Episode #253: Tommy Pearce

Summary

On this week’s episode of the podcast, we dive into the transformative work of Neighborhood Nexus, led by Tommy Pierce. This civic data intermediary is making waves in Georgia by harnessing the power of data to create a lasting social impact. Here are the highlights of our discussion on how Neighborhood Nexus is revolutionizing the nonprofit sector through data-driven strategies:

Topics Discussed

• The Mission of Neighborhood Nexus: We explore the core objectives of the organization, which include addressing inquiries, informing programs, and fostering crucial relationships between data providers and users. The organization’s goal is to enhance the nonprofit sector’s ability to utilize data for effective problem-solving and informed decision-making.
• Data Utilization and Technical Assistance: Discover how Neighborhood Nexus offers support to ensure that data is not just collected but used effectively. This includes advocating for data-informed leadership through comprehensive training and building a community around data expertise.
• Quantitative vs. Qualitative Data: We highlight the organization’s focus on not just numerical data but also qualitative insights. This includes gathering real-time information and community input, recognizing the need to capture the full spectrum of lived experiences.
• Bridging the Gap: Learn about the pivotal role Neighborhood Nexus plays in connecting local and regional governments with nonprofits. The organization helps with strategic planning and addresses the resource challenges exacerbated by the pandemic, emphasizing data and equity.
• Understanding Local Nonprofit Sectors: The episode delves into the challenges of missing data and the importance of marketing insights to serve communities more effectively. We discuss the organization’s collaborative efforts with local journalism for deeper data collection and understanding of community needs.
• Navigating the Political Landscape: The discussion touches upon the political context in Georgia, particularly the urban-rural divide that transcends traditional partisan lines, and how this affects data-driven approaches.
• Capacity Building and Community Engagement: We emphasize the key themes of capacity and community building and the ambition to make data more actionable. This includes website improvements and the development of new tools to engage stakeholders.

Resources

Guest Bio

Mission-driven organizations ought to have access to actionable insights to inform their decisions—our communities depend on it. As executive director of Neighborhood Nexus, Tommy Pearce is working to do just that. With a background in research, strategic planning, and nonprofit management, he has worked with hundreds of Georgia organizations to maximize their impact with data. Tommy has an MSW from University of Pittsburgh and a BA in History from Georgia Southern. He’s a lifelong Gwinnetian where he currently resides with his wife, two daughters, and a stack of books he will never finish. Connect on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/tommypearce. 

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Transcript

00:00 – 00:15
Welcome back to the PolicyViz Podcast.

00:15 – 00:17
I’m your host, Jon Schwabish.

00:17 – 00:21
On this week’s episode of the show, I talk with Tommy Pierce, who is the executive director

00:21 – 00:26
of Neighborhood Nexus, a nonprofit organization based in Atlanta.

00:26 – 00:32
What you are going to learn in this episode is how an organization like Neighborhood Nexus

00:32 – 00:37
works with other nonprofits, provides technical and training assistance to those organizations,

00:37 – 00:46
but more importantly, how they build a community around data to use data to solve problems.

00:46 – 00:48
Where should food banks be located?

00:48 – 00:51
How do we resolve or solve crime?

00:51 – 00:54
How do we increase affordable housing?

00:54 – 00:59
And you can’t do that without data, and you can’t do that without working with different

00:59 – 01:04
groups and understanding the experience of people and communities on the ground.

01:04 – 01:09
So as you’re going to hear, Tommy and his group work with many other groups around the

01:09 – 01:15
city of Atlanta to better understand the lived experiences and the experiences of people

01:15 – 01:20
and communities living in their area, but also how to provide training and technical

01:20 – 01:26
assistance to groups who may not be far along in their data evolution, their exploration

01:26 – 01:32
of data, and how to provide data in engaging ways to those groups, but also to community

01:32 – 01:35
members and also to policy makers and to other stakeholders.

01:35 – 01:37
So it’s a really fascinating conversation.

01:37 – 01:42
I think if you’re working in the local space around local data, this is the episode for

01:42 – 01:43
you.

01:43 – 01:47
So here’s my conversation with Tommy Pierce, executive director of Neighborhood Nexus based

01:47 – 01:48
in Atlanta, Georgia.

01:51 – 01:53
Hey, Tommy, good morning, good to meet you.

01:53 – 01:54
Happy New Year, by the way.

01:54 – 01:59
Yeah. Hey, John, great to meet you and happy New Year to you as well.

01:59 – 02:00
Yeah, this is great.

02:00 – 02:02
I’m glad we’re able to chat.

02:02 – 02:07
We’ve got a nice connection from a reporter I worked with at the APAM conference in

02:07 – 02:09
Atlanta in November.

02:09 – 02:13
And so she and I were doing this sort of data, data communication session.

02:13 – 02:16
And she said, you really need to talk to this guy, Tommy Pierce.

02:16 – 02:18
And he’s doing some really cool work.

02:18 – 02:23
So I thought we would start background introductions about you and where you’re working, and then

02:23 – 02:28
we can talk about Neighborhood Nexus and we can talk about local data and all the good

02:28 – 02:30
things you guys are doing down there.

02:30 – 02:31
Cool.

02:31 – 02:32
Sounds great.

02:32 – 02:33
I’m Tommy Pierce.

02:33 – 02:36
I am the executive director of Neighborhood Nexus.

