UCI Basic Needs: CalFresh Analysis
Project Context: I previously worked as a Program Coordinator at UCI's Basic Needs Center, where I helped manage the center's CalFresh Assistance Appointment and CalFresh Enrollment Party data. During my MSBA program, I came back to that same data and rebuilt it as an interactive dashboard the team could actually use to track performance over time.
Business Question: How is the UCI Basic Needs Center's CalFresh assistance program performing over time, and what operational changes would most improve student access and staff efficiency?
Open Interactive Dashboard →
High Priority
Overhaul the Intake Form
The Acuity intake form wasn't built for analysis, especially its overlapping student eligibility questions, which made every export painful to clean. A redesigned form with cleaner dropdowns, plus one added field capturing which eligibility a student actually used, would fix this at the source instead of in Excel every time.
Medium Priority
Build SAR7 and Recertification Outreach
CalFresh requires a SAR7 check-in at 6 months and a full Recertification (RE) at 12, and students who miss either lose their benefits. Proactive reminders tied to these deadlines, personalized once the form captures which eligibility a student actually applied under, would help more students stay enrolled instead of lapsing.
Medium Priority
Lean Into Enrollment Party's Growth
EP events have grown from 84 to 572 students a year and now outpace individual appointments. As EP keeps scaling, shifting some of its operational and tabling support to the outreach team would free advocates to focus on the one-on-one casework only they can do.
Lower Priority
Reframe Eligibility as an Awareness Problem
94% of students served already qualify for CalFresh, most through LPIE, UCI majors and programs pre-approved for automatic eligibility. Eligibility isn't the barrier anymore, awareness is, so outreach should focus on telling more students they already qualify rather than convincing them they might.
Lower Priority
Test Better No-Show Reminders
No-show rates have stayed flat for years despite generic email reminders. SMS reminders and a short personal note introducing the advocate a student will meet are both worth testing before assuming the problem can't move.
Methodology
- Data source: 6,261 CalFresh Assistance Appointment records (Jan 2022-Feb 2026) exported from Acuity Scheduling, the system the Basic Needs Center uses to book these one-on-one sessions.
- Data cleaning: done entirely in Excel, including text-to-columns parsing, manual dummy variables for eligibility, and reconciling a form that changed structure multiple times over the years.
- Dashboard build: built in Tableau Desktop and published to Tableau Public, covering completed appointments, eligibility rates, advocate workload, and SAR7/RE trends over time.
Takeaways
- Data cleaning wasn't a preliminary step, it was most of the work. A form that changed shape year over year meant almost every column needed a second look before a chart could go up.
- Coming back with new tools to a place I already knew changed what I built. I already knew which questions mattered to the team, so the dashboard could skip straight to what they'd actually use.
- The dashboard mattered less than the recommendations it made possible. The real value was translating patterns into specific, doable changes for a non-technical team.