Alteryx for Good Week 2018

In April 2017, Alteryx for Good volunteer Deanna Sanchez reached out to the Commit Analytics team to explore the idea of a potential partnership between Alteryx and Commit for the annual Alteryx for Good Week. Just one year later, Alteryx has revolutionized the way Commit uses data.

As a data-focused education nonprofit, analytics tools are essential to Commit’s work. Alteryx is an analytics software used for prepping, cleaning, and merging data from disparate data sets. It provides users with the unique ability to easily prep, blend and analyze their data using a repeatable workflow, then deploy and share analytics at a much quicker rate than other software. The Alteryx for Good program provides free Alteryx licenses to students, educators, non-profits, and small government agencies in operating income to aid in achieving their respective missions and goals.

Shortly after Deanna reached out, the Alteryx for Good volunteers jumped right into the work with our Analytics team. Within the first day, the team finished a workflow that saved the Commit team at least a few hours of work per week. Within the first month, Commit began to access new, expansive data sets that we otherwise could not have even begun to work with due to the volume of data.

This partnership between Alteryx For Good and Commit did not end after ‘Alteryx For Good Week’ in 2017.  Due to Alteryx for Good’s and the volunteers’ generosity, our partnership continued through the year and beyond, leading us into our second ‘Alteryx For Good Week’ in 2018.

One example of Alteryx’s impact is on the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) data. It would take our team 3-4 hours a week to update the FAFSA completion numbers for Dallas County. With Alteryx, we can now download one file and update all of our apps in a matter of minutes.  This allows high school counselors to see their schools’ progress on FAFSA rates in real time and drive their implementation strategy.

The efficiency of Alteryx has helped us build capacity on our team and allows us to achieve deeper analysis and to reach more stakeholders such as funders, superintendents, and direct resource providers.

Commit would like to extend a special thanks to our Alteryx for Good Volunteers, including Brian Purcell, Marisol Rippy, Kristin Scholer, Rashmi Joshi, David Rardon, Swagata Kundu, and last but not least, to Deanna Sanchez, who made it all happen.