Girls Who Code (GWC), a nonprofit that partners with schools, community centers, and other nonprofits to close the gender gap in tech, is prioritizing operational excellence (OPEX) to enable sustained success.
GWC sought to centralize its reporting for key strategic and operational KPIs across multiple teams and data systems. It engaged FTI Consulting to develop a dynamic Tableau dashboard aligned with its recently developed 5x5 strategic plan and consolidate reporting metrics across teams and data systems.
GWC is reaching girls around the world to help close the gender gap in new entry-level tech jobs by 2030, having already served 760,000 girls, women, and nonbinary individuals. It has developed an artificial intelligence (AI) curriculum that will reach over 200,000 students in the US, launched two new AI programs and a data science course, and is teaching students how to use AI for financial literacy, producing music, and more.
Girls Who Code prioritizes OPEX
“Our partnership with FTI Consulting has enabled us to sharpen our focus on the strategic and operational metrics that define our success as an organization,” commented Dr Tarika Barrett, CEO of GWC. “The balanced scorecard equips me, our executive leadership team, and our board with a clear framework to identify priorities, measure progress, and take timely action. It will be an essential management tool for driving alignment, efficiency, and accountability across the organization.”
FTI Consulting conducted interviews with stakeholders across finance, programming, operations, and data and analytics to identify and prioritize the data indicators most important for GWC to track. This process included documenting data sources for each metric and assessing their organizational value.
It also built an interactive, comprehensive Tableau dashboard to measure performance, integrating data from multiple internal GWC databases, evaluating data consistency and quality to ensure accurate, repeatable reporting.
In addition, FTI Consulting developed a phased roadmap for incorporating new metrics over time, including clear timelines for data collection and integration into the existing Tableau environment.
To support long-term sustainability, it produced detailed documentation for all metrics, outlining data sources, ownership, and update procedures to ensure ongoing dashboard maintenance.
Enhancing OPEX at Girls Who Code
FTI Consulting delivered GWC’s first dynamic, Tableau-based scorecard showcasing performance across the organization’s programming, finance, internal operations, and learning and innovation pillars.
Each focus area highlights key performance metrics, such as club reach and engagement, fundraising outcomes and donor trends, program cost per student served, employee satisfaction, and program survey insights, to provide a clear view of organizational impact.
With this centralized scorecard, GWC leadership can monitor progress against strategic and operational targets and access critical metrics in one place, enabling more data-driven decision-making.
FTI Consulting also established data ownership and governance protocols by identifying business and technical owners and conducting knowledge-transfer sessions. The dashboards will support executive reporting, including Board updates, and guide decisions on where GWC should allocate time and resources.