May 11, 2023 – Since 1904, the Carnegie Hero Fund Commission has recognized and supported civilian heroes.The nomination and awarding process for its Carnegie Medal, given to individuals in the United States and Canada who enter extraordinary danger saving or attempting to save the lives of others, is a thorough and robust process.
Decision Lens approached the Hero Fund to work toward a new process for evaluation of nominated cases and eventual selection of those individuals awarded the Carnegie Medal. One critical element to the organization’s transformation was a more collaborative, data-driven evaluation process by the commission when evaluating finalists for the award. Enter Decision Lens. Before Decision Lens, the evaluation process failed to offer long-term trend data and required reliance on binary selection criteria, void of details as to the reasoning behind board members’ votes.
Recognizing the opportunity to fuse advanced software with a decision-science backed framework brought Decision Lens and the Hero Fund together. Using Decision Lens, the Hero Fund has:
- Improved evaluation focused on the details of each case.
- Provided transparency to the voting process with increased evaluation options.
- Enabled insights by saving and tracking year over year results.
- Created a feedback loop between the board and leadership through in-line qualitative feedback on nominated acts.
According to Mr. Eric P. Zahren, President & Chair of the Carnegie Hero Fund Commission, “The Carnegie Hero Fund arguably holds the largest repository of records on extreme human altruism. As we looked toward the future, we wanted to find ways to better expose these heroes while establishing a strong foundation for recognition in the future. Already, Decision Lens has become an important component to our final selection process allowing the committee to focus on the specific details of each case, provide real-time feedback, and weigh in from anywhere in the world.”
John Saaty, The Co-Founder and CEO of Decision Lens, said, “When I learned about the Carnegie Hero Fund, I was confident Decision Lens would be a perfect fit for modernizing its awarding process. As a mission driven SaaS company, we constantly seek out ways our software can be used to revolutionize decision making and there are few more laudable goals than helping recognize the heroes who walk among us.”
After a successful pilot, the Hero Fund has committed to a multi-year relationship with Decision Lens and is evaluating other ways Decision Lens can be used in the vetting and selection process. In 2023, the Hero Fund has relied on Decision Lens in the process which saw 15 nominees awarded the Carnegie Medal. You can find more about their acts of heroism at this link.
About Decision Lens
Decision Lens develops integrated planning software which modernizes how government prioritizes, plans, and funds. We have been transforming public sector planning since 2005, delivering the people, process and technology which empower agencies to effectively meet the needs of today while delivering the cutting-edge capabilities of tomorrow. Customers across the Department of Defense, intelligence community, federal civilian agencies, and state and local governments achieve a sustained operational advantage through superior long-term planning, continuous medium-term prioritization, and short-term funding execution.
About Carnegie Hero Fund Commission
The Pittsburgh-based Carnegie Hero Fund Commission, a private operating foundation, awards the Carnegie Medal to civilians who enter extraordinary danger while saving or attempting to save the lives of others. Throughout the more than 118 years since the Fund was established by industrialist-philanthropist Andrew Carnegie, more than $44 million has been given in one-time grants, scholarship aid, death benefits, and continuing assistance to recipients of the Carnegie Medal or their families.
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