CASE STUDY | SAVI AT THE CHILDREN’S MUSEUM
HOW DOES A MAJOR CULTURAL
INSTITUTION WITH A NATIONAL FOCUS
REACH ITS NEIGHBORS?
That was the problem facing The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis.
It never imagined that an answer might come from SAVI. But it did.
The Children’s Museum is one of the top
destinations of its type in the nation,
with a powerful citywide and statewide
reach. However, its level of success hasn’t
stopped the museum from focusing on
improving the lives of residents in its own
backyard.
The Children’s Museum has a broad range
of programs dedicated to community
initiatives in the Mid-North neighborhood,
and it uses SAVI to inform its program
development in this area.
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“SAVI is a great tool that I’ve used
many times in a variety of roles in different
places that I’ve worked, including as
a board member of a nonprofit,” said
Anthony Bridgeman, Director of Community
Initiatives. “It’s a great tool useful for
identifying or creating a better focus on the
target populations or target areas that we’ll
be working with.”
The Children’s Museum uses SAVI
primarily for demographic research
and analysis. For instance, it uses SAVI
to identify nearby areas with a high
concentration of families that it can target
for neighborhood events and after-school
programming. SAVI even allows the team to
look for clusters of households with single
moms or single dads. The team combines
these demographics with key community
assets, including transportation networks,
to help them understand how best to serve
this audience.
Some of the community initiatives
offered by The Children’s Museum include
after-school programming, free and
discounted museum admission for eligible
families, and a Quality-of-Life plan to
improve six Mid-North neighborhoods.
Consider after-school programming: “In
the northern part of the neighborhood,
there are a lot of economic challenges, as
well as crime, so we use SAVI to identify
opportunities for working with community
partners,” said Bridgeman. This strategy
enhances educational opportunities for
children in the neighborhood.
Data mined from SAVI not only informs
programming, but enables fundraising at
The Children’s Museum by enriching casemaking and reporting for grants.
“SAVI data is essential to really
providing context to our funders, not only
by showing them where the need is within
the community, but also by demonstrating
how we’ve made a difference over time,”
said Cory Rutz, Director of Foundation and
Government Relations.
Rutz first heard about SAVI from a
colleague at the museum who had
completed a SAVI training course. SAVI
data, in conjunction with the museum’s own
data, gives more context to grant reviewers
and a richer reporting experience to donors
who support programs at the museum.
“The data and SAVI really help us tailor our
programming at the museum when we are
working with a particular school system or
particular township,” said Rutz. “We can
look more at what the needs are, what kind
of education deficits exist, what kind of
assets there are, and, sometimes, it can
help us focus our efforts in one area or
another.”
Whether at the regional level or in its
immediate neighborhood, The Children’s
Museum is using data to drive better
education—and social—outcomes for
families in Central Indiana. u
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