Client Overview

A federally-funded economic development program provides technical assistance to cities implementing economic inclusion strategies—from workforce development to business support to housing policy. The program operates through a competitive cohort model, awarding planning and implementation grants to selected municipalities while providing ongoing coaching, convening opportunities, and expert consultation.

With multiple funding partners, diverse city needs, and high accountability requirements from federal stakeholders, the program needed a system that could track engagement, outcomes, and progress across all participants while maintaining transparency and building trust with funders.

Program Type: Federal Economic Development Initiative

Focus: Economic inclusion strategies across multiple municipalities

Structure: Multi-phase technical assistance program with competitive selection

Stakeholders: Municipal governments, federal funders, program staff, external consultants

The Challenge

As the program prepared to expand from its pilot phase into a larger, more competitive second cohort, the team faced critical challenges in managing stakeholder relationships and demonstrating impact:

• No systematic way to track city engagement levels, making it difficult to identify which municipalities needed additional support or were underperforming
• Funders lacked visibility into program outcomes, city progress, and how grant dollars were translating to tangible results
• Manual tracking of technical assistance calls, grant compliance requirements (MOUs, W-9s, ACH setup), and outcome metrics across multiple cities
• Different stakeholder groups needed access to the same underlying data but with appropriate permissions—cities shouldn’t see other cities’ information, funders needed aggregate views, and program staff required comprehensive oversight
• Inconsistent documentation of outcomes like new programs launched, policy actions implemented, stakeholder groups formed, and additional grants secured
• No clear accountability system to ensure cities, consultants, and staff were fulfilling their commitments

The program manager needed a way to demonstrate to federal funders that taxpayer dollars were being invested wisely, that cities were making genuine progress, and that the program deserved continued—and expanded—funding. Without a transparent, data-driven accountability system, the program risked losing funder confidence and its ability to scale impact.

The Solution

Park West Digital designed a comprehensive program management platform in Airtable that serves as both an operational backbone and a transparency tool for stakeholder accountability. The system was architected around the principle that the same data should tell different stories to different audiences—with appropriate access controls ensuring each stakeholder group sees exactly what they need, no more and no less.

Multi-Stakeholder Interface Architecture

Four tailored interfaces provide role-specific access to the unified database:

• City Interface – Participating municipalities see their own project data, technical assistance summaries, grant status, outcome tracking, and engagement metrics. Cities can update their progress, document new initiatives, and access resources without seeing other cities’ information.
• Funder Interface – Funding partners and program sponsors see aggregate metrics, individual city progress dashboards, engagement level summaries, and outcome tracking across the full cohort. This view emphasizes accountability and demonstrates return on investment.
• Staff Interface – Program managers and technical assistance providers access comprehensive calendars showing all scheduled calls, recurring events, engagement alerts, and full city records. This operational view enables proactive outreach to underperforming cities.
• Admin Interface – Senior leadership has unrestricted access to all data, reports, and system configuration, enabling strategic oversight and program evaluation.

Comprehensive Data Model

The database tracks every dimension of program operations through interconnected tables:

Data Category	What’s Tracked
Cohorts & Cities	City details, team composition, phase assignment, engagement levels
Contacts & Teams	Primary contacts, city project teams, subject matter experts, consultants
Grants & Compliance	Planning grants, implementation grants, MOU status, W-9/ACH completion, award amounts and dates
Economic Strategies	Strategies by city (workforce development, business inclusion, housing, financial empowerment), with sub-strategies and phase-specific approaches
Outcomes	New programs launched, policy actions implemented, stakeholder groups formed, federal/state grants secured
Engagement	Technical assistance calls (scheduled, completed, canceled, no-show), call summaries, engagement level classification

Automated Engagement Tracking

The system automatically classifies city engagement levels based on objective criteria:

• High Engagement – Regular participation in technical assistance calls, timely outcome documentation, proactive communication
• Low Engagement – Inconsistent call attendance, minimal progress updates, delayed documentation
• No Engagement – Repeated no-shows, non-responsive to outreach, no documented outcomes

These classifications update automatically based on call records and activity logs, removing subjective judgment and creating clear, defensible metrics for funder reporting. Program staff receive alerts when cities drop engagement levels, enabling early intervention.

