Empowering Advocacy Through NC Child’s Digital Data Center
Overview
NC Child is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that advocates for policies that improve the lives of all North Carolina children. The statewide nonprofit works to ensure that every North Carolina child has the opportunity to reach their full potential by elevating the voices of children and families in policy discussions, advancing efforts that address child health, education, and well-being, and serving as a resource for local and statewide policy leaders and decision makers. Although NC Child had long gathered valuable data on child health, it lacked a public-facing platform to effectively share this information. To address this, the organization partnered with Velir to design and develop an engaging data center that would showcase its research and mobilize support for its mission.
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Challenge
NC Child aimed to inspire support for its mission by making its health data and research more accessible and impactful. To accomplish this, NC Child needed a digital hub where users could easily visualize and understand its data, so that policymakers, advocates, and direct service providers could access and understand critical measures of children’s outcomes and access to services across the state. It wanted to create a data center on its website that provided both statewide and local data in an engaging, user-friendly format, making it easy for users to find and apply the information they needed.
NC Child’s challenges included:
- Creating an online platform to display a wide range of child health data
- Designing visualizations that make the data compelling and easy to understand
- Ensuring a smooth, intuitive user experience for diverse audiences
Approach
Velir began with a discovery phase, working closely with NC Child to define business goals and the desired visual identity for the data center. Our team produced design comps, functional specifications, and helped select the right data visualization tool—ultimately choosing the Google Charts API for its reliability and flexibility.
We launched an MVP version of the data center featuring multiple visualizations, including tables, line graphs, and bar charts. A second release followed with advanced features such as filtering by legislative district and a choropleth map.
Our approach included:
- Collaborating with NC Child to define goals and branding
- Creating designs and technical documentation for the experience
- Launching a fully functional MVP with key visualizations
- Enhancing the experience with additional filtering and mapping capabilities
Solution
NC Child’s data center launched in two phases — December 2024 and March 2025 — marking the first time its data was publicly accessible in a dynamic digital format. The platform now enables residents, policymakers, and advocates to explore child health trends across the state and use this information to support both NC Child’s work and their own advocacy efforts.
Results:
- Public access to rich, visually engaging child health data
- A go-to resource for policymakers, advocate partners, and direct service providers
- Advanced filtering by geography and topic
- A scalable model other child-focused organizations can follow