While there is no shortage of amazing organizations working to solve the problem of gun violence, status quo contracting incentives often force these organizations to compete directly for a limited pool of disconnected contracts to serve some of society’s most resource-constrained communities. Unfortunately, as there is no single solution to curb gun violence, any single-solution contract, service model, or funding strategy is not likely to sustain long-term impacts.
What happens when folks decide to do things a little differently?
Area 32 is a Collective of nonprofit organizations working collaboratively on a place-based strategy to reduce gun violence in the 19132 zip code of Philadelphia. The initiative was founded in 2023, with all partners supporting each other as they look to establish a new model of serving local communities that is innovative, collaborative, comprehensive, community-led, and focused.
The Area 32 partners
- Culture Changing Christians
- EMIR Healing Center
- Endangered Kind
- Impact Services
- PhillySafe
- Victory in Norf
the Independent Variable team built an interactive dashboard to help the Area 32 partners use data to respond to trends in gun violence, coordinate agency services, and strategize to drive collective impact.
While this work focuses on the 19132 zip code, in the spirit of collaborating for broader impact, the Collective has decided to release its dashboard to the public in hopes that it can be used to drive better services and more resources to other local collaboratives and neighborhoods. The Area 32 dashboard uses publicly available law enforcement data to enable more coordinated community support initiatives across the City of Philadelphia, not enhanced law enforcement responses.
Empowering communities with technology
Given the vast differences between Philadelphia zip codes and neighborhoods on any number of variables and resources, the Area 32 dashboard is also not meant as a tool to evaluate any specific program or intervention against population-level metrics, but to help spot promising practices and foster open dialogue as to what may be working for local residents.
Of note, the initial dashboard release offers access to the “Safety” portion of the application – a resource to support organizations looking to create nimble strategies to respond to local crime and shooting trends. Future versions may include snapshots from the “Services” portion of the application – a resource to support organizations looking to track and coordinate the delivery of their services in relation to said crime and shooting trends.
Hyper-local innovation and helping communities STRATEGIZE TO end gun violence
Combined, we hope these functions help to foster hyper-local innovation in community-centered approaches to gun violence intervention. From releasing open source software solutions to help communities take the lead on their own anti-violence strategies, to providing evaluation and training services for public sector stakeholders, to developing custom case management systems, dashboards, and datasets for nonprofits and government clients, at Independent Variable, we aim to provide the tools needed for our clients to be the variable that sparks the change they want to see in the world.
Contact us! As development of this dashboard remains an ongoing project, please send any comments or suggestions to: info@bethevariable.com
View the Area 32 Dasboard
Click the button below to navigate to the Area 32 Gun Violence dashboard and explore the possibilities. Please Note: the dashboard is better viewed on desktop or laptop computers, and not mobile devices.