November 2016 - Parks & Recreation - 14

Research
Introducing NRPA Park Metrics
The streamlined, interactive performance database formerly known as PRORAGIS
By Kevin Roth, Ph.D.

llow me to introduce - perhaps, more appropriately, reintroduce - you
to a friend: NRPA Park Metrics. This is the most comprehensive source
of data standards and insights for park and recreation agencies available
anywhere. It is an all-inclusive suite of agency performance resources to
assist park and recreation professionals in the effective management and planning of
their operating resources and capital facilities.
NRPA Park Metrics (www.nrpa.org/
metrics) includes not only an annual report
on the state of park and recreation, but also
a series of interactive tools that enable park
and recreation agencies to build customized
reports that allow for comparisons with
peer agencies. Park and recreation professionals can use this benchmark data to gain
more funding support, improve operations
and better serve their communities.
Renamed and Improved
If NRPA Park Metrics sounds familiar to

12 Parks & Recreation

you, it is because you already know it. It
is the new name for PRORAGIS. During
the past year, we have made a number of
improvements to PRORAGIS based on
the passionate feedback you shared with
us. The new name better reflects the benefits of this powerful resource.
One of the biggest changes we made
was a drastic streamlining of the survey
instrument that collects PRORAGIS
data. The new questionnaire takes far
less time to complete and only asks questions that are relevant to a majority of

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park and recreation agencies.
The resulting Agency Performance Survey instrument, launched late last year, collects all of its information in just 30 questions, broken into eight different sections:
* Jurisdiction (location, population, size
of area served)
* Agency Operations (operating expenditures, revenue sources)
* Capital Budget (current year, five-year
capital budget)
* Personnel (FTE counts, distribution of
responsibilities)
* Workload (number of parks and buildings, mileage of trails, number of people served)
* Agency Responsibilities (what agencies operate, maintain, contract)
* Facilities (counts of facilities, athletic
fields)
* Activities (sports leagues, cultural offerings, out-of-school time programs)
Most importantly, the streamlined survey instrument respects your time. If your
agency has not filled out an Agency Performance Survey in recent years, you, like
most agencies, can enter your data in 20
to 30 minutes. Even better, agencies that
have entered their data in recent years can
update their 2016 NRPA Park Metrics
data in just a matter of minutes. The online survey form allows you to " push " prior year's data into the current year's form.
After transferring this data, all you need
to update are a few figures for the current
fiscal year and you are done. In many cases, an agency can update its NRPA Park
Metrics data in less than 10 minutes.
Why wait? The 2016 Agency Performance Survey is now open to accept your
agency's NRPA Park Metrics data. Go to

November 2016 - Parks & Recreation

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