Before taking off on a flight and in anticipation of possible low oxygen levels, passengers often hear flight attendants say “put your mask on first before helping others.” This directive can be interpreted as “make sure that you are okay (or able to breathe) so that you are in the best position possible to help someone else.” Yet in the world of nonprofits, organizations are often helping others—as a condition of their mission and funding—before putting themselves in an optimal position to do so. Nonprofit organizations rely on external funding sources to support their external outputs: programming, service delivery, research, etc. Yet these external funding sources often leave organizations little room for internal organizational development, or to put their masks on first, such as by creating solid internal data infrastructures and assessing and refining their own practices. In this blog post, we highlight how three Microsoft Catalyst Grant Program grantees used funding from the grant to improve their internal operations, particularly their ability to collect and evaluate service data. The New York City Anti-Violence Project (AVP), Gemeinschaft Home, and Lone Star Justice Alliance (LSJA) are organizations from the 2022 cohort that used funding to improve internal data-collection and data-sharing practices, thereby creating a foundation for service improvement and future evaluation.
The New York City Anti-Violence Project Consolidated Data across Departments into One Database
The New York City Anti-Violence Project is a nonprofit organization in New York City whose mission is to empower “lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and HIV-affected communities and allies to end all forms of violence through organizing and education” and to support survivors “through counseling and advocacy.” The organization has six departments: Community Organizing and Public Advocacy, Client Services (which includes a 24/7 crisis hotline for survivors), Economic Empowerment, Legal Services, National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs, and the New York State Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender & Queer Intimate Partner Violence Network.
AVP used Catalyst funding to consolidate data from three of these departments (Community Organizing and Public Advocacy, Client Services, and Legal Services), including data collected from the 24/7 crisis hotline, into one custom-made database hosted in Salesforce. By moving data to one database, the organization is working toward reducing the number of times its clients (often LGBTQIA+ and Black and Indigenous people of color) have to share their experiences within the organization. In addition, moving data from separate departments into one database will enable the organization to recognize trends. This change will not just help AVP staff serve clients effectively, it could also enable the entire New York City community to better understand violence against LGBTQIA+ people, how the police are involved in this violence, and what can be done to improve the system of responding to harm. AVP collects data on what types of violence are experienced in the community, who experiences it, where incidents of violence occur, and the relationship of the survivor to the person who caused the harm. It focuses particularly on data on whether the police were involved in the violence, whether the violence was reported to the police, and whether the client would like to interact with police. AVP uses these data to advocate for more community-focused safety, working to reduce the number of police interactions for communities often harmed by standard policing.
Gemeinschaft Home Customized a Case-Management Software
Gemeinschaft Home is a nonprofit organization just outside Harrisonburg, Virginia, serving people who have recently exited incarceration or are under court supervision in residential and nonresidential programs. Among its nonresidential offerings is its day reporting center, a multiservice resource center providing preincarceration support to participants for at least 90 days.
Before the Catalyst grant, Gemeinschaft used a paper-based case-management and filing system, with fragmented data collection across multiple electronic formats. As a result, its capacity for conducting data analysis to assess program efficacy and track participant outcomes was limited. Gemeinschaft also lacked evidence-based assessment strategies for risk and needs assessment.
Collaborating with research evaluators from James Madison University, Gemeinschaft used Catalyst grant funding to customize ARETGroup Horizon software, the case-management and data-management system for its day reporting center. In addition to offering better mechanisms for storing sensitive data, the software provides a more sustainable approach for presenting data for internal performance management, assessing disproportionality, and reporting data to government and community stakeholders. A main goal of the project was to use data to systematically assess racial disproportionality in referral and program retention. Gemeinschaft can now also validate risk and needs approaches for specialized populations. The organization has also enhanced its capacity to apply for and implement grants, as it is in a much better position to regularly report key metrics.
The new software systematically tracks participant processes and summative outcomes from referral to postprogram completion on an individual level, enabling Gemeinschaft to promote collaboration, through data sharing, with the agencies it communicates with (e.g., probation, law enforcement, behavioral health providers). Gemeinschaft Home plans to make these data available to community and government partners and solicit community input to improve services by improving day reporting center policies and procedures.
The Lone Star Justice Alliance Optimized Its Case-Management System
The Lone Star Justice Alliance is a nonprofit legal organization serving youth and emerging adults (ages 17 to 24) involved in the criminal legal system in Dallas. Through its Transformative Justice model, LSJA develops community-based alternatives to the criminal legal system with a focus on addressing unmet needs, increasing social determinants of health, and improving public safety. One such alternative is a workforce program connecting emerging adults impacted by the criminal legal system with local employers.
With Catalyst grant funding, LSJA leveraged data from the JustCareers program to understand programmatic outcomes, including behavioral changes, recidivism, and continued system involvement. To do this, however, it needed to optimize its case-management system. Catalyst grant funding enabled LSJA to adopt a new and improved case-management database to track participant metrics and program outcomes, audit and identify gaps in its programming, and create its first snapshot and dashboard of the JustCareers program with which to evaluate program outcomes and target areas for improvement.
Adopting and implementing a case-management system enabled LSJA to better understand its performance outcomes, employment outcomes, and the demographics of its participants. It was also able to identify that its program boasts a small recidivism rate of 1.4 percent. LSJA also gained other program insights, such as that 93 percent of participants demonstrated increased knowledge of mental health resources and coping skills, and 66 percent of participants received intensive mental health support through the program.
At the end of the Catalyst grant period, LSJA was better positioned to understand its own data. As a next step, it is requesting external datasets from the Texas Juvenile Justice Department and Texas Department of Criminal Justice to build a broader picture of the outcomes for emerging adults in the criminal legal system and effectively compare their program outcomes with system outcomes.
Prepared for Flight (and to Serve)
As demonstrated by the work of these three organizations, organizations can leverage technology to improve how they collect and share data internally to better understand their strengths and opportunities for improvement. Doing so puts them in an ideal position to assess and improve their practices, and better serve their communities. Nonprofit organizations offer to operate without large reserves and need financial resources to upgrade and enhance their data and technology systems. As funders think about ways to invest in nonprofits and nonprofits think about ways to improve their performance, considering how funds can be used to strengthen organizational development will be key.
For another example of how a nonprofit organization used funding to improve internal operations, check out this blog post about how one Catalyst grantee used the project to create a custom case-management application.
The Catalyst Grant Program is a collaboration between the Urban Institute and the Microsoft Justice Reform Initiative to help nonprofit organizations use data and technology to advance racial equity in the criminal legal system. Visit the Catalyst Grant Program Insights page for more resources and stories about the grantees.