The Social IMPACT Research Center (IMPACT), formerly the Heartland Alliance Mid-America Institute on Poverty, offers a variety of research services designed to help your organization meet its goals, including customized research projects, data services, and a variety of other services.

Customized Research Projects | Data Services | Other Services

Customized Research Projects

Whether you’re looking for a program evaluation, a needs assessment, mapping, focus groups, surveys, or other research services, IMPACT customizes each project to meet the unique needs of our clients. Please contact IMPACT for more information.

Social Research

Many organizations seek to improve their understanding of and draw attention to the issues they address every day, but often lack the personnel, time, and know-how to effectively do so themselves. IMPACT specializes in conducting research that shines a spotlight on the social issues and solutions important to you, your program, and your advocacy and solution efforts. We produce reports, fact sheets, maps, case studies – whatever best helps you make the case for change.

Evaluations

Most organizations nowadays are encouraged or even required to evaluate their program’s effectiveness, document successes, and quantify unmet need. At IMPACT we view evaluations as more than just satisfying funder demands, but rather as opportunities to actively engage participants, staff, and administrators in continual program improvement and innovation. We will work with you to design and implement an evaluation plan that yields the information you need to improve your program.

Data Services

Sometimes the research you need has already been conducted or the data have already been collected. There is no need to recreate the wheel; IMPACT can find, review, and analyze this research and data for you – saving you valuable time and resources.

Data Requests

Many of our clients just need occasional data points for their community as they write grant reports, consider program and service expansions, or give presentations. IMPACT staff have extensive knowledge of Census and other related data sets and are skilled at extracting, analyzing, and presenting data. Submit a data request.

Data Subscription

Some organizations are more frequent data consumers, and for you we offer an annual data subscription service that allows up to 10 individual data requests per year. Inquire about our data subscription service.

Data or Research Review Contract Services

For those who have more intense time-consuming data needs, IMPACT offers a data or research review contract service. We collect the data you need and provide you with a literature review, a data book, an annotated bibliography, a best practices summary, or whatever you need to achieve your goals. Inquire about our data and research review contract services.

Other Services

IMPACT staff also have expertise facilitating planning processes, running coalitions, and providing trainings. From creating a Plan to End Homelessness to training staff on ways to access Census data sets, IMPACT can help you on the path to achieving your mission.