When I talk with my friend Haneef Hardy, who runs Unlimited Potential in West Baltimore, he tells me with pride about the exceptional kids in his neighborhood. He also shares some of the real struggles they face, from family members dealing with substance abuse to friends being shot. “I have kids who are 14 years old that have been to more funerals than weddings,” he once told me. Many of his kids couldn’t name the struggles they were feeling, let alone share it and address it.
So, he built an infrastructure to support them. He brought neighbors, teachers, and mentors to guide and uplift them. His kids are thriving and almost all of them are finishing high school and going to further education. Yet, even with such a great story and track record of change, Haneef struggles to get enough funds to address the needs of his community.
I spent years working at large national organizations where I helped create some of their big projects. I don’t think anything I did there had nearly the transformative impact Haneef has had in his own zip code. But here’s the unfair part: my team had the infrastructure to fundraise 50x times more money than Haneef could.
National organizations have development teams, surveys, and evaluation budgets. They can stand in front of a funder and say: we’re doing systemic change at scale, and show the charts to back it up. Haneef knows his impact is there. He just can’t hand it to a funder in a format that resonates with them.
This gap is getting wider. Funders have shifted toward funding systems change, but as research from Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, it’s not all equitable. Funds tend to follow organizations that can narrate change at scale and have established long-lasting relationships with funders.
Meanwhile, every community builder we’ve met already knows their efforts are deeply changing things. If you want to talk about systems change, which Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors defines as tackling the underlying conditions—mindsets, structures, relationships, and policies—that hold a problem in place, rather than treating symptoms, look no further than potlucks, book clubs, or youth ministries.
Folks who organize these gatherings know firsthand the transformation happening in front of them. You see folks who keep showing up, conversations that spill past the end of the event, and friendships that get built. But when you’re hauling folding tables and greeting neighbors at the door, you don’t have a spare hand to take photos, collect surveys, or track attendance. So the proof evaporates, and with it goes the case for new neighbors, city support, and foundation dollars.
That’s why we believe everyone who organizes a gathering – from a club to a local organization to a neighborhood association – needs an impact dashboard. And it’s why we built one into Plurality.
It starts with knowing who actually showed up. Plurality checks folks in automatically when they arrive within the geographic area of your event. Organizers can also print a QR code that checks people in when they scan it, and a quick dashboard lets you add anyone who has not RSVP’d. Over time you see how many faces are new and how many keep coming back, which is the difference between guessing at your retention and knowing it.
Then there are the moments of connection you didn’t see. When folks upload Moments, whether photos or a few sentences, they all land in your dashboard. We’re building a tool that connects those Moments into a narrative of your impact, one you can download monthly or quarterly and hand to your stakeholders.
The most powerful piece is seeing the ripples. The dashboard shows how many people built connections with each other on the platform, how many went on to start their own events after attending yours, and how many asked for a repeat. If your potluck sparks a community clean-up because of a conversation two neighbors had over BBQ, that thread is now visible. You can look at a single event or the aggregate, and get your whole year of impact in one view.
The best part is that all of this impact data is collected automatically, through actions people take at your event. It doesn’t require any surveys or other manual data collection. If you want to capture additional information, we also offer optional surveys you can send as prompts. You can choose to send right after the event concludes, which increases the likelihood that folks will start and finish the survey.
This data isn’t just for funders. It helps build trust in your community. When you track the connections folks make and the things they start, you’re telling them: we value what you do here, not just that you attended. That gives people agency. And when you share honestly with your community, this is where we are, here’s how many people stopped showing up, and what we are trying to improve, you create the shared understanding that deepens connection. When someone shares a Moment saying this is the first time I’ve felt connected in my neighborhood, it opens a door. Someone else reads it and thinks of the neighbor they know is lonely, and invites them.
And yes, it gives you the tools to fundraise. What we’re really doing is handing you the same instruments the big national organizations have. Better ones, because you can show exactly how folks are showing up, connecting, and acting, at a level of detail national organizations can’t reach. If you are a national organization, the same dashboard aggregates the impact of all your chapters, so you can tell a bigger story too.
Haneef has always known the impact is there. Now he can show it. You can too.
Do you work for a foundation or are a grant-giving organization? We’d love to chat with you to continually improve how to best structure the data to support folks who use Plurality. Please book a time with us.
Photo credit: By Freedom4U - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0,