Ingredients to Cultivating a Healthy Community Research Ecosystem

In part one of this three-part series, Matt Martin, Director of Community Research at The Columbus Foundation, lays the groundwork for this first annual Community Research Year in Review by examining the importance of insights gained through research and how it helps us plan, prepare, and react to community opportunities and challenges. Parts two and three will revisit and reflect upon the body of community reports, studies, and plans released throughout the previous year.

It’s a commonly used trope that most research studies and reports end up collecting dust on shelves without ever being used to inform any meaningful community change. While that may not be far from the truth at times, sound and strategic research can help us better understand our community’s strengths, weaknesses, challenges, opportunities, inequities, threats, and possibilities.

The insight gained through research helps us plan, prepare, celebrate points of pride, sound alarm bells, define goals, and clarify vision. Studies and reports can go viral, inspire movements and collective action, and guide multi-year policy agendas. Sometimes these reports come from within our community, while on other occasions, research conducted outside our community can shed light on things we may have overlooked or taken for granted. In short, when good research is used effectively, it drives our priorities and decisions.

This, of course, requires more than a few brilliant researchers working under perfect laboratory conditions. A healthy community research ecosystem is one in which residents, business leaders, and public officials alike are able to contribute to collective community knowledge and discern between factual realities and propaganda. This calls for a thriving educational system where lifelong learning is valued. It also requires effective journalism that adequately informs the public about the real issues facing the community. These are among the necessary ingredients to having informed residents with a baseline literacy for digesting information and interpreting data, leading to holistic community involvement that informs collective effort to strengthen and improve the community.

• Thriving Educational Systems include not only strong K-12 public schools, but also community partners and institutions that collectively equip all residents to reach their full potential and contribute to the civic good. This is why The Columbus Foundation supports educational nonprofits across central Ohio, as well as innovative initiatives like the Columbus Promise, and community pillars like the Columbus Metropolitan Library.
• Effective Journalism promotes transparency and accountability across all sectors and, in doing so, helps to achieve many of the same goals as community research by informing civic dialogue and the court of public opinion. This is why The Columbus Foundation has supported long-standing partners like local NPR and PBS affiliate WOSU, as well as pioneering efforts like the American Journalism Project and Signal Ohio.
• Appreciation for All Expertise is also crucial, because the best research isn’t just a combination of quantitative and qualitative data, but also a blend of wisdom and insight from across the entire community, including those who live beyond the shadows of academia’s ivory tower or the chambers of a city council. This is why The Columbus Foundation has embraced human-centered design by partnering with individuals and community partners to co-create deeper, more sustainable solutions to complex civic and social challenges.?
• Community Knowledge Networks cut across all sectors, and when they produce and share their work widely, can make for a more intelligent and insightful community that can make sense of data and convert it into informed policy decisions and public and philanthropic investment strategy. This is why The Columbus Foundation works alongside groups like the Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission and the Columbus Partnership to advance community knowledge across the region, and it’s why the Foundation supports and commissions research reports to help guide and inform community efforts and initiatives.?
• Organized and Accessible Information is key to cultivating and maintaining a bank of community knowledge that can be relied upon and revisited as we track civic progress. For this reason, in order to contribute to a healthier ecosystem of action-oriented community research, The Columbus Foundation is launching the first annual Community Research Year in Review, which will revisit and reflect upon the body of community reports, studies, and plans released throughout the previous year. This may include state or national reports with relevance to central Ohio and will be as exhaustive of all locally produced community research as possible [*and please bring anything to our attention that might have been missed*]. So, the next two articles in this series will recall our collective attention to all community research that was produced over the past 12 months and provide an aggregate assessment of what the year’s new research collectively reveals about central Ohio.

While each of these ingredients is important, a community that appropriately values research-backed solutions must also be able to recognize when enough research has been conducted, and what is really needed is more civic will and action based on what a plethora of reports and studies have already recommended. Central Ohio is a diverse region of communities, sectors, and industries, and as such, taking advantage of our biggest opportunities and making progress on our biggest challenges requires informed and collective effort.

Oftentimes, we’re able to gather information and make decisions with our heads and our hearts, but sometimes taking action on our collective convictions requires grit, fortitude, and sacrifice in order to strengthen the entire community and sustain it for future generations. At the end of the day, a healthy community research ecosystem therefore includes these ingredients, as well as the discipline of acknowledging that information must ultimately inform actions, policies, and investments that improve people’s lives.?

COMING UP! Parts two and three will revisit and reflect upon the body of community reports, studies, and plans released throughout the previous year.?