❮ Projects page Girlstart

Spatial Analysis Project:

The primary purpose of our spatial analysis project is to gain insight into where funds are coming from, compared to where we are spending our resources/ what communities are benefiting. These insights will be used to inform our strategies for both donor cultivation and program expansion. Through the proposed spatial analysis project, we would like to identify the following:

• Areas within Central Texas that have a high proportion of low-income students who do not currently have access to Girlstart programs, and areas where Girlstart programs are heavily concentrated.
• Areas where Girlstart is expending resources (providing programs) and reaching girls, and the level of community financial support for each area.
• Areas within Central Texas where Girlstart has a large number of individual donors, and areas where residents have giving capacity but currently do not give to Girlstart.

Data available:

Girlstart has the following data sets to use for this project:

• Participant addresses for After School, Summer Camp, and Girls in STEM, along with whether participants paid or received scholarships.
• Program and event addresses (including locations of our Girlstart After School partner schools, Summer Camp facilities, and Community STEM events), along with costs for each type of program and numbers of attendees
• Addresses of individual donors, with gift amounts
• School report cards for all area schools, which contain info on the number of economically disadvantaged, nonwhite, and at-risk students at each school.

Maps and Reports that will be created:

Girlstart would like to see the following maps:

• Map of our After School partner school locations, which indicate the size of the program at each school and the relative need of each school, and locations of other schools (ranked by high-need status) that do not currently have After School programs.
• Map of Summer Camp participant addresses and locations, including where paying and non-paying participants are coming from.
• Map of Community STEM programs, which indicate the number of participants reached at each event.
• Map of Girls in STEM event attendees’ addresses, indicating whether they paid to participate or received a scholarship.
• Map of individual donors’ addresses, indicating the amount of their gifts. Ideally this map would also contain indicators of the relative wealth of different areas, whether or not residents are donating to Girlstart, to provide insight into where we should conduct donor outreach.

Ideally we would like to be able to overlay these maps on top of one another, or toggle different views to compare information.

How the maps and reports will be used:

Girlstart will use the After School partner map to assess the relative success of each After School program (i.e. how many girls are participating, and are we conducting programs in the schools that need them most), and to identify potential expansion locations.

We will use the Summer Camp participant map to identify areas where our Camp marketing has been effective (or less effective), and areas where we should direct our marketing efforts, as well as neighborhoods that could benefit from a free camp program.

We will use the Community STEM program map to assess the extent to which our Community STEM expenditures are benefitting community members equitably (i.e. are we spending too much to do programs in a certain area? would those funds be better used elsewhere?), and to see if Community STEM programs correlate with donor engagement. Community STEM programs are a way to increase our program presence in low-income areas, but we also offer them in higher-income areas as a way to attract potential donors and participants for our paid programs, so we want to see if this strategy is working.

We will use the Girls in STEM attendee map to identify areas where we should market this event more heavily to potential paying participants, and where our marketing efforts are paying off. This map will also show us which After School partner schools are sending girls to the Girls in STEM event.

We will use the donor map/ community wealth map to identify potential donor outreach areas. If donors are heavily concentrated in certain areas, we may be able to identify reasons behind our success in reaching those communities, and implement those same strategies in other areas.