On November 2, 2023, the Brookline Community Foundation (BCF) launched its publicly available Understanding Brookline Community Indicators Database. The database provides real-time, continuously updated data and insights into education, housing affordability, economic inequity, racial justice, and more. With this database, BCF hopes to provide data that supports the Brookline community in addressing shared challenges, identifying opportunities to work together, and forming new partnerships.
The database spans six topic areas — community, economic equity and justice, education, essential needs, health, and racial equity — and 50 individual indicators, or metrics, within these topic areas. Users can view data for any indicator (such as language diversity) over time and across multiple counties and see a summary of what the indicator measures, why it’s important, how Brookline compares to other regions, and notes on the data, like its source and confidence level. Users can also create custom dashboards to learn about the intersection of different indicators. To create a dashboard, users select a region and filter by one or more indicators and by one or more races or ethnicities to create an at-a-glance graphic summary showing how different populations are faring across the selected indicators.
The idea for the database began with BCF’s Understanding Brookline research series, a series of reports looking into community needs. So far, the series covers economic inequity, poverty, out-of-school programs for youth, and demographic trends. Its first report was published in 2013. While the research series provides a comprehensive look into community needs over time, it cannot be frequently updated; its data is sourced from the United States Census through the American Community Survey, which releases data only every ten and five years, respectively. BCF argues that this alone is not enough to show if meaningful progress is being made on pressing issues. “We don’t want to wait ten years to see what’s going on in our community,” said Meghan Guidry, director of communications at BCF. “For example, are we successfully ensuring that everyone in our community has food and access to early education?” The database was born from BCF’s desire to create an accessible tool that anyone in the community can use to get real-time information on issues without waiting years for census results, sifting through spreadsheets of data, or being blocked by paywalls.
To determine which community indicators to include in the database, BCF used findings from their 2021 community engagement process, which consisted of listening sessions, focus groups, community meetings, and an online survey to gather community feedback on where to invest funding in Brookline. They also worked with the Center for Governmental Research (CGR) to map community input to reliably measurable metrics for the Town. CGR is a nonprofit organization that conducts data analysis and helps organizations create living databases for particular geographies or communities.
Guidry is hopeful that insights from the Community Indicators Database will encourage policy change by raising better questions about the community. “We’ve been struck not only by how much the data can tell you but also where it can’t tell us things,” Guidry said. “The data can show us the percentage of homes that don’t own a vehicle, but it can’t tell us the lived experience: how many people don’t have cars because they choose not to, versus how many can’t afford one. In this way, the database prompts us to see patterns and ask better questions about people’s lived experiences, making it a powerful tool for policy work.”
She hopes everyone uses the database, feels empowered to find the necessary information, and is inspired to get involved in community change by volunteering or creating community groups to donate to local organizations. “We really hope that this is a tool and springboard off of which folks can do a lot of really exciting things,” she said.
The Understanding Brookline Community Indicators Database can be accessed at understandingbrookline.org.
