May 29, 2008 | Read Time: 1 minute
IssueLab, a new organization in Chicago, is using the Internet to try to win greater exposure for research conducted by nonprofit organizations.
“Our efforts are evenly split between providing a platform for organizations to archive that work, and pushing that work back out to journalists and educators and librarians and funders, really trying to build a broader audience for research, so that it isn’t just sitting on the shelf somewhere,” says Gabriela Fitz, co-director of IssueLab.
The organization has received two grants totaling $300,000 from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, in Menlo Park, Calif., in support of its work.
Each month IssueLab selects a specific topic — this month it looked at veterans’ health — and gathers research on the subject conducted by charities.
The organization is particularly interested in raising the profile of research conducted by smaller charities that don’t have a lot of money to promote and distribute their work. IssueLab, says Ms. Fitz, wants to make sure that it’s “not just the Cato Institute and the Urban Institute and the usual cast of characters that get used as sources by journalists and included in syllabi.”
While other information clearinghouses that gather data from nonprofit organizations tend to focus on a single issue or field, IssueLab takes an interdisciplinary approach, says Ms. Fitz.
“We believe that it’s really important to be able as a sector to relate findings across issue areas,” she says. “People working in housing obviously have learnings and are producing research that’s applicable to people working in poverty relief or youth development.”
To get there: Go to http://www.issuelab.org.
