In today’s uncertain federal data landscape, policymakers are increasingly turning to state and local administrative data and community-generated data to inform their decisionmaking.

Historically, data collection and governing systems were perceived as technical work for highly trained experts. Now, community members and organization leaders are shaping the data ecosystem by collecting, analyzing, and releasing data themselves. This governance enables them to ensure data accurately represent their communities and can inform policymaking that affects their families and neighborhoods.

But local data creation and governance requires diverse expertise. Some community organizations are partnering with local governments, technical assistance providers, and data and privacy experts to fill the gaps. There’s also a critical role for philanthropy here: It can help facilitate strong community partnerships and incentivize cross-sector collaboration to strengthen local data. Philanthropy can learn from the following promising community-based models from across the country and apply their lessons and support similar efforts in other places.

Community collection improves housing data quality in Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Ten community-based organizations joined together to form the Reclaiming Our Neighborhoods coalition to improve housing stability, supported by several local philanthropic and nonprofit groups. The coalition executed a multipart project to address distressed properties and help city programs prioritize services and resources for homeowners and renters that would ensure their homes’ safety and stability.

The Sherman Park Community Association took the lead in engaging community members on developing survey questions on local housing conditions, categorizing them, and conducting the surveys. Then, a community data organization and member of the National Neighborhood Indicators Partnership (NNIP), Data You Can Use, provided technical help to develop data tools and analysis to expand the use of those data.

As a result, he coalition expanded community members’ opportunities to weigh in on investments that promoted greater housing affordability and stability and improved property conditions. These data collection efforts have identified key areas for enforcement and investment around home repairs to the City of Milwaukee’s Department of Neighborhood Services and have deepened city leaders‘ understanding of historical disinvestment in particular neighborhoods.

Community governance improves safe uses of youth data in Baltimore, Maryland

To ensure young people receive better care and services, the community organization Baltimore’s Promise is leading the Baltimore City Youth Data Hub, an integrated administrative data system linking youth-related data across agencies. The hub is a partnership between local government (Baltimore City Public Schools, the mayor’s office, and the city’s health department), Baltimore’s Promise, and partners with specialized knowledge in data integration and urban planning, including Actionable Intelligence for Social Policy (AISP) and the Family League of Baltimore. The hub’s Community Research and Action Committee, made up of representatives from nonprofit organizations, faith-based institutions, and the broader community, makes data governance decisions and codesigns some of the data collection, analysis, interpretation, dissemination, and policymaking decisions. The hub also ensures data privacy protections are in place to protect young people.

For its first effort in applying the data, the Youth Data Hub is investigating youth engagement in city and city-partner summer programming (PDF), exploring demographic trends of participants and which groups may be underrepresented. These initial data analyses helped the hub better target design, outreach, and funds for these programs and ultimately improve long-term academic and career trajectories for the city’s young people. With anticipated reductions in funding in 2025, these data are critical to policymakers’ decisionmaking and implementation and to ensuring they are reaching those with the most need.

New community-collected data fills information gaps in Detroit, Michigan

Data Driven Detroit (D3) is a community data organization that launched in 2008 with funding from The Skillman Foundation and The Kresge Foundation and an NNIP Partner. D3 provides data and analysis to inform local decisionmaking. D3 has invested heavily in trainings on responsible data consumption, data ethics, data management, and more to support community-led data collection efforts to fill information gaps. D3’s community advisory groups and task forces review questions for data collection for the Neighborhood Vitality Index survey (NVI), serve as data ambassadors for their interactive tools, and provide governance on selected data initiatives, particularly those involving data collected by the community and nonprofit programs. NVI indicators capture the realities of the community with neighborhood-level indicators related to schools, safety, parks, and health care so investments can be better directed and tracked.

Philanthropy can pilot, scale, and amplify what’s working

These examples demonstrate that community-driven data efforts are stronger with ongoing cross-sector collaboration between local nonprofit organizations, local government, philanthropic partners, technical providers, and on-the-ground resident organizations. Sustainable efforts are rooted in common priorities and benefits with committed groups that bring a range of technical expertise (particularly in data and privacy), political capital, and resources.

National networks are also key to helping spread and sustain these efforts across the country. Through their strong connections with NNIP and AISP, these local organizations in Milwaukee, Baltimore, and Detroit exchange promising practices with groups across the country and continuously improve their approach to responsibly using data to create communities where everyone can thrive. NNIP offers this peer learning to its network of Partners in 31 cities and a dozen other prospective cities, and the AISP learning network consists of 40 data-sharing efforts at the city, county, and state levels.

As the national data infrastructure shifts rapidly and federal investments shrink, there is a critical opportunity for cities, states, and community institutions to work together to reimagine and rebuild systems that center community voices while protecting critical populations, particularly those affected most by federal program cuts. Philanthropy—from community foundations to large national foundations and corporate giving programs—is in a unique position to scale these efforts with their financial investments, convening power, and communications channels. Guided by communities, they can encourage the piloting and sustaining of local data collaborations to improve the well-being of people and places.