Introducing Wil-Doo Cycle
Wil-Doo Cycle provides cycling programs to youth living in a neighbourhood with a high density of families living below the poverty line and refugees, promoting social inclusion and accessibility. It is a small non-profit that is run by one dedicated Executive Director, but has a large impact on the community that it serves.
Storytelling and word of mouth have taken their programming to where it is today, which is kids running down the street when they see the ED driving in, excited to jump on a bike to learn and play together. However, funding bodies are requiring non-profits more and more to explain their impact in relation to larger social issues and how their work in the community moves the needle forward.
Challenge
When working with our data collaboration research team, the primary challenge that Wil-Doo Cycle faced was internal capacity and limitations around data use in general because of the size of their organization.
The journey from idea to service delivery typically begins with funding applications for our non-profits. This is when new programs are scoped out and planned according to the challenge being addressed and in alignment with funding application requirements. Non-profits are asked why this type of program or service is needed, what impact that these programs will have on the community, and the demographics of who will be impacted.
The NPO Data Collaboration team worked with Wil-Doo Cycle to identify data within the Community Prosperity Hub to strengthen their funding application for a new youth cycling program that would promote the social inclusion of predominantly refugee youth living in the circumstance of poverty within our community.
Our research team met with Wil-Doo Cycle to learn about the new youth cycling program and then had a follow up meeting to present the data from the Community Prosperity Hub that could support this application.
We were able to provide demographic information of the neighbourhood surrounding the cycling program’s meet up location, outlining how many refugee families and youth populate that area, as well as the percentage of households living below the poverty line defined by the Market Basket Measure.
Data Use
This open source demographic data was used to enhance the story and understand the given problem that Wil-Doo Cycle addresses with their programming. By integrating concrete numbers and demographic information about who their cycling programs impact within a 5 minute, 10 minute, and 15 minute walking radius of their meeting location, the application was better able to establish that this neighbourhood has a high rate of poverty and refugee density and advocate for change through the continued development of cycling programs that promote the social inclusion of predominantly refugee youth living in the circumstance of poverty.
Impact
The Executive Director shared with our team that they would have most likely made educated guesses based on experience for the required data of this funding application, and that having this data from the Community Prosperity Hub reiterated the importance of their work in the community that is otherwise communicated anecdotally.