NEWbraska Partners: NEWbraska's “Common Sense” process provides a Common Understanding of our On-going Community Needs

ID

284

OrgName

NEWbraska Partners

PhysicalAddress

1901 Howard Street Suite 325 Omaha NE 68102

MailingAddress

PO Box 43 Omaha NE 68101

Website

NEWbraska.com

SocialMediaAccounts

Name

Lee Myers

Title

Partner

EmailAddress

Lee@newbraska.com

Phone

+1 (402) 598-4131

Team

Yes

TeamExplanation

Lynn Hinderaker, Partner Luke Armstrong, Partner

OrganizationalChart

to be determine

OtherCompletedProjects

Major projects: NEWbraska with UrbaNatural, NEWbraska CommonSense, NEWbraska Transportation

ProposalTitle

NEWbraska's “Common Sense” process provides a Common Understanding of our On-going Community Needs

TotalBudget

720000.0

LB1024GrantFundingRequest

510000.0

ProposalType

Service/program

BriefProposalSummary

NEWbraska is helping communities to make Common Sense of the world through local stories and data collected over time in dedicated local and virtual spaces. NEWbraska facilitates "Common Sense" sense-making services to help non-profits and foundations to find representative stories and uncover data they need to align with the public good.  We use community non-profits as “Oracles” to organize common sense collection events that ensure our greater community gets regular opportunities to be heard so that we can move forward together with a true sense of understanding. It seems like we are always hearing disagreement and fighting about what needs to be done in our community. Politician’s speak on our behalf about what the public wants.  Pollsters reflect the slanted results their surveys provide. Advertisements tell us what we need to buy to be happy. Sometimes it feels like we are projections of their reality.  Is anyone listening to us?  Does anyone care? What if we as a community could listen in a new way?  We could make real, common sense out of all this noise.  With regular meetings at community spaces right in your local community, you’d feel invited to participate and we’d capture your stories along with valuable data.  With distributed locations and convenient times our community members could share their experiences without interrupting their lives.   With shared interpretations and visuals of this anonymous data we could begin to truly understand and prioritize our community needs as a systematic process.  “Imagine what having ears to the ground would really mean in terms of aligning to the public good.  So many of our community efforts now are based in assumption. We need a better way of hearing the heartbeat of our communities.” Lee Myers (NEWbraska) “Understanding how our community, customers and members think can help us unlock the most valuable services for them, so we can meet them right where they are at.  That’s not a stabile thing, sometimes the environment changes, priorities and needs change.” – George Garrett III (Cali Commons)

Timeline

January 2023 - Conduct Pilot Common Sense making Sessions July 2023 - Close Submissions for Paid Oracles December 2023 - Common Sense Training Completed for Oracles July 2024 - Year 2 Common Sense Begins + Data Release for Year 1 July 2025 - Year 3 Common Sense Begins + Data Release for Year 2 July 2026 - Data Release for Year 3 + Year 4 Common Sense begins with new funding sources

PercentageCompletedByJuly2025

1.0

FundingGoals

Fundamental Change (i.e., a proposal that will continue to elevate North or South Omaha's presence and perception within the region, significantly improving the lives of area residents through physical development) Long-Lasting Economic Growth (i.e., a proposal that will foster gainful employment opportunities and financial investment in the area, leading to the creation of generational wealth and widespread economic vitality in North and South Omaha) Transformational (i.e., a proposal that will help energize, recharge, or spur significant and favorable advancements in North or South Omaha's function or appearance)

Community Needs

Other Infrastructure (i.e., develop or improve broadband, business districts, roadways, sewer, etc.) Policy (i.e., develop or improve context-sensitive education, finance, health, training, zoning, etc.) Quality of Life (i.e., create or enhance natural spaces, mixed uses, parks, safety, etc.) Sustainable Community (i.e., create or enhance housing, services, education, civic uses, recreation, etc.)

OtherExplanation

ProposalDescriptionAndNeedsAlignment

By listening to the public we will be able to hear and prioritize our problems. By collecting stories we will be able to understand the nuance behind the numbers. By categorizing our findings we make the accessible to those who want to see the opportunity to remedy this community pain. By teaching others to collect this data and setting up a funding apparatus to collect it we are distributing the burden and benefit of our efforts. The quantity of practitioners will grow as will the datasets if we can continue the programs for the long term. The collective psychological effect of being ignored or unheard cascades into apathy. We can provide a listening service directly in neighborhood spaces that are convenient. We can model processes for our politicians to copy. We can help people experience a similar process to help frame up their social demands. As public transparency demands rise sense making processes will take on additional importance. This may open the door for software to support these processes with software to collect and interact with data in more compelling ways. This should in turn drive public policy. As this policy delivers value, public trust might return.

VisioningWorkshopFindingsAlignment

To combat negative external perceptions the community needs to discover and highlight stories of great value and success. CommonSense can help uncover these stories and contextualize them for the community. Using this raw material we can tell better stories that replace these negative misperceptions. To uncover the gaps in educational resources, a businesses and its employees need to be able to express their challenges. We need to create safe spaces to collect and catalog the frustration of modern business. As new technologies emerge, we can learn together by capturing and sharing experiences. Cultural capital and a strong sense of community are great assets. We need to share the essence of the creative community, the flavor of a neighborhood or the vibe of a community space. CommonSense can help uncover the tangible stories and reveal the social currents that shape the community.

