MDRC, Arnold Ventures Expand Groundbreaking Partnership that Supports Evidence and Data in Policymaking and Practice

New seven-year collaboration will significantly expand MDRC's work in evidence-based policy

NEW YORK, Aug. 27, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- MDRC is pleased to have received a new multiyear grant from Arnold Ventures building on a decade-long collaboration between the two organizations to promote the use of the best research and evidence to improve policies and programs serving people with low incomes.

"Over the past decade, MDRC's work with Arnold Ventures has built important, actionable evidence in numerous fields," said MDRC President Virginia Knox. "We are delighted to continue working with the Arnold Ventures team to bring decision-makers in public agencies, education systems, and other critical sectors the capacities and information they need to improve opportunity and economic mobility."

The new grant will support MDRC's work in four areas:

• bringing evidence to policymaking, particularly in states and localities,
• promoting evidence to practice through technical assistance to providers,
• supporting states and localities in leveraging their own data to improve programs and systems, and
• enhancing the field's use of applied methods to learn what works, for whom, and why.

Like Arnold Ventures, MDRC believes that high-quality research and evidence play a vital role in improving policy and practice in the United States. A nonprofit, nonpartisan organization celebrating its 50^th anniversary in 2024, MDRC conducts rigorous studies of programs and policies that affect people with low incomes, actively disseminates the lessons to policymakers and practitioners, and works directly with programs and agencies to help improve their effectiveness.

"Arnold Ventures is proud to have worked alongside MDRC over the past decade, raising the bar for rigorous research and evidence-based policymaking," said Arnold Ventures Executive Vice President of Evidence and Evaluation Justin Milner. "We're excited to deepen our partnership and further institutionalize a culture of evidence among decision-makers that will increase our collective impact in the years to come." 

Arnold Ventures has supported a variety of MDRC's evidence-building projects, including in postsecondary education, workforce development, and criminal justice, as well as MDRC's efforts to share its knowledge with public and private decisionmakers at all levels.

One new cross-cutting initiative that this grant will support is the State IMPACT Collaborative, a partnership with the Coleridge Initiative to improve state policymaking by leveraging advanced data analytics and collaborative research to foster evidence-based decision-making. The State IMPACT Collaborative will streamline data acquisition for use by evaluators and enhance the skills of state staff to conduct analyses of their own. It will bring together data providers, state employees, MDRC researchers, and Coleridge data scientists to collaborate on high-quality tests of the effectiveness of new state strategies in education, criminal justice, income support, and employment, using linked sources of government data.

SOURCE MDRC