In Conversation with United for Brownsville: Building a Starter Dashboard for Place-Based Nonprofits
In July, David Harrington from United for Brownsville joined us for the next installment of In Conversation with Nonprofit Data Leaders to discuss Building a Starter Dashboard for Place-Based Nonprofits.
We’ve pulled out a few key moments we think will resonate with you below.
Tracking fewer things, chosen well, gets you further.
United for Brownsville started with a list of 30 possible indicators and narrowed it down to 7 North Star measures. The narrowing was the hard part. It meant working through disagreements with community stakeholders, and widening UB’s lens from early childhood to cradle to career. What came out of it was a short list of outcomes the whole community could rally around.
For many communities, data has been used against them, not for them.
David was honest that his team’s first reaction to the dashboard was resistance. Brownsville has been labeled with headlines about being one of the worst places in the city to raise children, and numbers have often been used to blame residents. Changing that meant changing the frame. The gaps in the data reflect structural inequality and underinvestment, not the people who live there. Brownsville should be as well resourced as the wealthiest neighborhoods in the city, and the dashboard measures progress toward that.
It also surfaced good news. Brownsville’s pre-K participation is above the city average, and David described a city official stopping to study that number when she saw it printed on the wall.
A dashboard works great as a conversation starter.
David brings printed maps to community convenings and uses them to get people talking about what they see. With one group, a math score became the starting point for digging down to root causes like chronic absenteeism. His advice to other leaders: data and relationships on the ground are the two keys that unlock the work, and you need both.
Watch the entire webinar recording below!
PS: You can explore the United for Brownsville dashboard here.
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