02:36 – 02:42
We are, I guess, what you would call a civic data intermediary, which is like really kind

02:42 – 02:48
of sexy type of organization that people love to support.

02:48 – 02:54
There’s about 30 to 40 cities across the country that have something like us all through the

02:54 – 02:58
National Neighborhood Indicators Partnership, which is kind of based out of the Urban Institute.

02:58 – 03:03
So if anyone is interested in anything I say, you should go to their website and an IP and

03:03 – 03:06
see if there’s an organization in your city you can support.

03:06 – 03:13
But what a civic data intermediary really does is that we support social impact organizations,

03:13 – 03:18
mostly nonprofits, a lot of public agencies, local governments, just to think about data.

03:18 – 03:25
We help them connect to data that maybe they help answer a question or inform a strategic

03:25 – 03:27
program or initiative.

03:27 – 03:31
We’ve actually worked with a lot of philanthropy through the pandemic to make sure that we’re

03:31 – 03:35
distributing funds more equitably.

03:35 – 03:41
And so we do kind of all things from analysis to just building relationships between data

03:41 – 03:44
sources and data users.

03:44 – 03:47
We’re really focused on capacity building of the nonprofit sector, just to make sure

03:47 – 03:52
that social workers like myself, I’m a social worker, that’s my background, are comfortable

03:52 – 03:57
and confident with data and how to use it because it doesn’t have to be like this intimidating

03:57 – 03:58
thing or anything.

03:58 – 04:05
Really just our mission is to grow a culture of data informed decision making among Georgia’s

04:05 – 04:08
social impact leaders.

04:08 – 04:14
So what does that sort of thing look like in terms of training and education for folks?

04:14 – 04:22
And I think maybe interesting for folks who are listening is what are the data capabilities

04:22 – 04:27
of those nonprofits coming in when they work with you, when they get started?

04:27 – 04:28
Yeah.

04:28 – 04:32
I mean, honestly, it’s all over the place where I think of ourselves as issue agnostic.

04:32 – 04:39
So not a housing expert, I’m not a human services delivery expert, although I’ve worked

04:39 – 04:45
in shelters and done street outreach and done refugee resettlement just in my past life.

04:45 – 04:52
But organizations come from all over, different skill sets, different size teams.

04:52 – 04:56
They might have the technical abilities or know what they want, but just don’t have the

04:56 – 04:57
time or resources.

04:57 – 05:01
And so they can sort of outsource some of it to us.

05:01 – 05:04
I think about our work kind of in two main domains.

05:04 – 05:08
One is that training and capacity building, while the other is more doing the work or

05:08 – 05:10
making connections.

05:10 – 05:13
So making sure the data exists and is connected to people.

05:13 – 05:18
On that training side, I think for the first time about six months ago, we really started

05:18 – 05:23
putting out our own series of webinars and trainings around kind of what are kind of

05:23 – 05:29
our four main steps that we do for everything, which is helping people ask the right questions,

05:29 – 05:33
use the best data, tell compelling stories and make informed decisions or kind of data

05:33 – 05:34
to action.

05:34 – 05:39
So we can usually break anything we do into those four areas.

05:39 – 05:44
I think this interesting and one of our big kind of takeaways from 2023 is that when we

05:44 – 05:50
have trainings, the people that show up are maybe the one person at their nonprofit that

05:50 – 05:53
is thinking about data and can’t find someone else to talk to.

05:53 – 05:56
And so they just want to talk to people, it’s like emotional support, but they’re also bouncing

05:57 – 05:59
ideas off before they show their boss or board.

05:59 – 06:03
And so we’re almost shifting a little bit or maybe adding to our training to do more

06:03 – 06:04
intentional community building.

06:04 – 06:09
So we’re going to do some convening starting in February, trying to make them fun and also

06:09 – 06:14
solves like this larger problem we think a lot about, which is nonprofits don’t always

06:14 – 06:16
know what data and tech can get them.

06:16 – 06:22
They don’t know necessarily how to procure those skills or people or to know what success

06:22 – 06:24
looks like or how to measure it.

06:24 – 06:26
Do we get what we paid for?

06:26 – 06:30
And on the other end, you get these kind of data and tech professionals who want to do

06:30 – 06:35
data for good, but don’t necessarily understand the complex social issues that nonprofits

06:35 – 06:39
are addressing or state agencies or local governments are addressing and don’t have

06:39 – 06:43
that experience. And so you end up with sometimes things like hackathons that are on a

06:43 – 06:47
surface level. If we can get those people in the same spaces and just build relationships,

06:47 – 06:53
maybe we can find some data savvy board members for nonprofits or find some capstone

06:53 – 06:58
project for students or make some connections and help everyone kind of build capacity on

06:58 – 06:59
both sides of that.

06:59 – 07:03
Right. So and I’ve done a lot of work with NNIP in the past, because as you mentioned,

07:03 – 07:04
it’s housed at Urban.

07:04 – 07:10
And so the NNIP partners like you all are sort of like my avatar for who I work with.

07:10 – 07:12
It’s like small nonprofits, right?

07:12 – 07:14
They’ve got six, maybe 10 people.

07:14 – 07:17
And there’s a person who’s like thrust into the data role.

07:18 – 07:24
So when it comes to the data that these different nonprofits are collecting or using, I

07:24 – 07:28
should say, like, how are they thinking about collecting it and housing it?

