Using Data to Strengthen Afterschool Planning, Management, and Strategy: Lessons from Eight Cities

Drawing from The Wallace Foundation’s Next Generation Afterschool System-Building Initiative, a four-year effort to strengthen systems that support high-quality afterschool programs for low-income youth, the report presents findings on how data systems were established, operated and used in eight cities. By the end of the initiative, the eight cities had established data systems by building working coalitions across public, philanthropic and nonprofit sectors. Operating these systems required continued attention to the three central pillars. The cities made notable progress in how they used data in meaningful ways, both by expanding how data were used across the system, and by engaging providers more systematically and purposefully in using data, including for accountability, improvement, strategic planning and program management.