(Inactive) Nonprofit Center of Milwaukee

The Nonprofit Center of Milwaukee is an association of non-profit organizations that provide technical support, training and services to the non-profit community. The Center dispenses the tools that nonprofits need to successfully fulfill their missions and improve the lives of people in the community. The Center serves about 60 organizations each year. The City of Milwaukee Community Development Block Grant program subsidizes free services to grantee agencies. Other work is covered by a combination of grants, partnerships, and fees-for-service.

The Nonprofit Center of Milwaukee participates as a "Local Learning Partner" in the Annie E. Casey Foundation Making Connections program. Substantial data analysis and presentation materials have been prepared to support strategic development of that program. (See the "maps" section of www.connectionsmilwaukee.org.) The aim of this program is to move beyond administrative data sources toward community-based research involving resident-generated information.

The current program budget is based upon a one FTE staff load. Student interns from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee are a key resource to the work of the program and gain substantial experience from serving community clients. As many as four interns work 200 hours within each year. Some of the interns work as part-time staff after their intern experience ends.

In 1991, the Neighborhood Data Center program expanded the scope of services to include data and GIS (geographic information system) support. It is a clearinghouse for series of address level data including housing, health, safety and community assets. The primary focus of the clearinghouse is to support ongoing decisions by non-profit organizations in the service of neighborhoods. Customized template systems have been developed to speed the production of maps and tables for membership organizations. When data sets are confidential at the address level, the Nonprofit Center shares them as aggregate tables or as spatially smoothed maps. In addition, the Center distributes U.S. Census tables and maps.

The Neighborhood Data Center program works to add value to existing data systems through address-matching, archiving, template development and other data organization. This often involves working with data ambiguities—such as who owns a property or the linage of a series of parcels whose boundaries have changed over time. It also involves documenting the strengths and weaknesses of data elements, providing statistical interpretation of the reliability of measures, identifying the most useful indicators, monitoring trends, creating appropriate "visualizations" of data and consulting with customers about the fit of data to the decisions they are making.

The climate for data access is strong in Milwaukee. The City's property data sets go back to 1976, public health data sets are four to ten years in extant. In addition to the Nonprofit Center's work, several other "clearinghouse" operations are in place in Milwaukee. The city of Milwaukee has data and interactive mapping on their web site. (See http://www.milwaukee.gov.) Recent developments in identifying opportunities to strengthen coordination among the service providers for ex-prisoners and their families has been funded through a Department of Justice COMPASS grant. The Employment Training Institute at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee has used State of Wisconsin data to build family economic indicators. (See http://www.uwm.edu/Dept/ETI.) The Firearm Injury Center has developed a model for tracking violence in a program funded by the U.S. Center for Disease Control. (See http://www.mcw.edu/fic/.) In addition, the Center for Urban Population Health is developing access to health services data sets to further research in urban health delivery systems. (See http://www.cuph.org/.)