Collaboration provides data analysis tool for diocese

By DAWN PROSSER
Director of Communications 
 
A collaborative effort with the University of Iowa will allow the diocese to be able take a deep dive into demographic data throughout the Diocese of Sioux City’s 24 counties. The information will assist in decision making and planning, amongst other activities.
 
Deacon Mark Prosser, Bishop Walker Nickless’ chief of staff, explained the Diocese of Des Moines recently partnered with the University of Iowa Tippie School of Business for a successful demographic study. A similar opportunity was offered to the other Iowa dioceses, and all accepted the proposal to participate and take a closer look at their own territories.
 
“After several meetings, Dubuque, Davenport and Sioux City (dioceses) all said we’d like to do some demographic deep dives in our individual diocese. So, we entered into an agreement - a memorandum of understanding (MOU) - for this study to occur in the spring semester of 2025 via the University of Iowa,” the deacon explained, adding that the Des Moines Diocese was signing on for a second year of demographic study with the university.
 
To start the process, diocesan staff provided existing school and parish information to the students. Maria Garcia, administrative assistant at the Central Catholic Offices, is serving as the point person for the project, working with the chief of staff.
 
“We’ve not shared any personal information of any parishioner or anything like that,” Deacon Prosser stressed. “But we have addresses of where people live with no names attached. We’ve isolated all the zip codes of our 24 counties. We’ve entered data by grade and by school of the last 11 years of all our Catholic schools to help look at trends.”

Maria Garcia video conferencing meeting with the business students

At the same time, a team of three University of Iowa business students assigned to the Sioux City Diocese started to gather public information including from the U.S. Census that such as population, age, income and other data.
 
“They’re going to cross reference this and blend it into a series of pie charts, mapping and other (presentations),” the deacon explained.
Garcia said she has been meeting with the student team each Wednesday since February via video conferencing. Deacon Prosser and Garcia shared information about the diocese and the deaneries and as well as what kinds of information the diocese would want to have available at the conclusion of the project.
 
Population trends are an area that the chief of staff asked the students to concentrate upon in their work for the diocese.
 
“We know we’ve experienced loss in 16 of our 24 counties – a population loss from the last census. Our net gain in the other eight counties pretty much was the gain by an immigrant population,” he said. “We wanted to focus on some specific areas where we know we have large, diverse populations. We want to look at that makeup and do a deep dive into the data research and see what the overall impact on the diocese is.”
 
When the students reached the middle of the term earlier this month, they presented the data collected through charts and tables to Garcia and the deacon.
 
“They completed a 23-minute briefing as their mid-semester report. I was very pleased with some of the charts,” Deacon Prosser said.
 
Connecting the data
The business students entered information into Excel and are integrating it into Power BI, a Microsoft software tool that will connect the data sources for the diocese staff to access.
 
Garcia is training to use the software, which she and the deacon said will be very useful for the diocesan departments as well as the parishes and schools.
 

The team reviewed the diocesan deanery map

“We had a meeting with the Archdiocese of Dubuque and they showed us a little bit of how they use the system and what they use it for like their pastoral planning and Mass counts,” Garcia said, noting she recognized how Power BI will benefit the Sioux City Diocese. “It’s going to be a really nice tool that I feel a lot of departments would be able to take advantage of and use, especially pastoral planning.”
 
The Diocese of Des Moines has found the work of their University of Iowa student team to be very helpful to their development office, Deacon Prosser said.
 
“They were looking at the trends in their diocese, the mean cost of homes, where there may be pockets of poverty and things like that will help their diocese react to that. We would look at that too, to see if there’s special needs in those places,” he explained.
 
Helpful to new bishop
As the diocese will have a new bishop taking possession of the diocese on May 1, having the demographic information available will help Bishop-elect John Keehner get a better sense of the Diocese of Sioux City.
 
The deacon said the future bishop can determine future pastoral planning needs or take a closer look in areas including population trends demographics, ethnicity and others.
 
 “We can isolate it by parish, by school, by city, by county and currently they are also breaking out the data by deanery,” the chief of staff said.
 
Parishes and schools will access data once the project is completed. The information can assist them when considering a capital campaign, expansion or other changes, he said.
 Before the end of the semester, the business students will ensure their diocesan clients have the tools they need to use Power BI and continue to add data in the future. 

“As we move towards the end of the semester, the plan is to have an in-person meeting of all four student teams with all four dioceses somewhere in the state of Iowa,” Deacon Prosser pointed out. “I certainly hope that Maria and I could go meet these young men that are on this team in-person and the professors that oversee the project.”
 
Garcia said the student team will perpare a manual for her to use Power BI and the data collected as well as share any issues they encountered so she can use the software independently after the semester concludes.
 
As the data collection and instruction on using the software will be very valuable to the diocese, the financial investment was relatively small.
 
“We’re getting all of this work done for just a donation to the school of business. Each diocese made a $1,000 donation towards this. If we hired a software company or any other organization to pull all this together, it would be tens of thousands of dollars. So, the price was right and it provides students great experience,” the deacon explained, noting the software cost is under $50 per year. “It’s really going to give us a comprehensive report.”