MapDash™ for Faith Communities to Go “Live” at TEC Convention Expo

Work continues apace to ready MapDash™ for Faith Communities for its public debut at the Weekend Expo at the Episcopal Church’s triennial General Convention.

MapDash™ for Faith Communities is an interactive, data-grounded, map-based tool for missional analysis and planning. It was developed by Datastory Consulting, in collaboration with The FaithX Project, and beta tested by diocesan and congregational leaders in five Episcopal Dioceses.

MapDash™ for Faith Communities enables dioceses to assess congregational health, identify missional opportunities, and promote collaboration among congregations. It gives congregations the capacity to better understand and engage the neighborhoods they are called to serve. And it empowers faith leaders at all levels to make better and faster decisions with objective data that augments natural intuition and wisdom.

MapDash™ for Faith Communities will be available on a subscription basis, primarily through dioceses and other judicatories. The standard bundle will include five dashboards: one Executive Dashboard and four Congregational Dashboards:

  • The Congregational Dashboards will allow congregational leaders to define their neighborhood in different ways, then select data maps that will help them understand their neighborhoods’ population characteristics, community issues, and community resources.
  • The Executive Dashboard is built on top of the Congregational platform and includes all of its features, plus important additional diagnostic features: a Congregational Health Assessment map layer and a Missional Opportunities map layer.

Our work on the Congregational Dashboard is nearly complete, with about a week left in our final beta test.

We have a little more work on the Executive Dashboard. The Congregational Health Assessment is a little over a week away from completing beta testing, while a couple of weeks remain to complete the Missional Opportunities map layer.

So if you are planning to attend the 2018 General Convention, come by, visit us, and get a demo at booth #837.


 

More Information On
MapDash™ for Faith Communities

MapDash™ for Faith Communities Congregational Dashboard provides:

  • A secure, web-based dashboard built on industry-leading Esri software that allows visualization and exploration of your diocese through an interactive map.
  • Missional data maps that come preloaded with the locations of all Episcopal congregations in your diocese, along with a collection of community-oriented maps. Use this data to explore your neighborhoods through the lenses of population characteristics, community issues, and community resources.
  • Drive-time boundaries that allow you to display the 15-minute drive-time boundary of any selected congregation, which typically accounts for about 70% of a congregation’s members. You’ll also be able to see how this relates to the drive-time areas for adjoining congregations or all the congregations of the diocese.
  • Missional Context Reports™, which help you understand the practical implications of the unique lifestyles and habits of people in your neighborhoods.
  • Links to underlying data. Clicking on any area of any map layer activates a pop-up window containing summary data for that neighborhood (also viewable in a spreadsheet format).
  • MissionWebs™, which use Episcopal congregation location data to generate a map containing the area of greatest influence and attraction of each of the congregations in the diocese (as defined by equidistant drive times).

MapDash™ for Faith Communities Executive Dashboard provides all above plus:

  • Diocesan parochial health analysis, developed using key indicators from parochial report trends and neighborhood demographic projections. This generates a map-based analysis of short- and long-term congregational sustainability.
  • Diocesan missional opportunity analysis that identifies opportunities for redevelopment of existing congregations and high-potential areas for new congregations.

 

Change efforts up to 50% more likely to succeed
with orientation, coaching, and consulting

Research has demonstrated that change efforts are up to 50% more likely to succeed with orientation, coaching, and consulting. That’s why orientation and training are built in to every installation of MapDash™ for Faith Communities, and why tailored consultation in missional planning and implementation, monthly coaching, location analytics, and Story Maps (a visual representation of your data) are also available.

 


 

About Datastory
Datastory empowers businesses, nonprofits, and community leaders to establish an objective, data-driven foundation for strategic and tactical decision-making. We enable the leaders and stakeholders of these organizations to make informed and impactful decisions by combining, organizing, and analyzing multiple forms of data to create new insights and present it as a data-rich story that informs and inspires.

About FaithX
The FaithX Project is a faith-based, nonprofit consulting practice that helps faith communities and
the denominational bodies that oversee and support them survive and thrive in uncertain times by becoming more vision-driven, experimental, and context-sensitive. The FaithX Project has more than 25 years’ experience in missional strategy, ministry development, congregational redevelopment, and new church starts.

 


For more information, visit the Datastory/FaithX booth (#837)
in the exhibition hall at General Convention, July 6-9, 2018
Or contact Ken Howard at 410-583-8877 or mapdashforfc@datastoryconsulting.com.