FAECTOR Consultancy Project (FCP)
The FAECTOR Consultancy Project (FCP) offers you the opportunity to help non-profit organisations and small companies with data analytics projects, while at the same time allowing you to put your econometric knowledge into practice. You will gain valuable experience as a consultant and improve both your analytical and soft skills. You will work in teams of 5 and participate in several training sessions that will help you with the execution of the project. Additionally, you will receive professional guidance from consulting companies throughout the project. Also, note that this project is worth 2 ECTS!
The FAECTOR Consultancy Project starts at the end of March and ends just before the summer break. There is a workload of approximately 5 hours per week, including training sessions and meetings with your guiding consultant. For the complete schedule and more detailed information on the cases, the participating companies and the trainings a student manual will be made available at the time.
The description of the participating companies is:
War Child
At War Child we are seeking to get more insight into our donors. Over the years we have already gained quite a bit of knowledge about our structural donors (our so-called Friends in War Child language), but we actually still know very little about our individual donors (Supporters). We would like to gain insight into the potential of these people. Some give more often, but not everyone. How can we entice our supporters to make a second donation (and a third and a fourth)?
Research question suggestion: With which approach strategy can we entice which supporter to make a subsequent donation?
Ideally, we see a probability calculation per supporter as output, which we can then use to refine our selections for campaigns.
What kind of data are you going to work with? There is general data about the persons (gender, age, postal code, place of residence), we also have information such as recruitment channel (door recruitment, TV, online, event, post) and campaign history (mail received, telemarketing, e-mails). And of course we know the number of payments and the amounts and to which campaign they donated. We are mainly looking for a combination of factors: is someone who was recruited through door recruitment, and subsequently also participated in a telemarketing campaign, more inclined to donate than someone who has only received direct mail? Which factors (age, recruitment channel, donation amount, etc.) all play a decisive role in this? Or is there none? And how much time after the first donation can we best approach them via which channel (or campaign)?
SNV
Fresh fruits, vegetables and spices, in the Netherlands we only have to go to a supermarket to find an abundant variety of horticulture produce. In Africa it can be a challenge to buy affordable fresh products. The Horticultural Livelihoods, Innovation and Food safety in Ethiopia (Horti-LIFE) project aims to increase the involvement of smallholders in innovative and competitive horticulture production. The goal of this project, funded by the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs, is to improve food security for rural families, food safety and contribute to improved nutrition in domestic markets. With this project you will be improving the lives of families in Africa directly!
Over the past six years the project has collected a large dataset of cost-benefit analysis of various crops, like tomatoes, pepper and cabbage. It compares inputs like fertiliser, reduced use of pesticides, water, labour with profits of the sale of crops. The HORTI-LIFE project would like to know what interventions work best to increase horticulture production for various crops. They currently use averages to analyse the cost-benefit data, but would like to know more about variation within crop categories. This could lead to more tailored advice to farmers about inputs, agronomic practices and more healthy fruits and vegetables for the people of Ethiopia.
Koningin Wilhelmina Fonds (KWF)
KWF has three types of corporate donors, business friends, activation partners and strategic partners. A donating company is determined to be one of these types, according to the amount they contribute to the KWF. This year students will work on the following questions:
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Which non-active business relations in our data-base have the highest probability to reactivate as an active partner?
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Which relations have the highest probability to donate structurally?
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Can we enrich our database? How can we realise this? How can we use this data?
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What is our market share per sector in the Netherlands?
World Wide Fund for Nature (WNF)
Created in 2002 by Arjen Hoekstra, the water footprint is one of the family of environmental footprints that help us understand how our production and consumption choices are affecting natural resources. This network has created a methodology that enables us to track and compare the various water input, consumption and output streams (including the quality impacts) across many industries and geographies.
For this piece of work we will focus on agriculture supply chains, which is defined as product water footprints. Since the creation of the Water Footprint Network there have been many reports documenting the many trade-offs within certain crops types, as well across the whole agriculture industry. The goal of this case is to find out the optimal way farmers can use their resources to farm crops, while minimising the water footprint. This is an amazing opportunity to help local farmers who struggle with wanting to fight climate change, but at the same time needing money to feed their families.
Hartstichting (Dutch Heart Foundation)
The Heart Foundation has two types of donors, individual donors and Structural donors. This year students will work on a scoring model for the campaign specifically for former structural donors. Using previous campaigns to calculate someone's score or probability of a positive response to the campaign. The campaigns can be done more efficiently and successfully using this information.
If you have any questions, don't hesitate to send an email to fcp@faector.nl!