Measuring How We’re Doing As A Community: Twin Cities Compass
How well is a community doing? There are thousands of statistics to pick and choose from. An exciting new project in Minnesota, the Compass Project, is underway in the Twin Cities and working on expanding outward to the rest of Minnesota.
Take a look at their extensive website here.
In the Twin Cities, they have the backing of a long list of foundations and key organizations ranging from the Bush Foundation to the Wilder Foundation. As part of Duluth Mayor Don Ness’s frist 100 days in office speech, he said he’d like to see the project extended to Duluth. The idea is to make sure there’s a good “dashboard” of indicators across many sectors to give everyone in town a good (and simple) way of understanding how the community is doing. Using many indicators is a useful way of approaching an understanding of community. Many times, leaders look at simple economic indicators that might not tell you that while the economy as a whole is doing well, those at the bottom are really struggling.
Itasca Economic Development does a nice job of using a variety of indicators to show how their community is doing. Their reports are available here.
