2020 Special Projects Fund Recipients Announced
Good Measure is honored to announce its 2021 Special Projects Fund Recipients and highlight their work to address critical needs in our community—with data! The Good Measure community recognizes the vital role data plays in increasing the ability of nonprofits and social sector partners to respond effectively to critical community challenges created by COVID-19. In many instances, working with data in COVID times has become increasingly difficult, requiring endless flexibility, persistence and creative partnerships. This year’s RFP was designed to support collaboratives and individual organizations with data-related scopes of work connected to COVID-19 response and/or long-term recovery.
The Steering Committee received many high-quality, creative proposals and is truly grateful to all the organizations that applied for Special Projects Funding this year. “We were impressed with thoughtful and impactful proposals to serve our community through data.” noted Virginia Potter of the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation. “We are grateful for the great work you are doing and would love to partner with you in the future.”
Award recipients include:
Latinitas, E4 Youth and Con Mi Madre have a combined 50-year legacy of increasing high school graduation rates, college attainment and the youth of color ratio in Austin’s workforce while working exclusively at underfunded schools. Still, in their day to day work, the three organizations clearly see the repercussions of decades of segregation and disproportionate services to communities of color in Austin now being amplified exponentially by COVID’s impact. Latinitas’ Executive Director Laura Donnelly shares, “It is clearer than ever that Austin’s most vibrant communities of color, though a selling point for city growth, are not faring the same, and their needs and challenges have traditionally not been prioritized.”
The partnership is preparing to launch a Cultural IQ Project designed to capture the three organization’s collective expertise navigating the experience of Black/Indigenous/People of Color families, racial and gender bias, issues like imposter syndrome and the general lack of data and research focused solely on girls and families of color in Austin. According to Donnelly, “Our collective special sauce, our ‘Cultural IQ,’ comes from the delivery of culturally relevant programs that are 100% bilingual and leadership, reflected in near 100% People of Color (POC) boards and executive leadership and a holistic, one size does not fit all approach.” By ultimately creating a Cultural IQ toolkit for best practices in evaluation of communities of color - the collective plans to help other nonprofits provide more culturally responsive services as Austin, and Texas as a whole, continues to grow as a majority POC population.
Texas Appleseed is a public justice center that leverages the skills of volunteer lawyers and other professionals to identify data-driven practical solutions to difficult systemic problems. Appleseed is partnering with Texas Justice Initiative, an organization that collects, analyzes, publishes and provides oversight for criminal justice data throughout Texas to better understand the critical needs of a population that is particularly vulnerable to COVID-19: men and women who are incarcerated. According to Appleseed, transmission of COVID-19 within correctional facilities can be more rapid and widespread both in the facility and the surrounding community, and the impact on individuals who contract the virus can be more severe given the medical vulnerabilities in the confined population. In Central Texas, like the rest of Texas and other states across the problem, this problem is particularly acute given the significant number of people unnecessarily incarcerated in county jails. For example, the Texas Commission on Jail Standards population data shows that 68% of people held in the Travis County jail in June were there pre-trial, meaning they had not been convicted for the charge for which they were being held.
Texas Appleseed and Texas Justice Initiative plan to collect, analyze and publish data on the 5-county MSA that tracks the number of COVID-19 tests and positive cases among the incarcerated population, custodial deaths compared to previous years, an array of demographic data including who has been released/diverted from jail, as well as tracking recent changes in jail policies due to COVID-19 impacting jail release, booking, health and hygiene. They will then leverage this data to help Central Texas leaders better understand how this crisis affects incarcerated individuals, and ultimately plan for the next public health crisis and avoid the harms that people experienced during this pandemic due to mass incarceration and poor jail conditions.
Children’s Optimal Health
Children’s Optimal Health (COH) is a shared leadership initiative and data collaborative in Central Texas that helps communities visualize neighborhood health, identify assets, needs, and trends over time, and unearth opportunities for collaborative change. Internet access, particularly broadband access, has emerged as a critical need in responding to the COVID-19 pandemic across health, mental health, social service, education, and business sectors. This recognition lays bare the inequities to access across the 5 county MSA. Lack of adequate connectivity and devices limits access to health care, education, and economic opportunity.
Community organizations such as Communities in Schools, the Digital Empowerment Community of Austin (DECA), and E3 Alliance are working to find solutions. School districts have been essential in identifying where families are lacking access, and in creative problem solving to address the need. Still, efforts are not well-coordinated, data is scarce and scattered at best, and inequities will persist without focused action. According to Interim Executive Director Susan Millea, “The pandemic is deepening our understanding that internet access is a social determinant of health. To be a just community we must address inequities in access.”
Children’s Optimal Health is partnering with multiple school districts, Communities in Schools Central Texas, and United Way for Greater Austin to document the effort, challenges, and current status of student and family digital access across the 5-county MSA. COH plans to document the experiences of families, service providers and school districts, gathering crucial qualitative information to gain insight into addressing digital equity. COH will also develop publicly available maps incorporating national and school district data to identify hot spots of need which can support local response efforts. Ultimately, this work will enable COH to participate in cross-sector leadership efforts to enhance equity in digital access, with a focus on identifying and aligning effective strategies across partners, sectors and place.