In today's social service sector, the needs of service users grow increasingly complex and front-line workloads intensify. Data-driven approaches and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies have become core capabilities for NGOs to enhance service effectiveness, scale up social impact, and secure resources.  NGOs are not only expected to deliver quality services, but also to clearly demonstrate how their work creates impact to meet management, collaboration, and funding requirements. 

This workshop is designed for NGOs to help participants master the use of data to identify community and service user needs, design services with clear objectives and measurable outcomes, and leverage AI Agents to enhance service design, data management, knowledge management, and evaluation. Participants will also learn how to convert data into compelling presentations. This supports better internal decision-making, promotes cross-team communication, demonstrates service outcomes to stakeholders clearly, and helps articulate service needs and social impact in funding applications. Beyond resource acquisition, it also enables organisations to build capacity to continuously learn, improve services, and effectively respond to the real needs of service users.

The workshop combines theoretical input, case analysis, tool demonstrations, and practical exercises, encouraging participants to draw on their organisation's service contexts. It will help develop practical approaches that can be applied immediately.

• Apply a data-driven approach to identify the needs of service users, families, and communities, enhancing the accuracy of service decisions
• Develop systematic needs assessment skills by integrating frontline experience with data analysis
• Understand the fundamentals of Theory of Change (ToC) and impact measurement to enable clearer, more measurable, and more sustainable service design
• Understand the concepts, applications, and limitations of AI Agents, and apply them safely and practically in daily work
• Enhance the ability to synthesise service experience, present service outcomes, and develop impact storytelling

• Starting from daily work, understand how data supports the discovery of service needs, service gaps, outcome changes, and directions for improvement
• Learn to define service problems and identify the needs of service users, drawing on front-line observations, service records, questionnaires, interviews, and community data to support decision-making
• Get to know common data sources, collection methods, questionnaire and interview design approaches, and basic data analysis methods
• Learn to build a Theory of Change (ToC), Logical Framework, and Impact Indicators
• Convert data into clear, accessible, and compelling reports to support service improvement, internal communication, presentations to stakeholders, and resource applications

• Understand the concepts, application scenarios, design principles, and limitations of AI Agents, and explore how they can be applied in service design, data consolidation, knowledge management, and outcome evaluation
• Discuss data privacy, handling of sensitive information, professional judgement, and the division of responsibilities between employees and AI
• Drawing on actual organisational service scenarios, integrate data analysis, Theory of Change (ToC), and AI Agent design to develop initial ideas for service optimisation and impact communication, as well as resource applications

Remarks

• Please bring your own laptop.
• Participants are not required to have any background in data analysis or AI technology.
• Participants are recommended to think in advance about an actual scenario related to their organisation's services, for example, service user needs, pain points in service processes, existing data sources, service outcomes they wish to improve, or upcoming funding or grant application needs, so as to facilitate practical exercises and discussion during the session.