Our partnerships often start like this: An organization comes to us with a question they want answered or a program or policy decision they need to make. The first thing we do is help them clarify their goals, the audiences they're trying to inform or influence, and their budget and timing constraints. Then, drawing on our decades of expertise and experience, we design a plan for them. While that plan may include conducting data collection and analysis for them, we often help them build their research, analytic, and data science capabilities through consulting, training, or other services. And we support them through the full arc of their projects, advising them on how to disseminate their findings to have the greatest effect.   

We also act as strategy consultants. For instance, we partnered with the Parkinson's Foundation on a strategic plan that will guide all its program offerings and investments over five years and make its outreach more responsive to the needs of Americans with Parkinson's disease. In this case, we leveraged our previous research with the foundation to identify unmet needs and groups that weren't being reached. By collecting and analyzing research data, we've helped other foundations quantify the impact of their grants so they can be more effective donors. We've even drafted organization charts and budgets for clients to staff up new initiatives.