is unlike anything I have or could experience anywhere else.

2022 was a huge success for The Magdalen House as we used these metrics to continue to grow and streamline our programs. And from the data we collected, we are going into 2023 with even more information to reach more alcoholic women and their families.