07:28 – 07:33
I’ve noticed that’s an issue is data privacy and security is not always like forefronts

07:33 – 07:35
like, oh, it’s on my computer, so therefore it’s secure.

07:35 – 07:41
But, you know, so how are they thinking about in your experience or maybe just in the

07:41 – 07:45
Georgia area or specific region, how are they thinking about the data collection and

07:45 – 07:46
housing side of things?

07:47 – 07:52
Yeah, so we we work mostly with community level data, which is typically going to be

07:52 – 07:54
from public data sources.

07:54 – 07:58
So we honestly don’t, I guess, have to think about data privacy too much.

07:58 – 08:05
We do often compare that community level data to maybe some program data just to see,

08:05 – 08:07
like, are you serving people you’re serving?

08:07 – 08:10
Are they reflective of the community that you’re trying to serve or the target audience

08:10 – 08:11
that you’re trying to serve?

08:12 – 08:14
But we won’t necessarily be publishing.

08:16 – 08:21
Publishing the individual level data or anything like that, right, I think, you know, I

08:21 – 08:26
think the kind of the typical case, there’s a there’s a large organization in Atlanta

08:26 – 08:30
that came to us and they were like, hey, we’re doing strategic planning, what data can

08:30 – 08:36
you provide? And we literally have thousands of indicators at dozens of geographies.

08:36 – 08:41
And we ended up helping shape the questions they’re trying to answer.

08:41 – 08:46
And there’s someone that had several campuses or sites across metro region, about 30

08:46 – 08:51
county region, and help them figure out, like, maybe what they want to know is what

08:51 – 08:56
their programmatic priorities should be in each of these diverse neighborhoods so that

08:56 – 09:00
then they can develop things like a resourcing strategy and infrastructure strategy to

09:00 – 09:05
support those different types of programs, whether it’s more sports fields or more

09:05 – 09:07
early child care, things like that.

09:08 – 09:12
So I think a lot of people come to us maybe with even a simple data request.

09:13 – 09:17
And instead of emailing back a spreadsheet, we like we’ll call them and say, what are

09:17 – 09:19
you trying to do? And it usually is something different.

09:19 – 09:23
Yeah. And so, yeah, we end up spending a lot of time doing that kind of thing, but it’s

09:23 – 09:25
usually more impactful.

09:25 – 09:29
So, I mean, we really get things from all over the place from, you know, a one person,

09:29 – 09:32
all volunteer organization will reach out just to say like, hey, where should we open up

09:32 – 09:36
this clothing closet to Unite Away?

09:36 – 09:40
We work with a whole lot on their data team, their marketing communications team.

09:40 – 09:44
They gave me this, like, cool piece of art last year for all the work we’ve done with

09:44 – 09:47
them. And so, I mean, the scale is really all over the place.

09:49 – 09:52
Even the ideas and the types of projects are all over the place.

09:52 – 09:56
We helped write a big 65 page report about black wealth building late last year.

09:57 – 10:02
Yeah, yeah. So one of the phrases that I keyed in on when I was poking around the

10:02 – 10:04
website was the phrase community voice.

10:05 – 10:10
And you’ve already talked a little bit about how that works in terms of the groups that

10:10 – 10:14
you work with. You know, I think the example of like, where do we locate this

10:14 – 10:19
particular food bank or clothing location?

10:19 – 10:21
I think that’s like a really good example.

10:21 – 10:26
But in terms of the actual voice, in terms of the qualitative piece, like, I guess

10:26 – 10:27
there’s kind of a two part question here.

10:27 – 10:32
When these nonprofits come to you and they’re talking about data, are they 99 percent

10:32 – 10:34
thinking about quantitative data?

10:34 – 10:39
And then how are you all sort of bringing in the qualitative piece, either for their

10:39 – 10:43
data needs or just, as you mentioned, sort of the community building piece?

10:43 – 10:48
Yeah, I think we’re actually, we’re in experiment phase to figure out what that

10:48 – 10:53
really looks like. I mean, for I think this will be our 15th year in existence.

10:53 – 10:58
We’ve really just our go to has been we know what data source that is.

10:58 – 11:01
Maybe we’ll combine a few things into an index and then we’ll feed that back to you.

11:01 – 11:07
We always say here’s the quantitative data from the census or from Department of

11:07 – 11:10
Public Health or DOE or our governor’s office in achievement.

11:11 – 11:14
A lot because a lot of our state agencies in Georgia are actually really amazing at

11:14 – 11:16
capturing and sharing out data.

11:17 – 11:20
And then we say, like, but go talk to people, go talk to your program participants.

11:21 – 11:24
We’ve always put that kind of back on them because we’ve been the quantitative

11:24 – 11:32
folks. You know, during the pandemic, when we’re looking at federal, state, even

11:32 – 11:37
local government data to kind of work on projects or even tell stories, I think our

11:37 – 11:41
role in 2020 was just to help people make sense of what was happening or make sense

11:41 – 11:44
of what might be happening because we didn’t really know either.

11:45 – 11:50
And everyone wanted to know things like, well, what is what is the mental health

11:50 – 11:53
demand look like in in our county last week?

11:53 – 11:56
And I’m like, we we don’t we don’t know what it looked like last year.

11:56 – 11:57
Like we don’t that doesn’t exist.

11:58 – 12:03
Yeah. And we’ve been thinking a lot now for a couple of years about, well, how do we

12:03 – 12:05
get something closer to real time data?

12:05 – 12:08
Look at the logistics kind of sector.

