to not only participate in research on their own terms, but to lead it.

This guide, and understanding how other community organizations are using research to serve their justice mission, can help you navigate the risks and make your decision about whether to do research now, or not.

Organizations have said “no” to doing research even where when the funding for it was available, for example, because their partners or participants were tired of being researched. If you do decide to participate in research, there are a range of ways to begin. Your research can draw on multiple approaches, depending on where you see benefit in an external perspective or voice, and where your wisdom and capabilities lie. Like all people, individual researchers may be biased towards approaches they are familiar with, and their emphasis on first building trust with your organization will vary. It is important you get informed. Where you feel you can, engage with funders and researchers and speak up. When you do this, you further relationships and mutual accountability. This guide can travel the journey with you.

in recognizing their immense influence and unintended bias in shaping the questions asked, and the inputs used to answer them.

In all cases related to knowledge creation, researchers wield substantial power in shaping the questions asked, and the inputs used to answer them. How research gets done—the approaches, methods, metrics—has a system of assumptions built in. The guide provides a series of questions to push for more equitable approaches to arrive at a more authentic truth.  

Because evidence truly matters, we must care how it is made. The existing power dynamic between community organizations, researchers, and funders is getting in the way of the scale of impact that we, collectively intend. The power dynamics between specific researchers, funders, and community organizations will vary. Some funding, including government grants, will impose restrictions. Some community organizations may feel comfortable asking questions and asserting their perspectives; others may fear that being assertive may jeopardize the opportunity and funding. In all cases, researchers wield substantial power in shaping the questions asked, and the inputs used to answer them.

Depending on the kinds of research you do, your research institution, and your own experience, the action you take will look different.

For example, you may:

• • Reflect individually or engage with your colleagues and institution on biases and how these flow into your research
  • Change how you engage with community to identify research questions and study outcomes
  • Propose timelines for research differently, for example to support trust-building, or to develop survey instruments with community input and community testing
  • Interrogate numbers and stories you lift up, and use different framing in what you publish
  • Evaluate your own work differently, or engage your funder stakeholders differently

Making intentional change can feel messy and uncomfortable. It requires openness to new perspectives and unlearning old ones. It requires shifting power dynamics, departing from how “it has always been done.” Starting from relationship and accountability, researchers can unlock immense creativity, to achieve the promise of what knowledge can yield for communities.

to ask hard questions about their agendas, unlock more meaningful knowledge, and therefore achieve greater impact.

Funders are a driver of the economy of research and evaluation: funding the production of research, incentivizing its creation, shaping its form, consuming its outputs. Government funding is influenced by the evidence philanthropic investments produce. The guide includes questions around history and personal biases, board dynamics, and more, in order to support community partners’ ability to participate in research with full voice.

Individual funders relate to research differently. Some may fund research to generate knowledge for policymakers and other funders on what works and what does not. Others may fund evaluation to assess the impact of their funding, for their or their boards’ own consumption. Still others may fund research in service of a community organization’s growth or to change narratives. Those that do not fund research at all may participate in the research economy by using data to direct their funding or to summarize the impact of their work.

Depending on your particular relationship with research, the action you take to unlock more meaningful knowledge, and therefore greater impact, will look different.

For example, you may:

• • Change the research questions you are willing to fund
  • Fund and set timelines for research differently
  • Issue Requests For Proposals, or RFPs, for research differently or guide and evaluate your evaluators differently
  • Engage with board and staff on internal processes and biases, especially relating to how you use data
  • Interrogate numbers and stories you lift up, and use different framing in what you publish

In all cases, it will require challenging what has “always been done.” This may not be tidy, or comfortable. But starting from accountability and relationship, funders can help to achieve the promise of what knowledge could yield.

Each funder may, in asking the questions throughout the guidebook, find answers appropriate to their own work. Chicago Beyond has shared some of our experience to illustrate.