User Base Insights

Situation

The Makaton Charity helps individuals access Makaton, a language programme that uses signs, symbols and speech, to ensure that everyone living with learning or communication difficulties has the means to understand and be understood. The Charity offers a range of services, including training, learning resources and support and advice. To address the relationship gap that it had with end users, the Charity recently designed a new membership model and now has over 50,000 free members and 1,000 paying members. This membership scheme provided an opportunity to increase engagement with Makaton users. The Charity aimed to better understand current and potential Makaton users, to ensure that their products and services were aligned with user needs, helping to attract and retain members going forward.

Our approach

We supported The Makaton Charity to analyse and refine its understanding of Makaton’s user base. We started the project with an extensive review of tools and processes for data collection, to assess existing gaps in data and insight. We then determined what information The Makaton Charity should collect on users, through conversations with stakeholders and a collaborative process of prioritisation with the team. This informed the development of updated data collection tools and processes, including the design of new survey questions to measure prioritised information. Finally, we analysed findings and presented an insights report on their current and potential user base as well as recommendations on how to improve the Charity’s insight generation in the future.

Our impact

This project helped The Makaton Charity to take a more systematic and streamlined approach to user insight generation. Our collaborative approach to the data prioritisation process was particularly appreciated, as it embedded this new approach from the outset. Project progress was regularly shared with the Board of Trustees and was well received. Aleron will continue to work with The Makaton Charity to support them with their impact strategy and measurement, and develop effective performance management systems for their Makaton tutors.