From the ground up: Assessing and building the data capacity of community-based agencies in the Mission Promise Neighborhood collaborative

San Francisco’s Mission Promise Neighborhood is an interagency collaborative funded by the Department of Education that aims to improve the lives of youth and families. The Department requires that the MPN collect and track impact data, which poses a challenge to partner agencies that do not have sufficient data infrastructure in place. To prepare partners to meet data mandates, the MPN’s lead agency, Mission Economic Development Agency, conducted an assessment of partners’ data capacity with the purpose of building a technical assistance plan that would increase their capacity to better understand and monitor their impact. The assessment spanned seven months and included two site visits at each of the twenty-four partner agencies. Partners were rated by their ability to collect and track participant information and program activities; track referral information; and utilize data to report on the impact of their services. Our findings show a range in capacity based on partners’ level of service and level of sophistication around data infrastructure. All twenty-four partner agencies – some serving students, families, or educators in the MPN – collect and track information about their services, but only seventeen out of 24 utilize their data to report on impact. Partners attributed limited staff time or ineffective data management systems as challenges to their data utilization abilities. While our assessments were specific to each partner, our approach stemmed from the need to strengthen their capacity to be able to use data to analyze, learn, and improve their services and to build infrastructure to ensure their sustainability.