12:08 – 12:13
And they’re really good at, you know, grabbing things from social media, just

12:13 – 12:18
understanding what what real time things might cause delays or or surface trends and

12:18 – 12:21
signals. And so what does real time data look like?

12:21 – 12:26
How do you how do you reflect lived experience or community voice and turn that into

12:26 – 12:32
actionable data? And so we’ve actually we’re really reconfigured our entire

12:32 – 12:37
organization around this idea that, you know, we think some of the best data comes out

12:37 – 12:40
of the Pew Research Center, but it’s usually not local.

12:40 – 12:45
Right. So could we do a panel survey that looks at maybe the city of Atlanta or just

12:45 – 12:46
five core counties?

12:47 – 12:52
And instead of building out an index to say, if you need a cup of sugar, do you feel

12:52 – 12:54
comfortable asking your neighbor?

12:54 – 12:58
Like, what if we just asked a few thousand people if they felt comfortable asking your

12:58 – 12:59
neighbor for a cup of sugar?

12:59 – 13:02
And we don’t have to build a model or make an index.

13:02 – 13:04
We can just have asked them directly.

13:04 – 13:10
Yeah. You know, the other kind of similar things that we’ll be asking are, you know,

13:10 – 13:11
we know what crime data looks like.

13:11 – 13:15
We know that violent crimes going down, even though fatalities are going a little bit up

13:15 – 13:18
because I assume because the weapon of choice has become a gun.

13:19 – 13:25
Right. But and even when we polled Atlanta Regional Commission here in Atlanta, polled the

13:25 – 13:27
region and crime was the number one issue.

13:28 – 13:30
That’s the perspective or perception.

13:31 – 13:35
We don’t really know if people feel safe on their street at night.

13:35 – 13:38
We could just ask them that question versus trying to figure it out.

13:39 – 13:44
We did a pilot in 2022 where we asked people, what’s the number one issue in the region?

13:45 – 13:47
They said crime. We asked what the number one issue in their household is.

13:48 – 13:49
It was not crime. Crime was pretty low.

13:49 – 13:51
Actually, people feel kind of safe in their own home.

13:53 – 13:57
The other is, you know, we know all kinds of stuff about housing trends and we know what

13:57 – 13:59
the housing burden data, all of this stuff.

13:59 – 14:04
But, you know, no one really is asking how pressured do you feel to move and do you feel

14:04 – 14:08
like you need to move or have you recently moved?

14:08 – 14:12
What are the conditions that you’d be looking for in a new place?

14:13 – 14:17
If your rent and property taxes weren’t going up, what might you spend that money on?

14:17 – 14:22
Which people, they always say paying down debt and savings, but who knows?

14:23 – 14:27
So we’ve been experimenting and we’ve designed this new program in partnership with

14:27 – 14:32
Atlanta Civic Circle, which is a local nonprofit media group, and it’s called Atlanta

14:32 – 14:36
POV. So we really want to build a large 10,000 person panel.

14:37 – 14:43
We want to feed them a handful of questions every month to understand their priorities,

14:43 – 14:47
opinions and values, which is kind of the second meeting of POV, in addition to point of

14:47 – 14:49
view, because that’s how clever we are.

14:51 – 14:54
And and so we’ve got Atlanta POV.org.

14:54 – 14:56
We’re about to kind of soft launch some of this stuff next week.

14:56 – 15:02
But we just want to just ask people instead of trying to build all these complex models.

15:02 – 15:05
Yeah. You know, it’s it feels kind of simple.

15:05 – 15:07
It’s the harder work that I can’t really do.

15:07 – 15:09
So we’re going to lean into that.

15:09 – 15:10
Right. Right.

15:11 – 15:12
But yeah, that’s where we are today.

15:12 – 15:18
And through all these groups that you have, you know, the other various groups around or

15:18 – 15:22
in Atlanta, around Georgia and the university sector.

15:22 – 15:27
And, you know, there’s a huge like certainly with the CDC and the health research sector

15:27 – 15:34
down there. Have you found that there’s a pretty large and sophisticated kind of data

15:34 – 15:36
culture?

15:36 – 15:40
What I mean is you’ve talked about sort of the smaller groups that are sort of learning.

15:40 – 15:42
But above that, I mean, above in a hierarchical way.

15:42 – 15:47
But there’s a there’s a larger there’s another group that more sophisticated in.

15:47 – 15:51
And you found that they I guess I’m asking, do you find yourself as kind of the go between

15:51 – 15:58
in some way between these kind of different different organizations and different places in

15:58 – 15:59
their data evolution?

15:59 – 16:04
Yeah, I think if there are go betweens, because it honestly feels kind of fragmented, I’m not

16:04 – 16:10
sure. Yeah, a small organization, you know, actually, you might the way that I that I see that

16:10 – 16:15
work is if an organization wants some program evaluation work done, they’re probably

16:15 – 16:19
grabbing someone that works at CDC to work on the side as like pro bono or there’s a side

16:19 – 16:21
consulting. Right.

16:21 – 16:24
And so it’s not necessarily like a formal organization to organization relationship.

16:25 – 16:30
Working on a project right now at the CDC Foundation with four other groups.

16:31 – 16:34
So that’s been kind of really exciting to kind of build those relationships.

