What we do
To do our work well, we have to understand the needs of the communities where we invest and gauge the on-the-ground impact of those investments on people’s lives. LISC also recognizes that to be truly responsive to community needs, our investments must be directed by local voices, and help build and strengthen neighborhood organizations addressing the root causes of community challenges. And because even our most substantial investments cannot alone solve for centuries of inequity and exclusion, our work needs to inform and support policy and systems change to promote racial, economic, and gender justice.
The Community Research & Impact team supports LISC’s work by conducting studies to evaluate the impact of both our own initiatives and public policies that shape outcomes in urban and rural areas. We also work with LISC’s national programs, local offices and community partners to strengthen organizations, develop more effective programs, and contribute to policy and systems change. Finally, we help integrate research and data into the design and implementation of a range of local and national programmatic and policy change initiatives.
Find our research roadmap here, and visit the LISC Institute for Community Power for our recent reports, webinars, and other resources.
How we do it
- Measuring impact: Using methods that are rigorous, transparent, and participatory, we describe the impact of our work and those of our partners. And even more importantly, we show how communities come together to achieve this impact, so lessons can be applied elsewhere.
- Lifting up innovation: We identify significant emerging policies and programs that support resilient and inclusive communities of opportunity.
- Supporting learning, program design, and evaluation needs: We help our local offices and their partners by providing evidence, training, and advising that strengthens their programs. At the national level, we support analysis of new strategic initiatives, from supporting career pathways to promoting climate resilience.
Featured resource
This report from the LISC Community Research and Impact team describes COPA and TOPA policies at work and their outcomes in DC and San Francisco, implementation lessons, and evidence about the impact of these policies based on preliminary LISC analyses of housing market dynamics in New York City.
