GISCorps Volunteer Assists Foodbank of Central and Eastern North Carolina

The Food Bank of Central & Eastern North Carolina  (FBCENC) is now better equipped to manage its data and serve its communities, thanks to a new ArcGIS Online custom solution. This project has streamlined how the Food Bank collects data at its Pop Up Market distributions and visualizes its impact.

The Food Bank of Central & Eastern North Carolina is a member organization of Feeding America, the largest hunger-relief charity in the United States. FBCENC works every day to provide food to people in need while advancing long-term solutions to end hunger in our communities. FBCENC sought the assistance of a GISCorps Volunteer with experience in developing an aesthetically pleasing and informative ArcGIS Dashboard of data collected using Survey123. Matt Wolf of California was selected for this project due to his broad expertise with ArcGIS Enterprise and ArcGIS Online.

The result is that FBCENC has streamlined its data collection and visualization processes by implementing a new ArcGIS custom solution. This system replaces the previous method, which involved using separate Survey123 forms for each Pop Up Market location and manually post-processing data in Microsoft PowerBI. The new solution now consolidates all data into a single, unified feature layer, which then populates a configured ArcGIS Dashboard (Figure 1), making data management and visualization more efficient and centralized.

The new ArcGIS Dashboard provides a comprehensive view of market statistics, including the number of households, children, adults, and seniors served. Staff can use filters to quickly analyze data by specific Pop Up Market locations, county, or date range. A mobile-optimized version of the dashboard was also configured, ensuring that critical information is accessible on mobile devices.

In addition to the dashboard and Survey123 forms, the project also delivered a new public-facing ArcGIS Instant App web map (Figure 2) and an Instant App data management site. The web map displays Pop Up Market locations and provides a summary of key statistics for each site in the map pop up, giving the public a clear picture of the Food Bank’s reach. The data management site allows FBCENC staff to easily view and update market information and collected data.                                            

While FBCENC was already successfully using Survey123 to capture intake data, these ArcGIS enhancements have provided them with a centralized platform to better monitor and analyze the impact they are making and can now make more informed decisions to better serve those facing hunger in their communities.

“Working with GISCorps was a great experience for the Food Bank of Central & Eastern North Carolina. Our project resulted in new tools to collect, visualize, and maintain data for our mobile food distribution program. We are now able to share this program’s impact more easily with both internal and external stakeholders. This solution has reduced user errors in data collection and saves us a lot of time with data cleaning and updating. Our assigned volunteer (Matt Wolf) was very attentive.“

Project Completed.