What was built An educational infrastructure decision-support dashboard mapping seven active school construction sites across Nepal — integrating construction status, funding metrics, and narrative photography to support donor engagement and program planning decisions across two distinct stakeholder audiences.
Who it was for Building Education's development team and board leadership — for use in donor meetings, program reporting, and resource allocation decisions across Nepal's active school construction portfolio.
Why it mattered Nonprofit dashboards typically optimize for one stakeholder audience and compromise the other. This one was architecturally designed to serve both simultaneously — the same project pin, two different experiences, one tool that works across every donor conversation.

The Challenge

Service delivery organizations face a persistent spatial data problem: program status information sits in spreadsheets, not in a format that makes geographic distribution, construction progress, and funding gaps visible to decision-makers at a glance. Building Education operates seven active school construction sites across Nepal — a geographically dispersed program where resource allocation, donor engagement, and site prioritization all have a spatial dimension that text reports can't communicate.

The dashboard had to serve two fundamentally different stakeholder audiences simultaneously: analytically-driven donors who need construction timelines, funding progress, and student reach metrics — and relationship-driven donors who connect through photography, narrative, and human impact. Both audiences make funding decisions. Neither could be compromised.

The answer was layered architecture. The map itself carries the data layer: seven project sites across Nepal, each with construction status, classroom counts, and funding metrics accessible on click. But the pop-up panels were designed as storytelling units — photography, narrative context, human-impact content integrated alongside the numbers. Both audiences click on the same school pin. Both get what moves them.

The dashboard is also designed as a living spatial dataset — new sites can be added as the organization expands. It's used to support program planning and donor engagement decisions, and will launch publicly as the centerpiece of an upcoming website overhaul.

"Before I started designing, I asked: what decision is each person trying to make? Two audiences. Two sets of triggers. One dashboard that serves both."

Process

  1. 1
    Research Interviewed stakeholders; identified two distinct donor audiences and their decision-making triggers; mapped what each audience needs to see.
  2. 2
    Data Prep Structured 7 project sites with construction status, funding amounts, classroom counts, student reach, and project timelines.
  3. 3
    GIS Work Built dual-audience layout in ArcGIS Experience Builder; designed pop-up panels with data + narrative + photography; tested for both audience types.
  4. 4
    Output Complete ArcGIS Experience Builder dashboard prototype; approved by staff; launching with website redesign as a public-facing donor engagement and program transparency tool.
Principle 02
The map is for a person making a decision

Every design decision — layout, pop-up content, data shown — should trace back to a specific person and a specific decision they need to make. If you can't name who the map is for, you can't design it well.