The Justice Climate Fund (JCF) secured a landmark $940 million EPA grant to drive climate resilience initiatives in low-income and disadvantaged communities. However, they faced a critical challenge: their existing data infrastructure—built on basic Office 365 tools—couldn't support the scale and complexity required to track, measure, and optimize the impact of these substantial investments.
JCF needed more than just mandatory environmental metrics reporting—they required a comprehensive data ecosystem that could capture both primary environmental impacts and the broader economic and social effects of their initiatives to guide future investment decisions.
Holistic Data Collection Framework
We designed a multi-dimensional data architecture capturing both required environmental metrics and optional economic indicators across employment, business growth, housing, community wellbeing, infrastructure, financial resilience, and environmental justice.
Privacy-First Governance Framework
We established robust data governance and security protocols to safeguard sensitive economic and community data while enabling appropriate access and analysis.
Diverse Data Integration
We mapped primary data sources (project-specific assessments, partner reports) and secondary sources (federal, state, academic, and private sector data) to create a unified data ecosystem.
Phased Implementation Roadmap
We developed a 24-month implementation plan balancing quick wins with transformational capabilities, ensuring sustainable progress aligned with organizational capacity.
Microsoft-Optimized Technology Stack
We architected a scalable Azure-based infrastructure utilizing Data Lake Storage, Synapse Analytics, Databricks, and Machine Learning services—dramatically expanding JCF's capabilities beyond their existing Office 365 limitations.
Demonstrate Comprehensive Impact:
Move beyond basic emissions reporting to quantify the full economic and social benefits of climate initiatives in disadvantaged communities.
Make Data-Driven Decisions:
Allocate resources to projects with the highest combined environmental and economic impact, maximizing the effectiveness of grant funding.
Scale with Confidence:
Implement an infrastructure capable of handling the substantial growth in data volume and complexity as projects expand across communities.
Build Trust Through Governance:
Establish privacy-respecting protocols that encourage community participation while protecting sensitive information
Create a Foundation for Innovation:
Position the organization to leverage advanced analytics and AI as their data maturity evolves
JCF transformed what could have been merely a compliance exercise into a strategic advantage, enabling them to maximize the impact of climate investments in the communities that need them most while building a data foundation for long-term innovation.