16:35 – 16:41
I think if there is a go between for some of these larger local regional state governments

16:41 – 16:48
and kind of on the ground, local and regional nonprofits, it would be us, Neighborhood Nexus

16:48 – 16:52
and also the Atlanta Regional Commission, especially the research department, where we

16:52 – 16:54
kind of spun out of last year.

16:55 – 16:58
But we work closely together and I think we tend to be the go to.

16:59 – 17:03
We’re in so many different boardrooms that we do have this advantage of seeing what

17:03 – 17:07
questions all kinds of people are asking, because sometimes we’re just asked just to sit

17:07 – 17:12
in. And if we hear something, we can either like real time fact checking or go run and find

17:12 – 17:14
the data that we’re looking for or suggest things.

17:14 – 17:19
So, yeah, so we’re kind of in a unique position as a capacity building organization to

17:19 – 17:21
really make those connections.

17:21 – 17:26
I think that’s becoming truer and truer.

17:27 – 17:29
Our universities, you know.

17:29 – 17:33
Like these Gen Z students that are studying data science or they’re, or they’re studying

17:33 – 17:37
business and they taught themselves data science, like they’re interested in working in our sector

17:37 – 17:43
and, and, and really like, you can’t, they’re not going to intern for you if you don’t talk

17:43 – 17:47
about equity and the environment and climate change and, and all these issues. And so actually

17:47 – 17:52
I’ve got a pretty good list of students that have come to us and I’m not sure there’s enough

17:52 – 17:56
nonprofits with research teams. So it’s like, how do we, how do we make these connections? And

17:56 – 18:01
that’s maybe deeper than, you know, just these weekend projects. Cause I just, I’m not convinced

18:01 – 18:05
that does much other than skill building, team bonding, that kind of stuff. And how do we do

18:05 – 18:11
some authentic, solve some problems. Right. Is part of the challenge there, just the, the lack

18:11 – 18:17
of, as you mentioned earlier, the lack of really good detailed local data to get people to get

18:17 – 18:24
really deep into the weeds. I think that’s some of it. I think nonprofits just aren’t resourced

18:24 – 18:31
to do a lot of thinking. They’re, they’re resourced often, most often based on the number of

18:31 – 18:37
people that can serve, you know, and, and even finding money to do strategic planning can be

18:37 – 18:43
hard or to invest in marketing and, and messaging can be hard data. You know, people think about

18:43 – 18:48
data as data, not what data is getting them. Right. And so even when I’m pitching what we do

18:48 – 18:52
to foundations, it’s, it’s kind of tough, you know, it’s like, you know, here’s, here’s the

18:52 – 18:58
ultimate impact. It’s not, we’re not funding data. We’re funding what data unlocks and how

18:58 – 19:04
we deepen our impact. I actually think the pandemic helped, you know, when, when data and

19:04 – 19:09
equity were the two top kind of things for a long time and maybe still are, we were kind of already

19:09 – 19:14
at that intersection locally. And so I think, I think that kind of in some ways helped position

19:14 – 19:22
us to just be there at a lot of the decision-making tables. Yeah. I wanted to ask about missing data.

19:22 – 19:27
If you mentioned a few, this idea of doing sort of a broader launch, maybe even longer panel,

19:28 – 19:36
survey or study in your mind, what are the big missing data challenges that, that you all face,

19:36 – 19:43
or maybe more specifically about sort of local nonprofit sector faces? Yeah. To me, like data is,

19:43 – 19:49
is a piece of it, but it’s really about marketing, I think, and not marketing, like advertising,

19:49 – 19:54
marketing about like understanding that people were trying to serve and building solutions that

19:54 – 20:01
solve their problems as they see it, as they identify with them. I do think if we’re able to

20:01 – 20:06
better understand lived experience, better understand what the community is thinking about,

20:06 – 20:11
what the priorities are at, at local neighborhood levels, you know, like if the mayor wants to

20:11 – 20:15
improve safety, I bet that looks like different things in different neighborhoods. I mean, we,

20:15 – 20:21
we had neighborhoods in Atlanta that probably want more policing. They want less policing. We’ve

20:21 – 20:26
had, we had a neighborhood last year that tried to leave the city altogether. And so, you know,

20:26 – 20:31
we need, we need to figure out how to build solutions that, that local residents identify with.

20:33 – 20:36
I mentioned that we’re working with Atlanta Civic Circle, a local journalism group,

20:37 – 20:43
you know, when we collect data, like surveys are, you know, more real time, we can ask whatever

20:43 – 20:47
questions we want. Honestly, I don’t even want to ask the questions I want, you know, the YMCA to

20:47 – 20:51
tell me what they’re trying to answer. I want Atlanta Wealth Building Initiative to tell me

20:51 – 20:55
what they’re trying to answer. It’s not me, the researcher, I’m just trying to build a machine,

20:55 – 20:59
but Atlanta Civic Circle is coming in and they’re doing interviews, focus groups. We want to know

20:59 – 21:05
what’s driving those answers, right? Like why, why did they answer and how do they feel about it?

21:05 – 21:10
Because I think that’s where we’re going to start to like really understand what the solution looks

21:10 – 21:14
like, or even what the messaging looks like. Maybe we’re trying to, you know, maybe we’re

21:14 – 21:19
trying to expand transportation in a couple of our suburban counties. We always talk about rail,

21:19 – 21:24
and I’m pretty sure that doesn’t work. And it’s not going to work, even if some people want that.

