The Adams County Department of Community and Neighborhood Resources approached JVA when it wanted to better understand the landscape of service providers working within the community–where more than 13% of 441,000 county residents live below the poverty line. The county wanted both the broad picture and a more focused look at some of the organizations that have received funds from the county so as to provide more effective assistance and support where needed.

In order to accomplish this, we sent a brief survey to all of the nonprofits registered in the county and used the results to build a searchable, sortable digital inventory along with a map of all the organizations.

For the second phase of the project, we created a streamlined version of its Comprehensive Organizational Assessment (COA) and administered it to seven organizations. The results of this survey were used to better identify and understand factors that might limit an organization’s effectiveness and to help the county understand how it can help these organizations succeed.

“It was a very exciting project to work on,” says Laura Morales, JVA’s managing associate for research and evaluation. “It was nice to see a government agency looking critically at their community’s nonprofits, how they support them and what kinds of additional help they might need from the county to do even better work.

“County officials knew there were nonprofits in the county that could use greater support, and with the inventory, they have an accurate picture of the kinds of assistance that can be provided most efficiently.”

The county now has an inventory that includes all nonprofit agencies in the county, the kinds of work they do, their budgets, etc. County employees now can easily find, for instance, every nonprofit that provides emergency shelter or emergency food and clothing. The inventory also provides information on how many people are served by each nonprofit and what factors might be limiting the number served or the results being achieved.

“The work you and your team put into this is greatly appreciated. Everything looks fantastic and we received a product beyond what we hoped for. We look forward to sharing it with our partners and other Adams County departments,” said Liz Espinoza, county grants coordinator.