PrioritiesAlignment

This proposal addresses a key issue with many COVID policies, inadequate two-way communication. Nearly every organization struggled to effectively understand the public need during the recent pandemic, from the CDC to our local organizations and businesses. We have the ability to provide an infrastructure that starts to collect reliable data from the community on a regular basis.

EconomicImpact

The permanent and temporary jobs created by this project cannot be counted at this time. The sense making efforts will provide significant revenue for small non-profit and community venues. A mass adoption of this sense making program would create both permanent and temporary jobs.

EconomicImpactPermanentJobsCreated

unknown

EconomicImpactTemporaryJobsCreated

unknown

EconomicImpactWageLevels

high project based wage

EconomicImpactAlignProposedJobs

We will be partnering and paying organizations in the qualified census tracts to do sense making research.

CommunityBenefit

Communities deserved to be heard. People need to be accommodated with regular opportunities to provide their stories and contribute their experiential data. CommonSense is a community centric program that goes to where the people are to collect data and stories.

CommunityBenefitSustainability

Leaders shouldn't have to make decisions on limited datasets. With CommonSense they can learn what their community wants and needs and how that changes over time. With this information, they can align interests and energy to serve their community.

BestPracticesInnovation

Sense making is a modern way of dealing with complexity. It allows us to extract stories and data to get a true sense of what's going on with our communities individually and in the aggregate. CommonSense makes all that theory accessible. We work directly with community "oracles" to collect data and when they've got it down they can carry on into the future. It's this collaborative approach that will help us collect and scale a data driven approach to the common good.

OutcomeMeasurement

Organizations will have a better sense of who uses their services, who supports their services and the stories behind those datapoints. A deeper understanding of the individuals who make up our community, business or organization will help align to the value they seek. This experience informed clarity will help organizational communication become more authentic and trusted. By understanding and prioritizing the problems in our communities, we can start imagining, creating hypothesis and designing solutions. We can collectively get serious about the problems we uncover. By modeling a sense making process we can demonstrate to political leaders how to listen to the public to find opportunity. From this place we can restore trust in public institutions and begin to heal our experience of the collective.

OutcomeMeasurementHow

The measurements are the goal of this sense making process, they'll be taken by leaders at the organizations but NEWbraska will train and assist with facilitation services.

OutcomeMeasurementCoinvestment

Yes potentially, it could help large funding groups to create knowledge that helps them find better outcomes.

Partnerships

Yes

PartnershipsOrgs

Principal partners include Lee Myers, Lynn Hinderaker, Luke Armstrong, NEWbraska Partners, RENMIND, NEWbraska CommonSense, WOWbiz, Emergent Architecture, CaliCommons, Omaha Star, El Perico. Other partners we look forward to working with include Culxr House, Hot Shops, Benson Theatre, Union for Contemporary Art, Bluebarn Theatre, 1M Cups, ModeShift Omaha, Manne Cook, MAPA, Greater Omaha Chamber of Commerce, Aksarben Foundation, Knight Moves of Des Moines, Modus Coworking Omaha

PartnershipsMOU

not applicable

Displacement

No

DisplacementExplanation

PhysicalLocation

To be determined by NEWbraska CommonSense community surveys and LB1024 oversight committee

QualifiedCensusTract

Within one or more QCTs

AdditionalLocationDocuments

PropertyZoning

Yes

ConnectedToUtilities

ConnectedToUtilitiesConnected

No

ConnectedToUtilitiesUpgradesNeeded

No

DesignEstimatingBidding

No

DesignEstimatingBiddingPackageDeveloped

No

DesignEstimatingBiddingCostsDetermined

We aren't doing any construction.

GeneralContractor

No

GeneralContractorPublicCompetitiveBid

GeneralContractorPublicCompetitiveBidWhyNot

RequestRationale

Would like to pay local non-profits to collect data monthly. Estimating paying $12k for services and rental fees for 12 months of service for each location for 3 years. Will need some funds for software and to train and staff these events and analyze our findings.

GrantFundsUsage

We will be using funds to collect local community data with non-profits in the census tracts.

ProposalFinancialSustainability

Yes

ProposalFinancialSustainabilityOperations

We would like to use these funds to produce a case study to prove the value of community data collection. After this initial period we would need to secure funding through other partnerships or direct channels.

FundingSources

We would explore interest from large funders who would like to learn about the communities their funds are being deployed in and to ensure these efforts align to the public good.

FundingSourcesPendingDecisions

Would be after data is collected for some period of time.

FundingSourcesCannotContinue

Maybe with partnering organizations who provide this funding instead.

Scalability

It could be scaled up or down depending on interest but it does need to be of a certain size to show its true value.

ScalabilityComponents

We might be able to do 5 oracles (locations) instead of 10.

FinancialCommitment

Thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours of research have gone into the framing of this proposal.

ARPAComplianceAcknowledgment

1.0

ARPAReportingMonitoringProcessAck

1.0

LB1024FundingSourcesAck

1.0

PublicInformation

1.0

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