Mission: The Social IMPACT Research Center provides dynamic research and analysis on today’s most pressing social issues and solutions to inform and equip those working toward a just global society.
The Social IMPACT Research Center (IMPACT), formerly the Heartland Alliance Mid-America Institute on Poverty, is a full-service research and evaluation resource. IMPACT's research helps organizations raise the profile of social issues and promote solutions that improve the quality of life for poor and low-income individuals. Since 1989, IMPACT has been investigating a variety of social issues and solutions.

The hallmark of IMPACT's work is our poverty, economic security, and housing-related research. Through nearly a decade of producing the annual Report on Illinois Poverty , IMPACT has become the established source for data on poverty issues. Our work successfully resonates with elected officials as well as non-experts due to our effective way of communicating otherwise complex and confusing data.

Each of our research projects is formulated to leverage strategic policy change or program enhancement. IMPACT frequently works with groups to identify data that support the case for needed policy change. Our data is leveraged and used by many groups in their action alerts and issue fact sheets. Additionally, our analyses and reports are user-friendly and geared toward real-world application, including only the most salient data and presenting it in meaningful ways.