Guiding regional philanthropy through data-driven community insight
The Client: Community Foundation of Northern Colorado (NoCo Foundation)
The Challenge: The NoCo Foundation wanted a clearer way to understand and communicate what contributes to wellbeing across Larimer and Weld counties. While many partners were already working toward community health and prosperity, efforts were fragmented. The Foundation needed a shared framework—grounded in both data and lived experience—to guide strategic investments and spark regional alignment.
Our Approach: IBE partnered with CSU’s Institute for Research in the Social Sciences, to co-create a participatory, data-driven process that reveals the story behind the numbers. We used living systems frameworks to guide workshops, data collection, and reporting and then brought findings together in a way that highlighted the intersections and potential intervention points between the challenges and opportunities facing Northern Colorado communities.
The Outcomes: The resulting Intersections report provides a view of the two-county region as a whole – a living place with its own unique identity, challenges, and potential. The report reveals and elevates systems-level understanding, helping stakeholders see greater potential in their respective roles and contributions to the region’s overall health and wellbeing. The NoCo Foundation will continue to use the framework and process designed by IBE to convene regional organizations in collaborative conversations and to create future reports. Over time, stakeholders and the community will be able to measure how aspects of the system shift and adjust their priorities to meet the moment’s greatest needs and opportunities.
Read the report here.
Key Outcomes
- Developed community indicators for regional wellbeing
- Created a community indicators report to catalyze stakeholders around shared vision and understanding
- Designed a process for the NoCo Foundation to ongoingly convene and engage its community in conversations about regional wellbeing
Deliverables
- Three community conversation workshops
- Framework for organizing indicators data and report, using community-engaged research
- Partnerships with key stakeholders to gather relevant data related to the region
- Development of a replicable process for regeneration of the Intersections report
