Tell Your Story With an Economic Impact Dashboard

Would you rather read a 15-page report or play with an interactive economic impact dashboard? As long as all the information is the same, I wouldn’t blame you if you chose the interactive dashboard.

Over the years, Camoin Associates has discovered that, while a full report is still needed to provide the background information and methodology details (for all the data nerds out there!), you can more effectively tell your story with an economic impact dashboard.

An interactive dashboard has the same information as an economic impact report, but displays it in a way that may be more appealing and accessible for many people. A dashboard can be an effective format for sharing information for individual projects as well as for impacts over time as more data becomes available. It also allows the user to dive in deeper, if they want, and even download and share the results with others.

Opting to tell your story with an economic impact dashboard offers multiple benefits, including:

• Greater Access: Being able to embed the impact analysis results right on an organization’s website allows for greater access by interested parties, rather than stakeholders needing to download a report and dig through the details.
• Additional Interest: As a more modern approach to information sharing, the dashboard is likely to generate more interest than a traditional report would.
• Enhanced Transparency: With the ability to dig in deeper to the data that is most interesting to the audience, a dashboard can increase the feeling of transparency compared to other mediums.
• Updated Regularly: The dashboard can be updated at any time as new information is available or as the project is refined. This means the public has access to the most current data and is not reliant on older reports and outdated information.

Dashboards are one of many tools Camoin Associates uses to help organizations more clearly define and promote their work. Examples include:

• The Nassau County Industrial Development Agency (NCIDA) uses their dashboard to track the projects it funds. NCIDA updates this dashboard as soon as each project closes to ensure that it is up to date with the latest information. The purpose of this dashboard is to increase community and stakeholder understanding of the work NCIDA is doing and enhance transparency.
• The New York State Economic Development Council’s dashboard communicates the impacts associated with projects assisted by Industrial Development Agencies across New York State. This is all information that was already publicly available, but the dashboard provides a much more accessible format that can be used to better understand the work being done.

Whether you are looking to develop a user-friendly tool for your own internal use or to create a public-facing dashboard, this interactive format is the next step in putting critical data into the hands of decision makers, stakeholders, and constituents.

Learn more about how Camoin Associates can help you create an effective and interactive internal or external data dashboard for your organization or project.