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Successful Research Collaborations: Rules of Engagement For Community-Based Organizations

Author: Harlem Children's Zone | Year of Publication: 2012

Community-based organizations (CBOs) are frequently asked to provide evidence of their organizational effectiveness. Both private and public funders increasingly want proof their dollars are producing the desired outcomes. As a result, many nonprofits and CBOs have embraced a data-driven approach and found it has broader uses: As they begin to understand “what works,” they save time and money by choosing or keeping only the most effective and rigorously evaluated strategies that produce the strongest outcomes.

This focus on evidence has also spawned new collaborations between academic research organizations and CBOs. CBOs may lack the methodological and statistical expertise needed to conduct rigorous research on their own, having prioritized expertise in the subjects most crucial to service delivery. Or they may have the expertise but lack dedicated funding. Many small nonprofits scrape by without funding sources for research and evaluation and produce only the data their funders require. In such cases, the information gleaned from the process may not be used, or useful, in the end.

This paper provide guidelines for CBOs, and in particular Promise Neighborhoods lead organizations, to consider when working with external evaluators and researchers. The Harlem Children’s Zone (HCZ) has learned many lessons over more than 30 years of collaborating with researchers. In this paper, HCZ offers its perspective to other CBOs and to share the knowledge it has gathered with those newer to the process. The recommendations are not requirements, nor are they perfect for every research partnership. HCZ offers them as a starting point from which other CBOs can develop their own policies and rules for engaging successfully in research collaborations.

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