Using Data to Support the Narrative

THE MARIN COMMUNITY FOUNDATION

Finding the Story

The Marin Community Foundation is a philanthropic organization whose mission is, quite simply, to “help improve the human condition.” MCF came to Tenfold with a project close to home: to communicate the fact that, despite commonly held misconceptions about San Francisco’s famous semi-rural bedroom community, there is poverty in Marin County. Working with raw datasets, we let the numbers tell the story.

Testing Assumptions

The “Profile of Need”’ that evolved as we amassed, assessed, and organized the data illustrates that 35% of Marin households lie below the self-sufficiency standard, a fact made all the more vivid when compared with the same stats for Alameda County (38%), where one assumes that poverty is much more prevalent. The project served as a call to action for MCF donors.