Nearly one million people each year make pilgrimage to the King Center, a National Historic Site, to learn, be inspired, and pay respect to Dr. King's legacy.
The King Center
The King Center: Driving Impact with Sopact
Background:
Established in 1968 by Mrs. Coretta Scott King, The Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change ("The King Center") has served as a global destination, resource center, and community institution for over a quarter century. The Center is committed to furthering the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., by promoting nonviolence, social justice, and equality through its programs and initiatives.
Challenge:
The King Center operates numerous impactful programs, but it faced significant challenges in managing, analyzing, and reporting data from multiple initiatives. These data silos were scattered across different platforms like Qualtrics, making it time-consuming to derive actionable insights. The lack of dedicated data analysts also hindered the ability to perform qualitative analysis despite the wealth of information collected. The King Center needed a more efficient way to aggregate and analyze both qualitative and quantitative data from their programs to make data-driven decisions.
Solution:
The King Center partnered with Sopact to implement a comprehensive impact measurement framework across its seven key programs. Sopact replaced Qualtrics with its integrated Sopact Survey tool, which seamlessly connects with Impact Cloud, allowing for the aggregation of pre- and post-program surveys across multiple cities. Sopact Sense was also deployed to facilitate real-time learning from both qualitative and quantitative data without requiring technical expertise within The King Center’s team.
Results:
Outcome Strategy & Metrics: Four programs now have clearly defined outcome strategies and metrics that enable continuous learning. This helps the team understand what is working and identify areas for improvement.
Time Savings: The King Center has saved significant time by automating data analysis and reporting processes, allowing staff to focus on program improvements.
New Insights: For the first time, the organization can analyze qualitative data, gaining deeper insights that were previously untapped.
Expanded Research: The King Center is now better equipped to pursue new research initiatives, thanks to Sopact’s data-driven approach.
Program Impact Highlights:
Beloved Community Leadership Academy A comprehensive survey from 12 cities was conducted using Sopact Survey, focusing on the long-term leadership development needs of youth in the program. The insights from this needs analysis are informing future program design.
One Million Black Women (OMBW) Initiative: This program, funded by Goldman Sachs, addresses the underrepresentation of Black women in leadership roles. By targeting young Black women early in their education and careers, the program aims to equip them with leadership skills and access to opportunities, fostering a future generation of Black women leaders.
Nonviolence365 Education and Training: This program provides nonviolence education globally. With Sopact's data tools, program evaluation is now done in real-time, reducing months of data collection and analysis to mere minutes. This allows The King Center to immediately report outcomes to funders.
Better Together Designed to enhance the capacity of faith leaders to contribute to social justice, this program equips them with the philosophy and methodology of nonviolence to address pressing social issues.
Students with King Aimed at empowering educators, this program brings the legacy of Dr. King into classrooms through student-centered enrichment programming, focusing on literacy, character-building, and social-emotional learning.
Library and Archives The goal is to establish global distinction as the premier research hub for the study of Dr. King, Coretta Scott King, and the American Civil Rights Movement.
Driving Sector-Wide Change with Sopact: Sopact’s collaboration with The King Center is contributing to a sector-wide shift in how impact is measured and managed in social programs. Their tools enable:
Enhanced Decision-Making: The King Center can now make informed, data-driven decisions in real-time, optimizing interventions for greater social impact.
Increased Transparency and Accountability: By systematically collecting and analyzing data, the Center can clearly report program outcomes to stakeholders, building trust with funders, beneficiaries, and partners.
Capacity Building: Sopact’s focus on continuous learning from impact data not only helps organizations make better decisions but also fosters a culture of impact measurement and management.
"Gathering open-ended feedback was always part of our routine, yet it remained untouched—until now. Discovering automated insights was a game-changer, enabling real-time analysis and dynamic discussions during trainings."
