Many local funders focus on providing grants and doing fundraising to support local organizations and projects. However, some local funders also directly operate their own programs to serve the local community.

This December in the Denver metro area, the Piton Foundation will launch a major revamp of their Community Facts online database of neighborhood-level community statistics. This resource is designed to help Denver-area nonprofits, researchers, community organizers and others better understand and serve communities in need.

Although Piton serves Denver-area communities, it's not a community foundation in the traditional sense. Piton is a private, operating foundation established in the 1970s with a mission to improve the lives of Colorado's low-income children and their families. Originally Piton focused on serving only the city and county of Denver, but since Piton recently completed a new strategic plan, they've expanded their focus to serving communities across the entire seven-county Denver metro area.

Back in 1991, Piton took the then-unusual step of forming its own Data Initiative. This early "open government" effort gained access to local datasets, cleaned them up, and made this data available to organizations serving low-income Denver communities. By opening and democratizing local data, and putting it in the context of local neighborhoods, Piton empowered local organizations to do more for local families in need. Such data can help organizations better target programs or fundraising efforts, or better understand local needs and trends in ways that enhance the services they offer.

In 2011, Piton's Data Initiative expanded, adding projects like the Colorado Data Engine -- an open source online data repository of neighborhood-scale public data in a standardized, geolocated format. The development of this data engine was supported by funding from the Knight Foundation and a close partnership with the Denver Foundation. Adding more uniform structure and context to local open government data makes that data easier to put to use.

The Colorado Data Engine powers more than just Community Facts. Piton partnered with the Denver Council of Regional Governments (DRCOG) and Mile High Connects (a local public-private-nonprofit collective) to create the Denver Regional Equity Atlas -- an interactive tool where people can create maps depicting the Denver region's major origins and destinations in relation to the current and planned transit network, and also produce reports on demographic, economic and other data of the region or particular communities.

Engaging stakeholders in data tool development

Jennifer Newcomer, Piton's director of research, explained that the revamped Community Facts tool is part of a general overhaul of Piton's website. Besides expanding this tool to serve a seven-county region, Newcomer emphasized that Community Facts has been revised with substantial guidance from a volunteer corps of a dozen stakeholders from across the metro area. This allowed Piton to make Community Facts not only more user friendly, but more inclusive of the perspective, culture and needs of the communities surrounding Denver.

"Before we started development, back in June, we held an open house. That's because people in the region weren't necessarily very familiar with Piton, although we're very well known in Denver. We set a strong intention to attract highly engaged participation in the development of a bigger, better Community Facts tool."

At least in intent, if not in the details, Piton's stakeholder engagement in tool development is somewhat similar to the Smart Chicago Collaborative's civic user testing process. According to Newcomer, Piton recruited stakeholders who were representatives of the intended user group: planning and economic development professionals from local governments across the metro area, directors of local community-focused nonprofits, representatives of local higher education institutions, the Colorado Health Institute, DRCOG and more.

"These volunteers didn't necessarily have specific data expertise, but they are definitely potential consumers of this data. They helped us make sure that Community Facts will reflect and serve the needs of users," said Newcomer. "We drew from the sweet spot of existing users and added geographic diversity."

Stakeholder input proved especially valuable in interpreting the neighborhood context of data from the metro counties surrounding Denver.

"I'm sensitive about conversations that tend to be Denver-specific," said Newcomer. "Stakeholder input is helping us to make sure that people in Denver also gain more perspective on surrounding communities, to understand important relationships and interdependencies. Especially since low-income families tend to move across community boundaries more in a region. We hope this context will help people understand issues like regional trend toward the suburbanization of poverty."

Newcomer explained that when processing datasets, Piton goes to considerable effort to tag data with neighborhood-level context, since many local organizations provide services by neighborhood. This can be challenging because local neighborhood boundaries often don't correspond to U.S. Census Tract designations (the geographic designation of most of the local data Piton gathers). Piton was comfortable with using designated Denver neighborhoods, but the stakeholders offered considerable insight into the neighborhood boundaries of surrounding towns and counties

By offering the option to view Community Facts data at either the Census Tract or neighborhood level, the tool can support uses such as:

• A local nonprofit can gather the latest poverty data for specific demographics in specific neighborhoods -- useful to include in grant applications and donor outreach efforts.
• An organization providing English as a Second Language classes could compile a list of neighborhoods showing the percentage of adults who don't speak English for each, in order to target marketing for reduced-price ESL classes.
• Transportation planners or advocates could gather data on local income breakdown, to guide outreach for a survey on public transportation use.

Future development and collaboration

After the initial website and Community Facts relaunch, Piton has set aside funding for five additional phases to roll out and enhance this resource. For instance, later they will add the capability for users to share a direct link to the results of specific search queries -- useful in their own discussions of local issues and trends. Also, Piton will be more actively promoting the pro bono research services it offers.

Piton plans to expand its partnership with the DRCOG to enhance local data offerings through Community Facts and the Colorado Data Engine. Piton's focus on neighborhood-level data will complement DRCOG's regional focus, to enhance decision making at all levels of government in the metro area. And Piton is expanding its outreach to Colorado's civic hacking community.

Gathering, cleaning, and presenting data in interactive tools is a lot of work -- and local funders can support these efforts, whether or not they do this work directly. The payoff can be huge. "Mostly, we want to make sure people don't have to do so much work just to get the data they need to serve their communities. That means more people in need get helped. Data makes all your other investments in a community go further," said Newcomer.