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Visualising Data

In the heart of every grassroots organisation lies a passion for people and community. Whether you're running a food co-op, a local health initiative, or supporting whānau in need, chances are you're collecting a lot of valuable data—attendance numbers, service use, feedback, outcomes. But how do you make sense of it all without getting lost in spreadsheets?That’s where dashboarding comes in and tools like Tableau and Power BI make it easier than ever for small, resource-stretched teams to ...

Launch of Local User Groups

We’re kicking off 2025 with something new – Our “Local User Groups” for not-for-profit organisations using Infoodle (a locally-based CRM specifically created for use by charities and churches) and Tableau (Data visualisation software). Why a User Group? Software providers offer all kinds of online support resources, training and online help to help you get to grips with their software. But sometimes it’s really helpful to have some local contacts, someone working in an organisation ...

Homelessness and Housing Dashboards

The Kāinga Tupu Taskforce leads the strategic and interagency approach to addressing homelessness across the western Bay of Plenty sub-region. One of the foundational principles of the Homelessness Strategy is encouraging evidence-based interventions and data and knowledge-sharing between providers and community services. The Community Insights team contributes to this work by managing the refresh of the Taskforce’s Homelessness and Housing Data Dashboards and by producing quarterly infograph...

Working one-to-one with local groups

Every year the Community Insights team works one-to-one with local groups to provide support with data-related projects.  Every project is different – we help you decide what’s going to be most useful for your organisation to focus on. The diagram provided gives an overview of some of the areas we can support you with including:Working with you on your data foundations – clarifying the impact you are trying to make, what’s the most useful data to collect/track linked to th...

Data Spotlight - Crime

There has  been lots of recent commentary about increasing crime within our communities. What’s the reality?  The Ministry of Justice runs an annual survey – The NZ Crime and Victims Survey (NZCVS), interviewing 8000 New Zealanders every year, about their experience of crime.   The Community Insights’ Data Resources pages have a link to all of the last five years of  NZCVS results under our Safety and Harm theme.  On this page we also have links...

Census 2023 Data

The first data from Census 2023 was released at the end of May. Did you know Tauranga’s population has grown by 11.5% since the last census in 2018 (with the population now reaching 152,844)? This makes Tauranga New Zealand’s fastest growing main centre over that 5 year period. The Western Bay of Plenty district council area now has a population of 56,184 (an increase of 10.4% on 2018).  Tauranga can no longer simply be seen as a retirement centre, with our largest age co...

New Data Resources & Templates

Over the past twelve months the Community Insights team have developed a range of new data  resources to make life easier for community organisations. These resources are now available as templates and guidelines  on a new Data Resources & Templates page on the Community Insights Website.  Guidelines are a step-by-step guide to creating and using good data and the Excel and Canva templates have been created to help get you started.We currently have data resources cov...

CI Local Infographics

Community Insights (CI) has now been fully operational for three years. Over this time CI has been actively working to grow the confidence and skills of organisations across the WBOP community and social sector, to access and use data to improve practice and help deliver better outcomes to meet community needs.One of the ways we do this is by making available useful data resources of relevance to the sector. In 2022 we released our first sets of themed interactive data dashboards (Child and Yout...

Costs of Living - Local Food Prices

According to Food Price Index data (February 2022) Tauranga was found, on average, to have the most expensive grocery prices nationally. As food prices continue to rise, Community Insights has been keeping a watchful eye on grocery prices each month in the Western Bay of Plenty through a virtual trolley of standard family items.In June 2023, to launch the project, it physically purchased grocery items and donated the groceries to Tauranga Community Foodbank after the trolley was presented at a l...

Matariki 2022

Are you, like us, looking forward to Aotearoa’s new Matariki holiday (on Friday 24 June)?  The stars of Matariki will reappear in the morning skies of Tauranga Moana at the end of this week, signalling the start of an important time in the traditional Māori calendar.  This reappearance of the Pleiades star cluster, is known to Māori as Matariki (Ngā mata o te ariki o Tāwhirimātea, or "the eyes of the god Tāwhirimātea"). For Māori, who thrived through interdependence with...

Enhancing Data Skills for Social Good

The social sector has within it an enormous number of passionate committed people, who everyday put their skills, energy and the limited resources available to them to work, to enable positive changes for individuals, whānau, communities and the causes they care so much about.  And within this group of social sector workers is one particularly courageous bunch of people – those who have put their hand up at some point to take on the role of leadership in their organisation. It’s a toug...

Numbers do matter – Helping join the dots

Most days since 23 March, when we first went into lockdown following a growing number of cases of COVID-19 in New Zealand, I’ve tuned in to the televised 1pm update like most New Zealanders wondering “What do the numbers look like today?  Are there more people with the virus? Are the new cases coming from community transmission or at the border? Have more people succumbed to this disease? What are the transmission numbers in my community?  Who is being affected now and what was the...