20th anniversary Community Focus Report issued by last volunteer collaborative

After two decades of data collection and community needs assessment, the Community Focus Report is being turned over to a professional staff in the Missouri State University-based Ozarks Public Health Institute.

The 20th anniversary edition of the Community Focus Report was released this morning to community stakeholders at the Efactory.

Throughout its history, the biennial report has outlined challenges, referred to as red flags, and successes, or blue ribbons, within the Springfield area. It is the result of a collaboration among the Community Foundation of the Ozarks, the Junior League of Springfield, the Springfield Area Chamber of Commerce, Springfield-Greene County Library District, United Way of the Ozarks and more than 100 volunteers, according to project officials.

The five organizations share the $15,000 cost of the 2024 report, according to CFO spokesperson Aaron Scott.

Future iterations of the report will be supported by two full-time Ozarks Public Health Institute staff members and expanded resources.

Traci Nash, the initiative’s transition consultant, said the professional team will publish the biennial report and expand the report by launching an online dashboard to track key data. The staff will also build presentations and host workshops with community groups, including the Community Partnership of the Ozarks, which offers programs and services and also convenes collaborative partnerships to work on issues that include those covered by the report.

Nash told Springfield Business Journal that during the transition to the MSU office from this past summer until the end of 2024, funding is being provided by the Hatch Foundation, the Darr Foundation and the Tinkler family. The funding total was not immediately available this morning.

The office has applied for grant funding through the Missouri Foundation for Health for its next three years of continued operation, and that foundation has provided coaching through the process. There is a contingency plan if that grant does not manifest, Nash said in response to a question, and the OPHI has also devoted a portion of its budget to the program’s operation, she said.

In her presentation, Nash said the Community Focus team hosted by OPHI at MSU would take local data, clean and verify it, and then build presentations pertaining to each community partner’s topic area.

The team would also facilitate strategic planning workshops with existing collaboratives and community partner groups to select thresholds to help measure progress, she said.

“One of the advantages to having two full-time staff positions is having someone who is in charge of collecting data – not just quantitative data but also qualitative data – and then someone who’s able to act as the facilitator and to be in those community conversations,” Nash said.

Nash said the two full-time staffers have not been hired but are contingent upon the grant funding.

The first two years of funding will be largely focused on creating the dashboard, she said, noting that will be hosted by the Springfield-Greene County Library District, and data will be updated regularly.

“There’s a significant amount of data to be collected,” she said.

The staffers will collaborate with agencies – the Springfield-Greene County Health Department, the Greene County Juvenile Justice Center and CPO are some examples – to collect data and to make it available.

Erin Danastasio, executive director of the Hatch Foundation, said her organization has committed $10,000 to help the professional initiative get off the ground.

“I am a huge fan of it,” she said. “I think it’s so important because you need to be able to truly say we’re impacting this area by 2% change or whatever it may be. You need to be able to understand for the organizations that are coming together and collaborating that this is working, or this isn’t working and why not. That’s how you can make a greater impact.”

Jonathan Groves, chair of Drury University’s Communication Department, serves as one of two facilitators for the report, along with Lynne Meyerkord, a member of the CFO board of directors and executive director of AIDS Project of the Ozarks.

Groves said the move toward an office and full-time professional staff is a timely one.

“What we really need to find instead of every two years constantly being a little bit behind the data is to be with the data and looking forward a little more and thinking how do we take action,” he said. “The report card framing was always meant to be descriptive – here’s where we are; now take it and go do. We recognize that has its use, but it’s a very slow-moving way.”

Groves said volunteers are extremely busy.

“Poverty’s gotten better but it’s slow. One of the things we’ve learned in 20 years of doing this report is a lot of these things, they’re not instant fixes,” he said. “We’re not going to snap our fingers and make something happen.”

In a panel discussion during the announcement event, Katie Towns, director of the Springfield-Greene County Health Department, summed up some of the frustration that comes from slow progress with issues covered in the Community Progress Report.

“It’s definitely helped us to see the issues, to talk about the issues, to have this unifying sort of process and group of people that are conscientious about what these issues are,” Towns said.

But she said it’s necessary to pick up the pace.

“We have got to get serious about if we’re going to move the needle on some of these issues, and to spend 20 years for us to keep having this conversation to me, I guess I’m just in that point in my career where I’m just starting to value that time of how do we go to these meetings and continue to have these conversations and not see that needle move?” she said.

Nash said there is a definite advantage to having a professional team take over the administration of the Community Focus initiative.

“The volunteers that come together are doing so every two years, and they’re doing so in their spare time, meeting whenever they’re available,” she said.