21:24 – 21:28
And so like really talking to people, if it’s surveying them, like how do we follow up and

21:28 – 21:32
understand what’s, what’s driving their priorities, or even like, I think it’s more of a values

21:32 – 21:40
conversation. Because I bet they’d be all about economic development and, and increasing, you

21:40 – 21:45
know, workforce participation, right? And so how do we, how do we use data to really understand

21:45 – 21:52
what’s going on and formulate solutions out of that? What in Georgia, and I think many states

21:52 – 21:58
are like this now, what is the, I was going to use the word tension, but I will sort of

21:58 – 22:03
color it that way. What’s the relationship like between the Atlanta sort of metro area,

22:03 – 22:07
and you already mentioned a few sort of surrounding suburbs, but the, but the broader,

22:07 – 22:16
the broader state? Yeah, you know, I was having a conversation just a few weeks ago at an event,

22:16 – 22:21
and a couple of legislators were there. And so like, I’ll use their description, because I’m

22:21 – 22:25
probably in my own bubble. But, you know, when they’re, when they’re doing legislation down at

22:25 – 22:32
the state capitol, it’s not, you know, what I, my understanding is not as much a kind of Democrat,

22:32 – 22:36
Republican political divide. It is more rural, urban, and how do you find, you know, because

22:36 – 22:41
it’s kind of, you know, in some ways like Georgia is the state of Georgia and the state of Atlanta,

22:41 – 22:45
and they’re, you know, and then you can define like, you know, we’ve got our metropolitan

22:45 – 22:50
statistical area, and we’ve got, you know, every funder, there’s all kinds of combinations of what

22:50 – 22:57
metro Atlanta is. I kind of think about it as the five core counties, but you’ll see 11, 13, 23, 28,

22:57 – 23:04
like it really depends. Yeah. I think it also depends on like what, what the issue is. So

23:04 – 23:09
the solutions, again, are going to look different, like affordable housing solutions

23:09 – 23:14
might be hardest in the suburbs, where the population is growing fastest, but people don’t

23:14 – 23:19
want that density. Whereas in rural, a lot of people have left. So maybe there’s a lot more

23:19 – 23:25
vacant homes that can be converted into something. We think about internet access, I think everyone

23:25 – 23:29
agrees that we should have internet access across the state, even though we don’t actually have that

23:29 – 23:35
parts of Metro Atlanta don’t have good internet access, might have physical infrastructure,

23:35 – 23:40
but can’t pay for a data plan, things like that. So I think it’s issue to issue, it feels like

23:40 – 23:47
more rural versus urban, a lot of times, or even like urban, suburban, and rural. Yeah,

23:47 – 23:52
probably even more. Yeah, I mean, I think that’s the case in a lot of states. I mean, I grew up in

23:53 – 23:58
Western New York, and certainly the difference between, you know, the New York City area and

23:58 – 24:02
upstate New York, I mean, they’re just night and day. You know, I live in Virginia now,

24:02 – 24:08
like Northern Virginia, where I am now versus Central and Southern, especially Southwestern

24:08 – 24:10
Virginia. I mean, they’re just, you know, they’re just totally different areas.

24:10 – 24:15
Yeah, I’m a lifelong Gwinnettian, which is Gwinnett County, just outside of Atlanta.

24:16 – 24:21
When I growing up, it was kind of like the home of white flight. Now it’s the most diverse county in

24:21 – 24:27
the Southeast. And so, you know, I left for college and came back and it’s like, it’s a

24:27 – 24:31
very different place. And I love it now. It’s fantastic for our daughters. I’m not sure I would

24:31 – 24:35
have wanted to raise my kids in 90s Gwinnett. I mean, the schools are great, but you know,

24:35 – 24:41
just didn’t have that kind of diversity or, you know, whatever. Yeah, yeah. So with our last few

24:41 – 24:47
minutes, you’ve mentioned a few things already sort of planning out, ready to go, but what,

24:47 – 24:53
since we’re at the beginning of 2024, like, what are your plans for the next year? Or maybe even

24:53 – 24:57
five years, if you’ve got like that longer, I mean, that longer panel study sounds amazing,

24:57 – 25:00
which they’re always hard to do, but like, that’s clearly a long way, but like, for the next, you

25:00 – 25:04
know, for the next 12 months or so, what, what do you all have on the docket? Yeah, I mean, the

25:04 – 25:08
Atlanta POV panel is a big one. We’re, you know, there’s a, there’s a, there’s one that’s gotten

25:08 – 25:12
off the ground recently at Rice University in Houston, that’s going really well. So we’re

25:12 – 25:18
learning from them. That’s, that’s going to be a big piece of this, but I really think that capacity

25:18 – 25:24
building and even framing capacity building as community building among just nonprofit and data

25:24 – 25:31
practitioners is going to be huge. You know, my, my, my weird hobby I developed through the

25:31 – 25:36
pandemic was reading marketing books. I don’t know why, like my, my teenage self would like

25:36 – 25:43
be appalled, but it does feel like if you can create this small group of zealots, which I

25:43 – 25:47
actually think we have, I just think they don’t know each other. Yeah, they could probably do a

25:47 – 25:51
lot of the, you know, and maybe it’s a Slack group or maybe it’s just these meetups and maybe a

25:51 – 25:56
volunteer even runs it. So we don’t have to do it. We have a small team. You know, I just think

25:56 – 26:03
building this community would go a long way for both increasing the quality of data usage in our

26:03 – 26:08
sector, because I hope to bring in both even not nonprofit people, just the data for good folks,

26:09 – 26:15
be in the conversation. Maybe they do some data requests for each other, showcase ideas to each

26:15 – 26:20
other, and we don’t have to kind of shoulder that whole burden. And I think we can share that.

