Community Service
Community Service professionals use SparkMap’s Community Needs Assessment and Map Room to explore community-level resources, identify vulnerable populations, and plan impactful programming.
Community Service with SparkMap’s Community Needs Assessment
My county’s Community Service Office manages the acquisition and disbursement of funds for community service projects and initiatives. While our funding is awarded based on application processes, we also make our decisions by considering our county’s most pressing needs. Local data on issues such as poverty levels, food access, housing needs, education, and community health is pertinent. Yet, these local data can sometimes be difficult to acquire and compare.
SparkMap’s Community Needs Assessment has allowed us to access reliable, up-to-date community-level data at the click of a button. I purchased a Premium Annual Subscription through my office, and the ability to assess secondary data categories on topics such as poverty levels, education attainment, and disease prevalence for each ZIP code in our county has helped us significantly in identifying specific locations where we need additional services. We prioritize the primary data from our in-county sources, but being able to also contextualize these data by measuring them against SparkMap’s secondary sources has been invaluable. We are now able to more quickly and confidently reach decisions regarding where funding will be most effectively placed.
— Dana S., County Community Service Board Commissioner, Premium Annual Subscriber
Community Services with SparkMap’s Map Room
Food access is a significant issue in some parts of my community, so my department started organizing food drives and establishing food pantries. Throughout the planning process, I used SparkMap’s Map Room to collect more data on food access. Being able to view grocery store locations in tandem with ZIP codes with high poverty levels and low food access in our county helped me and my team gain a clearer understanding of which areas could most benefit from outreach.
We ended up upgrading from a free SparkMap subscription to a Pro Subscription so that I can upload our team’s data onto our maps. Now, we keep maps updated with SparkMap’s data on food access, layered with markers representing our food pantry locations and volunteer stations. This has been critical for showing how our community is making a difference.
— Charlie K., Community Volunteer Director, Pro Subscriber