Scope, the disability equality charity in England and Wales, is on a mission to create an equal future for all disabled people. Scope challenges attitudes, provides support to disabled people and campaigns for change.
According to Scope’s research, there are around 16 million disabled people in the UK and 11% of children are disabled. Coupled with the challenge of living with a disability is the fact that life for disabled people costs around £975 more per month, and disabled people are almost twice as likely to be unemployed. Halving the disability employment gap would bring a £17 billion increase to the economy each year.
Supporting third sector organisations in digital transformation
Scope’s mission aligns with Hippo’s Social Value Strategy, created to minimise the business’s impact on the environment, help diversify talent across the industry, and harness expertise to maximise its benefit to society. The strategy’s themes span social equity, diversity, inclusion and belonging (DI&B), and health and wellbeing.
Our initiatives include working to remove barriers faced by those underrepresented in the workforce through adapted recruitment processes, utilising a DI&B forum to embrace the diversity of our society and communities, and making continuous steps to improve the accessibility of workplaces.
One of the most powerful ways Hippo can drive social value is by putting its skill set and capabilities to good use. Supporting the growth and digital capabilities of third sector organisations through partnership projects allows our team of specialist consultants to deliver meaningful impact where it matters.
Data discovery to support the disabled community
This made us the perfect match for Scope, and in April 2024 Hippo completed a data discovery project for the charity, marking the beginning of a partnership to use our technology capabilities to deliver social impact outcomes that support the disabled community. Since 2017 Scope has supported over 15.6 million customer requests for information, advice and support, with more than 3.7 million customers supported between 2022 and 2023 alone.
Data is critical to unlocking potential across the charity to help it achieve its new ten-year strategy, An Equal Future. Our highly skilled team worked with Scope to harness their data to empower, advocate and respond to the challenges faced by disabled people. The goals of the data discovery work were to:
- Lower data barriers across the organisation to drive informed decision making and improved operational performance
- Gain better insights into donors and customers to improve their experience
- Advocate and respond to challenges faced by disabled people by providing data to inform Scope’s campaigning and influencing
What we did for Scope
Having a deep understanding of technological challenges is important, however, ensuring that digital transformation projects are conducted through a diverse, accessible and inclusive lens, with human-centred principles at its core, ensures that meaningful outcomes are delivered for all. To achieve this, we:
- Interviewed stakeholders and users to understand and map out data sources, processes, data stores and reports, as well as consumers and owners
- Produced a Data Map – showing where the data is, what it is used for and where it’s used/stored
- Developed profiles of users across the organisation to help better understand needs and pain points
- Produced a volunteering case study to highlight a real world example of how data can improve outcomes
- Developed recommendations to help Scope identify further opportunities for its data infrastructure
The results of this project are empowering Scope to make greater use of its digital tools and technology to provide advice and support to at least 3.5 million disabled people every year.
Our partnership will also unlock further opportunities to generate meaningful results for their work and impact with the disabled community, helping Scope to realise their ambitions and plans to be a digital-first organisation.
Scope’s Executive Director of Digital and Marketing Kwesi Afful said:
“We are incredibly grateful to Hippo for their outstanding work and dedication to our Data City project at Scope. Their expertise, creativity, and commitment to excellence have been instrumental in achieving our data goals. The collaboration has been seamless, and the results have exceeded our expectations. Thank you, Hippo, for your exceptional contribution and for being such a valuable partner.”
Alongside our provision of technical expertise, Hippo has donated several laptops to Scope’s new service hub at Brewery Wharf in Leeds, acting as a local centre for the charity’s services, retail products and community engagement work.
As part of our partnership, we draw on the charity’s expertise in our mission to achieve our Disability Confident Level 3 employer status alongside further training opportunities, and will be linking our current job vacancies to Scope’s inclusive and accessible jobs board.