26:22 – 26:27
You know, one of the big things, as far as you mentioned our website, our website isn’t like

26:27 – 26:32
that awesome. It’s, it’s dated. We really want it to reflect what we’re trying to do now. So we’re

26:33 – 26:38
working on strategic planning in the next couple months for the next five years, but we’re going

26:38 – 26:43
to have to do a whole web overhaul. I think we really need to make data friendlier. And this

26:43 – 26:49
is like philosophical in some ways, but like people talk a lot about democratizing data and

26:49 – 26:53
making data accessible. And I think that’s actually, I think we did that like a while ago.

26:53 – 26:58
I think that’s been done, but people still don’t use our tools and that’s because they’re

26:58 – 27:02
complicated. Like I’d actually don’t think people just want data to be accessible. They need it to

27:02 – 27:07
be actionable. And then even beyond that. Right. So I think about like, how do we share, how do we

27:07 – 27:11
share like just the insights, but even beyond that, I think data has to be really engaging.

27:11 – 27:20
And so we’re thinking about new tools or even new ways of just thinking about our web presence and

27:20 – 27:26
kind of social media personalities that is engaging just because we want people to want to

27:26 – 27:30
use it. Like I, my assumption now is that no one actually wants to be on our website, their boss

27:30 – 27:35
or their board said, go find some data. And they ended up at neighborhoodnexus.org because they’re

27:35 – 27:39
an admin and they’re now they’re trying to navigate or build a map or use one of our dashboards just

27:39 – 27:46
to export, find one data point for a grant proposal. What if we could build a GPT on top of

27:46 – 27:51
our databases that already exist? And it was just, you just ask it like, what’s the population of

27:51 – 27:56
Atlanta in 2017? What is it now? And it just tells you, right? Like what if you didn’t have to build

27:56 – 28:02
a map and use all these things, even though they’re all in one place, it’s still a lot of friction

28:02 – 28:07
there, I guess. So, I mean, those are the things we’re thinking about. How do we go beyond data

28:07 – 28:13
accessibility to making it actionable and engaging? How do we build community as a way

28:13 – 28:19
to facilitate capacity building for organizations? And then how do we really capture community voice

28:19 – 28:28
as actionable data? Yeah. Well, that’s just a few small things. Oh yeah. We’ve got two full-time,

28:28 – 28:34
like we’ve got two whole full-time people, three whole part-time people. So we’re doing great.

28:34 – 28:39
Yeah. But it’s, but yeah, I mean, you’ve got, like you said, you’ve got all these resources in

28:39 – 28:46
terms of firms and students and partners. We have so many friends, like, which is like,

28:46 – 28:50
that’s like the best thing for us, you know, whether they’re funders or just partner agencies

28:50 – 28:54
or students or people that, you know, from corporate world that want to volunteer. We’ve

28:54 – 28:58
got a lot of friends. We just need to figure out how to use them. I will be on the fundraising

28:58 – 29:02
trail this year, probably more than we ever have in the past, in our past 15 years. So,

29:03 – 29:06
just to get some of this stuff off the ground. We just built this tool a couple of weeks ago,

29:08 – 29:12
leading up to the break called the data wall. And it was like, instead of trying to like become a

29:12 – 29:17
GIS expert so that you can get this stuff out of our website, you know, can we just have a wall

29:17 – 29:22
of like our favorite 20 charts and you can scroll over and it’s interactive and it’s like, you don’t

29:22 – 29:25
have to do too much. You just have to hover over things and it tells you what the data is. And so

29:25 – 29:31
we’ll probably, we’ve got like a, it’s not linked to our website yet, but it was in our last

29:31 – 29:37
newsletter, which people should subscribe to. And we’re just trying new things out. If everyone

29:37 – 29:41
ignores it, then we’ll just kill it and move on to something else. But it’s kind of the mindset

29:41 – 29:46
we’ve got to be in. Yeah, that’s our, I said that was gonna be the last question, but your last

29:46 – 29:51
point is really interesting, right? That like a lot of this is just trying things out, right? Like

29:53 – 29:57
my wife, a couple of years ago started her own practice after working in the hospital sector

29:57 – 30:03
for a long time. And, you know, she’s working on Instagram and her Instagram followers and what

30:03 – 30:07
she shares is just growing, but she’s just kind of just testing and playing and seeing what works.

30:07 – 30:13
I mean, you know, I always like, just try something on your website, right? Like my site, her site,

30:13 – 30:17
like it’s not target.com. Like if it doesn’t work, you just pull it down and try something else.

30:17 – 30:23
And so I will end with this question because I don’t want to keep you all day, but do you find

30:23 – 30:30
that this concept of experimentation is something that people are reluctant to do because they feel

30:30 – 30:34
like, oh, if we did not something wrong, because it’s not wrong. It’s just, you know, it just

30:34 – 30:39
doesn’t work. Do you find that people don’t want to sort of experiment, particularly with data,

30:39 – 30:45
like we’ll stay in the data sphere. Are they reluctant to just experiment and try, or is that

30:45 – 30:52
just a cultural thing that they just need to sort of realize that they can do? So I don’t think that

30:53 – 30:57
you know, I, like I mentioned, I’m a social worker. I’ve got an MSW, but my whole career

30:57 – 31:04
has been nonprofits. I don’t think there’s a lack of ideas or people wanting to experiment.

