We Believe in Your Data—Here's Why

At mySidewalk, we’ve spent more than a decade building one of the most comprehensive community data platforms in the country, fueled by a library of standardized, public data. We believe in its power to shine light on community assets, measure equity gaps, and unlock better decision-making.

But we also believe something else—just as deeply:

Your data is just as valuable as ours.

Whether it lives in a spreadsheet on your desktop, a separate data service, or in a survey you just wrapped up, your local, primary, and third-party data tells the story no federal source ever could. It reflects the nuance, priorities, creativity, and reality of the work you’re doing in your own community.

That’s why we’ve never just been a data library. Our platform is the place where your data and our data can live together, side by side, unified for analyses and visualization, storytelling and publication, and, ultimately, change.

Now, we’ve made that integration easier than ever.

Why Unifying Data Matters

When you bring your own data into mySidewalk—whether it’s park locations, program stats, or foot traffic—you’re not just uploading a file. You’re putting your lived expertise in direct conversation with nationally sourced indicators.

You’re making your context visible to funders, stakeholders, and neighbors. You’re eliminating silos, saving time, and making local truth legible.

A Long History of Unification Headaches

Getting data from different sources to work together has been a challenge overwhelmed organizations have faced for a long time. It’s one of the first hurdles our platform helps overcome. Transform, quality assure, update and maintain billions of highly sought-after data ranging dozens of topics? Handled.  

But for some time now, organizations of all kinds have been uploading their data into our platform, looking into factors like hospitalization rates alongside the prevalence of diabetes, to complete the picture. 

While it was possible, admittedly, it wasn’t all that simple. The kinds of data and formatting required were limiting and time-consuming. So after talking with our customers, understanding their current needs, we got our team together and asked ourselves, “Can we also make it super easy for our customers to include their own data in the picture?”

We decided the answer was yes. 

We saw the deep value in unlocking these kinds of insights for our customers—and we knew to make it as easy as possible for all of them.

Unlocked and Ready for Local Action

Now, with improvements to our original Data Upload tool and the launch of our new AI-powered Smart Upload (in beta now), that act of data unification is more intuitive, more accessible, and more powerful than ever.

But what really makes this feature update a big deal is that it makes more data more actionable.

Understanding Local Impact of Federal Policy

County departments take on the responsibility for many of the day-to-day services and needs of the public, and providing leadership to local communities often includes navigating shifts to the national landscape. Leaders are preparing for large changes and budget cuts from federal programs like SNAP, Medicare, and Medicaid.

The U.C. Berkeley Goldman School of Public Policy’s Agile Government Initiative is led and described by Dr. Shannon Arvizu as a new effort to “equip present and future policymakers with the tools necessary to deliver the right things, in the right way, and at the right speed, even in times of disruption and change.” 

This summer, Dr. Arvizu's team was initially going to work on documenting historical case studies on federal and state government agility during the COVID-19 pandemic. But with sweeping changes to state and federal Medi-Cal policies, the team's focus turned to a more current need—prototyping local data products to help county governments monitor and respond to the impacts of Medicaid changes in their communities. While there was information regarding what the impacts would look like nationally and even statewide, Dr. Arvizu said,  "We asked ourselves, Can we develop an agile policy research product that could be helpful in this moment?"

The Counties R.I.S.E. (Research Initiative in Service Essentials) pilot included 15+ counties, all with varying populations, needs, and priorities. The pro-bono Medi-Cal County Snapshots are designed to be educational, non-partisan, and accessible resources, easy for anyone to understand regardless of their experience with Medi-Cal.

With local data unified alongside our library, counties were able to understand: 

• how many people currently rely on programs that provide critical resources to individuals and families,
• how access to these vital resources may shift over time due to evolving policy decisions
• and the kinds of population health and economic impacts the community as a whole will endure

“The biggest impact is being able to make the data visual,” said Dr. Arvizu. “When you can make a map and a story out of information that is typically available in a spreadsheet, you give people something new.”

While most counties did have some sort of dashboard, the information wasn’t framed in terms of a data story. Oftentimes, departments are left with reports listing enrollment numbers and racial and income demographics.

“We had yet to encounter any county that had produced a data product like this that was specifically focused on both the federal and state changes with the contextual narration that helped people understand what’s happening now and what might be happening in the future,” Dr. Arvizu stated.

Throughout the development of the R.I.S.E. Snapshots, there was a large effort to ensure they would be actionable. And with California counties of diverse demographics and industries, from rural to urban to suburban, more industrial to more agricultural, including the leaders who knew their communities best was critical.

“We knew that we were only going to be successful if we developed these policy snapshots in close coordination with the counties themselves,” Dr. Arvizu said. “If county-level stakeholders had a data product to help them make sense of changes, one that could actually be helpful for them in their decision-making moving forward,  we could strengthen their communications and advocacy work.”

Putting data together in easy-to-navigate dashboards featuring visualizations and narrative not only gives readers a comprehensive look at the total costs and loss, but also directions for resiliency and action.

In California, participating counties are already using their Snapshots for practical department communication, planning, and advocacy. Leaders have already stated they plan to share them with their boards of supervisors and even help direct the media to reliable information.

Putting the Pieces Together

Using mySidewalk’s data upload tools is one of the most powerful moves to getting a more precise perspective of your community. Combining your data with the intelligence of our platform can pull your insights into the right frame. 

Say, you're like one of our customers who wanted to understand the potential service area of a community theater infrastructure and rehabilitation project and its impact on the economic development and growth of the surrounding neighborhoods. By leveraging data upload, custom geography, and apportionment tools, you can get a much clearer view of how, how many, and where low-moderate-income individuals might benefit from the plan. 

Comparing that plan’s impact to another, or the hundreds of other plans put together every day by organizations working to help communities thrive, is the reality of many of our customers.  

Grants for community projects of all kinds are competitive, especially as resources continue to become more and more limited. 

Enabling our customers to evaluate data fairly and accurately, apples-to-apples, and to be precise down to the block group means donors and decision-makers can be confident the most impactful programs, new developments, and reinvestments get the support they need—and communities see the action and change they deserve.

Smart Where it Matters

All of this is possible because we’ve rethought what it means to “upload a file”—and we let our customers lead the way for what we were building.

• Smarter Location Matching: Detects cities, counties, ZIPs—even if they’re abbreviated, misspelled, or unusual.
• Automatic Geocoding: Upload street addresses, and we’ll handle the mapping.
• Real-Time Feedback: See and fix issues before finalizing. No guesswork, no frustration.
• Support for Non-Spatial Data: Bring in surveys, performance metrics, program stats, or logs—even without location columns.
• AI-Powered Smart Upload (Beta): For complex or messy files, Smart Upload helps you reformat, geocode, and structure your data with ease. And it makes you a pioneer on our journey to create the smartest, most innovative tools technology allows us to create.

And these aren’t just technical upgrades. They’re expressions of our philosophy: that every user deserves powerful tools to make their data work for them.

What Happens When Data Comes Together

No longer do spreadsheets of numbers live siloed alongside each other. In a world where data comes together, works together, it amplifies your impact. We want our customers to live in a world where they can do things like:

1. Upload neighborhood-level food access data
2. Compare it to national food insecurity rates and grocery store density
3. Publish a public-facing map showing both
4. And tell a story that drives change—faster, smarter, and more clearly

This is what we mean when we say we believe in your data. We’re not just making it easier to upload a file—we’re making it easier to turn your insight into impact. Because when data comes together, so do better plans to make communities stronger.

Already a user? Log in to see the new upload experience and try Smart Upload beta.