Atlanta POV: Turning community voice into actionable data

Originally published February 2024

📊 To truly design impactful programs, policies, and funding strategies, we need good data. But the exponentially growing data you can find online is often more overwhelming than insightful.

While federal and state public data are incredible at helping us directionally understand communities, they offer limited insights into our diverse communities’ lived experiences. Traditional data can’t tell us how our biggest problems feel right now — only people can do that.

For instance, we know what crime data looks like (it’s decreasing). But we don’t know if people feel safer. We know there are many effective public safety interventions, but we don’t know which ones people want in their neighborhood: more policing, less policing, more investment in mental health services, something else altogether?! We can’t really know without talking to lots of people. So that’s what we’re going to do!

📢 In partnership with Atlanta Civic Circle, we’re launching Atlanta POV!

To understand our community’s diverse points of view (POV), we’re conducting brief pulse surveys of thousands of everyday people in Metro Atlanta. This gives us real-time insights into priorities, opinions, and values (POV again!) on relevant social issues to inform solutions. Further, we’re conducting interviews and focus groups to really understand what’s driving people’s responses.

🫶 And we need your help!

A successful community panel like this requires thousands of participants — our goal is 10,000 by the end of 2025. So, not only do we need you to go to www.atlantapov.org and sign yourself up (it’s easy!), we need your help getting in front of your audiences and scaling our capacity.

🌐 If you have a constituent, client, or professional network in Clayton, Cobb, DeKalb, Fulton, or Gwinnett, help us get the word out! Forward this to a friend or colleague. Or we can help with the messaging to support community engagement.

🔮 If you could ask Atlanta a question, what would it be? We’ve built the machine, but we want leaders like you to shape the questions. Commission a survey to gain real-time insights today!

💰 If you have resources, we’ve bootstrapped the software and tested the methodology, but we’re seeking funds to get to scale. That looks primarily like staffing, but includes incentives to ensure we’re compensating panel participants.

🚀 Onward to more actionable and human data!