31:05 – 31:12
I think nonprofits have such limited resources that the risk factor has increases. So anytime

31:12 – 31:16
you like, we’re trying new things, but we’re bootstrapping all of those ideas. Like we just

31:16 – 31:22
bought software to run a panel on our own before we have funders, because especially with data,

31:22 – 31:26
like it’s so like abstract what we’re trying to do. And we have to have something to demonstrate

31:26 – 31:31
or, you know, show something like a demonstration project and show how impactful it can be.

31:32 – 31:35
And if it doesn’t work, like maybe we’ll just never talk about it again and pretend that never

31:35 – 31:41
happened. But like, it’s a financial risk because, you know, we don’t have usually these, this like,

31:41 – 31:45
you know, we’ve got our reserve, but we don’t have an additional internal line of credit for

31:45 – 31:50
strategy, like innovation in our sector. Like we’re not built that way. We’re not funded that

31:50 – 31:55
way. Usually if you have too much money on hand, it’s just as bad as not having enough, right. But

31:55 – 32:03
as far as optics for funders. And so, you know, funders being willing to invest in new ideas,

32:03 – 32:07
especially during the pandemic, I think that opened up a little bit, you know, a lot of

32:07 – 32:12
communities knew what they needed and it didn’t have to be evidence-based or best practice

32:12 – 32:16
necessarily. It didn’t have the journal article written about it for someone to say like, hey,

32:16 – 32:23
my roof is gone. Like, you know, like we know what the solution for that is. And so I think it’s not

32:23 – 32:31
like a lack of want to experiment. It’s just the lack of resourcing to do so confidently. And I

32:31 – 32:36
think the way that I’ve tried to get around some of that is by building in public. So the more that

32:36 – 32:41
I can say what I’m building and not do it in secret, because then it’s like, I need as much

32:41 – 32:46
feedback as possible early on, you know? And so if I talked to 20 people and say, hey, we’re

32:46 – 32:50
thinking about this, you know, when I talk to people and say, what should Neighborhood Nexus

32:50 – 32:55
work on next? They’re like, we don’t understand what you do at all. You tell us, because it’s

32:55 – 32:58
like, we’re the data people. We’re the ones supposed to come up with that. If I can come up

32:58 – 33:03
with a pilot or even a PowerPoint, like my go-to is PowerPoint template of what a tool might look

33:03 – 33:09
like, show it to someone and say, good or bad, like thumbs up, thumbs down. And like, if we can

33:09 – 33:13
just do simple things like that and keep progressing, then like we can put more money

33:13 – 33:19
into it, but being more confident that it’s going to work. But I think the fear comes more in

33:20 – 33:25
being open about what you’re experimenting with. And so if you can build in public,

33:25 – 33:29
I’ve been using our newsletter just to put out ideas and sometimes get emails that are like,

33:29 – 33:33
hey, that’s really cool. Like, tell me more. And I’m like, there isn’t more. That was all I had.

33:34 – 33:37
That was it. Yeah. And then sometimes we get no responses. I’m like, maybe that didn’t hit

33:37 – 33:41
the same, but yeah, I don’t know. That’s how I think about that mostly.

33:42 – 33:49
Yeah. Yeah. No, that’s great. So, okay. So how can folks connect with you all if they

33:49 – 33:54
are interested in just learning on how you’re trying things out or want to be involved? Like

33:54 – 34:01
where should folks find you? Yeah. Our website is www.neighborhoodnexus.org.

34:01 – 34:08
If you’re listening to this after say June, 2024, you should go there. If you’re listening to this

34:08 – 34:12
before then, you know, you might, it’s not great. Like maybe check out our LinkedIn. So just look

34:12 – 34:21
at Neighborhood Nexus on LinkedIn. We have a newsletter called Up to Data. So stay up to data

34:21 – 34:25
by subscribing to our newsletter. You can find it at the footer of our website. And then if you’re

34:25 – 34:31
interested in our panel, like if you live in Metro Atlanta, go to atlantapob.org and join it and

34:31 – 34:37
share it with your friends because we want to ask you some questions. Terrific. That’s great. And I

34:37 – 34:41
will put links to all this for folks who want to help out, learn more. They can just click and

34:42 – 34:46
connect with you all. Great. Tommy, thanks so much for coming on the show. This is great. I learned

34:46 – 34:51
a lot about what you’re doing. I’m very excited to see what comes of it in the next year or so.

34:51 – 34:52
Yeah, I appreciate it. Thanks so much.

34:54 – 34:57
Thanks everyone for tuning into this week’s episode of the show.

34:58 – 35:03
And I hope you will take a look at NeighborhoodNexus.org, sign up for their newsletter,

35:03 – 35:08
connect with them on LinkedIn. And maybe you can learn a little bit about how you could build some

35:08 – 35:14
more capacity and help the data community in your area to solve problems and offer solutions.

35:15 – 35:19
So until next time, this has been the PolicyViz Podcast. Thanks so much for listening.

35:20 – 35:25
A number of people helped bring you the PolicyViz Podcast. Music is provided by the NRIs,

35:25 – 35:29
audio editing is provided by Ken Skaggs, design and promotion is created with assistance from

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35:34 – 35:38
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