In 2017 we started Pulse For Good in an effort to improve homeless services. Since then we’ve expanded to help organizations of all types improve. Much of what we do is similar to what is laid out below — however, we’ve refined our process and our thinking since that time. Please take a second to see our latest work here: http://www.pulseforgood.com/
Homelessness in America is getting worse. No one knows *exactly *why. We’re going to find out in the most radical way possible: Asking the homeless population.
For years the private sector has realized that feedback from their customers is the lifeblood of their business. Surveys, Performance Reviews, Secret Shoppers, Exit Polls, Yelp, Rate My Professor, Glassdoor — all have harnessed the power of reviews to help understand a problem and provide insights into solutions using the data that they’ve collected.
We’re attempting to apply that same principle, the idea that the consumer of a service tends to know best what it needs and how effectively its needs are being met, to large scale social programs beginning with services around homelessness.
The goal is to expand the data being captured by federal, state, and local governments from quantitative, how many beds are being filled, to become qualitative, how well does a service actually do its job — in this case, help end homelessness.
We believe along the way the focus can turn from the macro societal problem of homelessness to the micro personal problem of an ***individual's homeless experience ***and thus lead to more individualized and personalized solutions.
***Our solution is simple ***— a listing of service providers separated by categories and geographic locations. Each service provider has a place for reviews to be viewed, basic information displayed and new reviews added by any person from any device connected to the internet. When someone adds a review we ask them a series of optional demographic questions as well as ask them to judge their experience at a service provider in a number of ways using a five-star scale. The combination of these two data points, the demographic information, and scaled rating system, allow us to give insight into questions such as:
The data gathered is then put into an easy to consume reporting platform and access is granted to various subsets of data depending on the need. For instance, every service provider has access, for free, to all data gathered about itself. Larger data aggregations for foundations, cities, counties, and other research groups are available. For more information please contact teampulse@pulseforgood.com.