Challenge: This charitable organization struggled to leverage the full value of the data created across more than 70 retail locations and health, education, and employment initiatives.

Solution: Goodwill of Central & Southern Indiana uses Domo across the organization to gather, visualize, and share data.

Impact: The organization can optimize daily operations at its retail locations while providing a higher level of support to new moms, adult learners, and job seekers.

Goodwill of Central & Southern Indiana does data-driven good using Domo.

As one of the largest Goodwill chapters in the country, Goodwill of Central & Southern Indiana is responsible for serving the needs of Hoosiers across 40 counties. By using Domo to warehouse, visualize, and report data, Goodwill of Central & Southern Indiana is able to leverage information from across the organization to do more good for more people. “We’ve expanded Domo to every department within our organization,” said Theresa McLean, business analytics manager at Goodwill of Central & Southern Indiana. “It’s the single point of truth all our different departments can leverage to help us operate and grow.”

“We’ve added 34 stores and 16 schools since we’ve started using Domo. That wouldn’t have been possible if we didn’t have the ability to manage our data and use it to make decisions,” she said.

Improving retail revenue

Goodwill of Central & Southern Indiana generates funding for its mission in part from its ecommerce site and more than 70 retail stores. Collectively, the stores earn more than $125 million in revenue each year across millions of transactions.

“Using Domo, we can track all of that,” McLean said. “Because our inventory is all donations, we can’t really plan for that. But we can use data to understand what days we have more business, what discounts are most effective, what types of products sell best, and more.”

Regional managers can visit a store and use Domo’s mobile app to see all the store’s key metrics at a glance. By reviewing sales, donation volume, staffing by shift, and more in near real time, regional managers can have deeper, data-driven conversations with store managers and staff about how to improve operations and drive more revenue to fund its programs.

“We are able to better manage our weekly quotas and move staff to different areas as needed to meet targets,” McLean said. “By tracking the pending inventory we have in the warehouse and what’s available on the floor, we can determine what items to get on the shelves along with what kind of staffing we need to drive more sales. We can also look at hours to make sure we don’t pay unnecessary overtime while giving other staff members opportunities to work more hours so we can give them benefits.”

Goodwill of Central & Southern Indiana also uses Domo to compare different locations that have similar characteristics to drive improvements. “It makes it easy to compare a store with similar sales volume or donation volume so we’re not comparing a store in a small town with one in Indianapolis,” she said.

Domo also helps managers gain new insight into their employee experience by gathering data from employee satisfaction surveys. Using this data, Goodwill of Central & Southern Indiana can better understand what issues drive retention and turnover across different staff cohorts so they can better meet the needs of their diverse workforce. Goodwill of Central & Southern Indiana even uses Domo to track milestones like employee birthdays and work anniversaries so employees can be easily acknowledged.

“Our regional directors can walk into a store and find those specific employees to congratulate them. It’s a really nice way to build a connection,” McLean said.

In addition to leveraging its retail income, Goodwill of Central & Southern Indiana also funds its programs from grants, donations, and government support. The organization uses Domo to collect the data it needs to apply for funding and show progress.

“Being able to produce reports efficiently is very important to us. Domo helps us save a tremendous amount of time and resources, which allows us to expand services without having to expand a lot of staff,” McLean said. “We have one report we’re required to do that requires 360 different data points, which used to take multiple people a couple of months to pull together. I’m now able to do it on my own in a fraction of the time.”

Using data to improve case outcomes

Retail income helps Goodwill of Central & Southern Indiana fund several health and education initiatives across the state. The Goodwill Nurse-Family Partnership connects new mothers who are at higher risk of complications due to issues like poverty, drug use, or homelessness with resources and support to ensure a safe and healthy pregnancy. Nurses follow the mother from the earliest stages of pregnancy up through the child’s second birthday to help the child reach critical developmental milestones.

“We use Domo to help nurses manage and monitor their caseloads,” McLean said. “If someone’s caseload gets too large, it helps us identify who on staff has capacity so we can reassign people or get them additional help.”

Goodwill of Central & Southern Indiana also uses Domo to better understand the program’s cases and usage so it can provide the right type of support. From analyzing where in the state mothers come from to their preference for video vs in-person consultations to the types of issues they most struggle with, Goodwill of Central & Southern Indiana can make informed decisions that help the entire family thrive.

“A healthy baby is not just about helping the mom. If others in the family are hungry or the spouse needs employment, we reach out and help. Domo helps us keep track of everything so that we make sure we’re providing all the support we can to anyone who is eligible,” McLean said.

Goodwill of Central & Southern Indiana also uses Domo to help manage and track the success of its education services. The organization operates schools across the state designed to help adults get a high school diploma, along with providing support services like free childcare, food pantries, and transportation.