Those Who Hold the Data Shape the Future
Community organizations focused on ownership and resident-led initiatives are finding new ways to use data to build agency, inform decision-making, and advance local priorities.
By: Bailey McCann
In 2017, Dean Dupris and his girlfriend, Kristen Lawrence, started running a cattle ranch on a piece of tribally-leased land 40 minutes outside of Timber Lake, South Dakota. They started with a Farm Service Agency (FSA) loan to get going, but three years into operations their ranch was starting to wane. The herd had decreased in size and margins were incredibly thin. Getting a traditional loan to buy more cattle and keep going was also out of reach since those loans require high up front fees and the loan payment often causes farmers and ranchers to get second jobs to keep the loan in good standing.
Facing the threat of going out of business, Dupris turned to Four Bands Community Fund, a Native American Community Development Financial Institution where he had taken an entrepreneurship class a decade earlier. He worked with them to develop a new business plan and secure an agriculture loan with very low payments, tailored to the financial realities of the local community.
With the loan, Dean purchased 33 head of cattle, his “Four Bands cows,” as he calls them. The cows give him enough flexibility to sell steers annually and make a profit without depleting his stock. By contrast, a traditional loan would force him to sell all his calves plus part of the herd each year just to stay current, leaving him worse off by the end of the loan term than when he started.
Lakota Vogel, executive director of Four Bands Community Fund, says their work gaining a deeper understanding of local community’s financial needs allows them to offer “patient capital” — flexible funding that helps residents maintain control of their businesses and their futures. Serving the Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation and broader South Dakota, Four Bands takes a hands-on approach, using community feedback and locally informed data to design financial products and services accessible even to borrowers with unique circumstances.
Resident Data Driving Resilience
For residents in greater Boston, flooding is becoming a bigger issue as a result of climate change. These areas also have dense, often older housing and aging municipal infrastructure, which can compound the impacts of flooding when it happens. Some of the most vulnerable areas are also home to neighborhoods that are primarily Spanish or Creole speaking which can make it harder for residents to access city services or understand information if it isn’t available in their native language.
Robyn Gibson, Founder and Principal at R.E.G Solutions, is piloting work in three of those communities, Everett, Brockton and West Springfield, to get feedback on what happens when flooding occurs to identify the best ways to support flood mitigation and get assistance from the city council for these efforts.
“We created roles, released a job spec and hired directly from within the community. So, it’s not a scenario where it’s another survey and gift cards. The community is interacting with people they already know, and everyone is getting paid to do the work.”
“We are looking at this from an environmental justice perspective,” she explains. “The city is providing the support to do our study in part because they haven’t been successful at bringing these communities to the table yet and getting feedback.”
In Massachusetts, environmental justice is a state level categorization meaning that the state funds an Office of Environmental Justice and Equity (OEJE), and state residents can get support under this categorization. If residents live in an area that is vulnerable to environmental challenges or is suffering the fallout of a past action, (OEJE) will work with them to find solutions. Gibson’s flood mitigation study is part of that work.
Gibson says they started with a variety of data sources to determine where to focus their efforts including census data, the Healthy Neighborhoods Study, as well as information from the Metropolitan Area Planning Council in Boston. From there, she says, the focus was on ensuring equity.
“I think one of the biggest differentiators for us is that people are on the payroll here,” she says. “We created roles, released a job spec and hired directly from within the community. So, it’s not a scenario where it’s another survey and gift cards. The community is interacting with people they already know, and everyone is getting paid to do the work. There is ownership in that.”
The residents that are working with Gibson on the study are mapping potential flooding impact areas, understanding the best ways to deliver information and creating mitigation strategies. This information can then be brought back to the city and incorporated in city level planning through an environmental justice lens. Several of them also work for other community organizations, businesses in the area or in schools and are already taking what they’ve learned back to those places to share information and help spread awareness.
“The residents are the ones that are identifying and ranking which issues are important and how they should be handled so the results that we are getting are really representative of the reality on the ground,” Gibson says.
Once the pilot communities have completed the project, a report will be generated and shared with the city. Gibson says that the pilot will also be analyzed for potential frameworks that could be used by other communities in flood prone areas.
“One of the things about this format is it is so customized to each community. They determine how the project will go for them, so it’s hard to say we’re going to be able to make it a one size fits all response. But that also means there is a lot of opportunity for innovation here because the communities are determining how they are going to use what they learn and what happens next,” Gibson says.
Rethinking Data to Build Trust
Creating space for community and doing so in a highly customized way, is a core focus for D. Rashaan Gilmore through his organization BlaqOut. He founded BlaqOut in 2017 to provide health and wellness care for the LGBTQ+ community in the Kansas City metro area.