Phased Program Architecture

The system was designed to accommodate the program’s evolution from pilot to scale. Phase I cities have their foundation data preserved, while Phase II introduces competitive selection, stricter performance metrics, and potentially different economic inclusion strategies. The database structure allows both cohorts to coexist with phase-specific fields and views, enabling comparative analysis while maintaining operational flexibility.

Funder Transparency Tools

Park West Digital created specialized reporting views designed specifically for federal funding partners:

• External Summaries – Pre-formatted snapshots showing program-wide outcomes, engagement distribution, and success metrics suitable for board presentations or congressional briefings
• City Progress Dashboards – Individual city views showing grant utilization, milestone completion, outcome achievement, and engagement history
• Cohort Comparison Views – Side-by-side analysis of Phase I vs. Phase II performance, enabling data-driven decisions about program structure and support intensity

Results & Impact

Funder Confidence and Trust

• Established data-driven transparency with federal partners, demonstrating exactly how grant dollars translate to municipal outcomes
• Created objective engagement metrics that remove subjectivity from performance assessment
• Enabled program manager to confidently advocate for expanded funding by showing concrete evidence of impact

Operational Efficiency

• Eliminated manual tracking of technical assistance calls, grant compliance, and outcome documentation across dozens of cities
• Centralized scheduling with automated reminders and status tracking for all stakeholders
• Streamlined reporting process through pre-built dashboards and export views

Stakeholder Accountability

• Created clear expectations and tracking mechanisms for cities, consultants, and program staff
• Provided cities with self-service access to their own data, reducing information requests to program staff
• Enabled early identification of underperforming participants, allowing for proactive support rather than reactive crisis management

Program Scalability

• Built infrastructure capable of accommodating program expansion without proportional increases in administrative burden
• Established baseline metrics from Phase I that inform Phase II design and selection criteria
• Created reusable framework applicable to future cohorts or similar multi-city technical assistance programs

Key Success Factors

Stakeholder-Centric Design

Rather than building a single administrative database, Park West Digital created a multi-faceted system where each stakeholder group has a tailored experience. Cities get the information they need to succeed. Funders get the transparency they require. Staff get the operational tools they depend on. This stakeholder-first approach ensures adoption and sustained use across all user groups.

Objective Metrics Over Subjective Judgment

By automating engagement level classification based on concrete criteria—call attendance, documentation completion, outcome reporting—the system removes bias and defensively documents performance. This is critical when federal funding requires justification and when underperforming cities need to be identified without accusations of favoritism.

Built for Evolution

The phased architecture acknowledges that program requirements will change as the initiative scales. Rather than building for current needs only, the system accommodates future cohorts, evolving strategies, and changing metrics without requiring fundamental restructuring. This forward-looking design protects the program’s investment in the platform.

Compliance as a Feature

Federal programs have unavoidable compliance requirements—MOUs, W-9s, ACH setup, grant reporting. Rather than treating these as administrative nuisances, the system integrates compliance tracking as core functionality, providing clear visibility into status and automatically flagging incomplete items. This ensures the program never loses funding due to paperwork gaps.

Conclusion

This case demonstrates that transparency and accountability don’t have to come at the cost of administrative burden. With thoughtful system design, a single database can simultaneously serve operational needs, build funder trust, empower participating cities, and position programs for sustainable scale.

For organizations managing multi-stakeholder programs—especially those with federal funding, complex grant structures, or accountability requirements—custom-built management platforms can transform how you demonstrate impact and build the trust necessary for long-term sustainability and growth.

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Ready to build accountability systems that strengthen funder relationships?

Contact Park West Digital to discuss your needs.