How CACI supported Zero Gravity target the right audience with Acorn datasets

The challenge

Founder and award-winning social entrepreneur Joe Seddon explains how Zero Gravity works: “To identify the most high potential students from low-income backgrounds, we’ve built a contextual recruitment algorithm which crunches data about applicants’ socio-economic and educational background. This system draws on simple information in applicants’ profiles, such as their home postcode and secondary school, to draw conclusions about their prior performance and barriers to success.

Now that London levels of postcode inequality have now become a nationwide phenomenon, our algorithm requires geo-demographic targeting at an increasingly granular level so we can target our services where they’re needed most.

The solution

Asking applicants to provide their postcode is a very ordinary requirement for registering with any online service today. From that single piece of information, CACI’s Acorn dataset provides rich, accurate and up-to-date socio-demographic information, helping to contextualise Zero Gravity applicants. “People expect to give a small amount of identifying data – sharing their home postcode is not a big deal when students are getting so much value for free,” says Joe. “Acorn provides just as robust an indication of family income from applicant postcodes as free school meals data, without any intrusion or sense of being patronised.”

The benefits

The impact was huge. “When thousands of secondary students signed up with us last year, we automatically knew which of them were in the greatest need. It was a hugely valuable tool.”

Joe sees wider future applications for the Acorn data in further education and development, which will benefit students, educators and employers alike.

Corporate employers and universities are becoming increasingly interested in spotting the best talent from non-traditional backgrounds and making sure no one falls through the net. Whether it’s targeting students for bursaries, putting a university application in context, or providing targeted mentoring support – Acorn data can be an incredibly powerful resource.

Joe Seddon,
Founder and CEO, Zero Gravity

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