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Submitting Foundation
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Foundation Name:
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Dallas Foundation
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Address:
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900 Jackson Street
Suite 150
Dallas, TX 75202
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Phone:
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214-741-9898
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Fax:
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214-741-9848
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Website URL:
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www.dallasfoundation.org
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Founded:
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1929
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Submitted By:
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Angel D. Ilarraza
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Title:
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Manager, Dallas Indicators Project
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Practice Example Details
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Applicability:
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All community foundations
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Methodology:
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Educator, Grantmaker, Community, Philanthropy, Issue Expert
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Standard:
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A community foundation works to identify community issues and opportunities and acts as a leader and convener, using its human and/or financial resources to address immediate and long term community issues and opportunities.
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How does this practice
meet the applicable standard?
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The Dallas Indicators project is bringing together expertise and knowledge from the community and making it widely available to the public. The Foundation is investing both financial and human resources to create this educational tool. Although initially only funded for three years, it is expected that the project will be an ongoing and expanding resource providing relevant issue and community based information.
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Briefly describe the practice,
including key elements:
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The Dallas Indicators Project, launched in March 2004, is a web-based community resource for data and information about Dallas and the surrounding eight county area. It was established not only to increase the visibility of the Foundation within the community, but also as a response to the identified need for an objective and central base to feature and democratize all the information available to the public. It is seen as a resource for everyone within the community from politicians to families, private businesses and non-profits.
Taking advice from the national Indicators movement and learning from the Boston Indicators Project in particular, the project is a partnership of four regional organizations, both corporate and charitable, who have contributed financial and human resources to run the project for three years after which the Project needs to be self-financing. The manager is based within and funded by the Dallas Foundation. Revenue is expected to come from partnerships formed with local research bodies that will pay for the project to source data that they will subsequently analyze. Finished reports will also be available via the site.
Categorized by topic, the featured data is evaluated and assessed for authenticity, validity and usefulness by representatives from the partners and local professionals. To remain objective, the site does not comment on the ideological position of the data.
Due to continuous updating, there are no plans to produce a printed version, but users will soon be able to print data straight from the Internet.
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What method is used for
monitoring and measuring outcome?
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Both qualitative and quantitative
feedback is being collated. Users who log on to the site can submit feedback. The site is checked daily for feedback and the feedback is reviewed as it is received. Currently the volume of feedback is small enough to allow for this daily process. The volume of individual hits a day is also tracked.
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What were the results?
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An average of 156 individual users are currently accessing the site each day. Qualitative feedback has been generally very positive and tends to include pointers to similar resources that may not have made it onto the site yet. Some negative feedback has been received regarding the content of certain data, but the project maintains its objective stance and invites people to submit alternative data if they have it.
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