BlaqOut provides health screenings, primary care, telehealth, health insurance navigation, and supportive services including emergency food, housing and transportation. Each facility is tailored to the surrounding neighborhood and aims to be a place where residents can visit and find a safe space when needed. Individuals who visit a BlaqOut clinic for services can also contribute to things like the in-house playlist at their location and get information and resources from partner organizations.
“When our members are coming into an appointment they are bringing their whole lives with them,” he says. “You can’t be an anchor for a community if you don’t know what that looks like.”
Gilmore says that when they started setting up BlaqOut, they went through a data gathering process to try and understand the demographics and needs of neighborhoods throughout the KC metro. The process was a formal study of the surrounding area to get as much granular data as possible about what was available and what was missing.
Gilmore says he used a variety of tools including information from Build Healthy Places Network that helped him shape the study. While census tract information can provide a lot of demographic information, he says, it wasn’t enough. “When our members are coming into an appointment they are bringing their whole lives with them,” he says. “You can’t be an anchor for a community if you don’t know what that looks like.”
This process, he says, was only the first step. Gilmore and his team used that data to start crafting their ideal member experience as well as identifying issues that would need further study or potentially further feedback from the community.
“I think a lot of people start from saying ‘these are the services I want to offer’ and just standing something up without really thinking through some of the core issues that can define a neighborhood,” Gilmore says. “We intentionally started from a place of saying ‘ok if we put a facility here what does safety really mean? Do we need to take extra steps? What are the transportation options? Can people get here? What are the accessibility options?”
Gilmore says that all these questions factor into health outcomes and the efficacy of any programs or services BlaqOut offers.
“We want to look at the whole picture and give people the tools to have ownership over their lives, and in turn, ownership over the support they get from us. We want them to play a role in the long-term vision for BlaqOut. That’s how you build trust and stay relevant within a community.”
“We recognize if someone is visiting us and sits down before an appointment that might be the first break they have had all day,” he says. “So, we have snacks and drinks available, we have a TV, we have a patient playlist. Providing a positive experience all the way through helps people feel better. If they know they are going to go somewhere and be treated with respect, in a supportive environment, they are going to take better care of their health and support the organization over the long-term. That’s how you become embedded in a community and become a place where people gather to build on that feeling and extend it outward back into the community.”
Gilmore says that organizations that work within marginalized communities can’t afford to be single-issue organizations if they want to lead and if they want those communities to take them seriously and invest in helping make them a long-term presence.
“Housing, transportation, job security, food security — all of those things are healthcare as well,” Gilmore says. “We can’t just offer someone a vaccine or some other service and say, ‘ok come back if you need anything else.’ That’s a very transactional mindset. We want to look at the whole picture and give people the tools to have ownership over their lives, and in turn, ownership over the support they get from us. We want them to play a role in the long-term vision for BlaqOut. That’s how you build trust and stay relevant within a community.”
Gilmore says there can be a hesitancy on the part of nonprofits and other community organizations to move away from models of service and data gathering that have been used for a long time like intake forms or generic surveys. “When we look at the data for some of those models,” he says, “they don’t work very well. So my question is why keep using them when you can work with the community you are in directly and get their feedback?”
Where Data Meets Healing
For Angie Main building resilience also starts with a focus on community building. Main is the Executive Director for the Native American Community Development Corporation — Financial Services (NACDC-FS) based in Browning, Montana which provides individual and business loans and financial services for Native Americans. NACDC-FS is the financial arm of the Native American Community Development Corporation which also provides access to healthcare services and supports community events and tourism within Native communities.
Established in 2010, NACDC-FS serves Montana, the Dakotas and Wyoming. Main says it took a year for NACDC-FS to begin offering financial services within the Native community in part because almost no data was available about the needs or demographics of Native Americans within NACDC-FS service area.
Fifteen years on, Main has moved NACDC-FS onto Salesforce to track a robust and largely fully custom dataset on the economic activities and needs of the Native American community across four states. Aggregate insights from these data are also being used by other Native American community development financial institutions in other states.
Main says the work has been a labor of love and necessity, but the dataset has matured to a level that NACDC-FS can more rapidly refine its products and services, ultimately allowing it to do more within Native communities. Most recently, NACDC-FS launched a project with Sweetgrass, a local consultancy, to help understand the drivers of financial trauma within Native communities and help individuals break free from problematic financial cycles. The report is a combination of survey findings and insights from financial services users.
“Main says all these factors show up in how Native Americans think about, spend and save money. The survey is designed to pull together responses from residents about how those traumas impact them directly and gain insights on what they want support for most.”
NACDC-FS pairs its financial services with coaching and educational programming for both individuals and businesses. This helps individuals develop financial literacy or additional entrepreneurial skills to keep a business running. In contrast to many traditional banks, their relationship is more hands-on and is designed to keep up with borrowers over the life of their loans.
This close relationship helped NACDC-FS focus on some consistent patterns they were seeing. “An individual borrower, for example, would take out a loan to build credit or consolidate debt. Inevitably, they get to a point where their credit looks good. They have more options and then they go get a new credit card and it starts all over. Or something else happens and they get behind on payments. That indicated to us that what was going on went beyond just low financial literacy,” Main says. These interactions prompted NACDC-FS to focus on trauma and study it.
It goes without saying that Native American communities have faced profound intergenerational trauma. Those traumas continue today at a structural level. Native communities are often significantly lower in income than the surrounding cities and towns. Some reservations struggle with infrastructure like potable water, electricity, and emergency services. Native owned businesses also face hurdles when it comes to securing financing and finding consistent sources of revenue in part because of the underinvestment in their communities.
Main says all these factors show up in how Native Americans think about, spend and save money. The survey is designed to pull together responses from residents about how those traumas impact them directly and gain insights on what they want support for most. The findings from the survey will be used to inform NACDC-FS programming and may also lead to changes in the financial products offered if it becomes clear that there are additional unmet needs within the community.
“We have the opportunity through the programming that we do to get feedback from the community and address these topics in our coaching and in the way we manage our products,” Main explains. “We don’t have to be as formal as a bank. If something happens and someone needs to reduce their payments, we can work with them on it and be a source of support.”
“People use data to make decisions every day. They should be empowered to use their own data to make decisions about their own communities.”
The survey and all the data work done by NACDC-FS are also, indirectly, significant contributions to the Native American population overall. None of this information was being tracked by the states where NACDC-FS provides services which created an opportunity for Main and her colleagues to build it themselves — by Native Americans, for Native Americans. Main plans to present the findings of the survey to other Native CDFIs later this year and hopes that the work of NACDC-FS and Sweetgrass will be a jumping off point for other Native communities to approach financial services and economic development from a trauma-informed perspective.
Four Band’s Vogel says this work, and the work Four Bands does with individuals like Dean Dupris to help his business stay viable are examples of data sovereignty in action.
“A lot of people want to talk about data sovereignty, but I think we should take it a step further and call it data democratization,” she says. “What we are talking about is pulling together the information that builds equity. Everyone thinks that data gathering or making data driven decisions is something for data scientists or managers. But it’s for everyone. People use data to make decisions every day. They should be empowered to use their own data to make decisions about their own communities. We want our frontline people to have as much data as I do as the executive director. We want to be using all the tools we have all the time, so that we can make the best decisions possible.”
Vogel says Native led, Native focused organizations like Four Bands and other Native CDFIs play a unique role in the community because they aren’t exactly like a bank even if many of the services they provide are similar. In this role, Four Bands gets a first hand view of what constitutes the economic and community development of the reservation itself.
“What really moved the needle for us was understanding how we rated character and commitment to the business. Getting that right is as important as looking at a factor like credit score.”
“We’re doing a lot of case management because we work so closely with our borrowers. Whether that is through helping them launch a business or just improve their personal credit,” she explains. “When you say case management people instantly get form and survey fatigue. What we’ve tried to do is make that process more supportive.”
Four Bands has refined its process so that intake is only done once, and people aren’t filling out the same data points over and over again on various forms. They also use what they learn through their classes and educational programming to refine survey questions. If a topic is coming up a lot in a question and answer, that might lead to further study. If coaching clients are showing a pattern of behavior, that might lead to a focus group or other type of study to understand what’s driving the pattern.
Four Bands also uses the feedback to reassess their lending criteria to ensure that the fund is being prudent about its lending, while still reaching as many people as possible. Most recently they took a second look at how they evaluate financial equity in their small business lending and discovered that the original ratings framework they were using wasn’t helping all that much. Like any lender they were looking at the basics — credit score, cash flow, collateral, etc. But there were some gaps.
“What really moved the needle for us was understanding how we rated character and commitment to the business. Getting that right is as important as looking at a factor like credit score,” she says. “So we’re refining our criteria and making it so that if someone is just starting out they aren’t getting dinged for having a smaller balance sheet or other limiting factors if they can demonstrate commitment to the business.”
By rethinking their underwriting criteria Four Bands was able to offer access to financing to more businesses earlier on in their journey and make it easier for them to grow into mature companies that will be able to serve the local community over the long-term.
“That’s how we leverage our data for maximum impact. We see our work as advocacy in addition to providing financial support. We’re always looking for ways to expand and improve access to services.”
