Transparency & Trust
- Does greater visibility into program activity and resource allocation influence stakeholder trust?
- How does accessible reporting affect perceptions of organizational accountability?
Research • Evaluation • Collaboration
What can we learn when participation becomes measurable?
Inclusion Forward is exploring research collaborations examining how transparency, participation, stewardship, and accessible outcome reporting affect organizations and the communities they serve.
We welcome researchers, universities, graduate students, evaluators, nonprofits, foundations, public agencies, and interdisciplinary teams interested in studying these questions independently.
Independent inquiry encouraged. Positive findings are never a condition of collaboration.
The technology is only part of the question.
Organizations generate enormous amounts of information about programs, participation, funding, volunteer activity, and community engagement.
Much of that information remains fragmented across spreadsheets, forms, reports, and disconnected systems.
Inclusion Forward creates an opportunity to explore what happens when participation, stewardship, and outcomes become more visible and structured.
The questions surrounding that opportunity extend well beyond the application itself.
That is where research becomes valuable.
See the idea in 35 seconds.
Explainer video coming soon
The platform provides the infrastructure. Research determines what we can responsibly learn from it.
Questions worth investigating.
Community Participation
- Does increased visibility into community programs influence participation or continued engagement?
- What mechanisms encourage people to become active participants rather than passive recipients?
Nonprofit Operations
- Can structured activity and outcome capture reduce reporting burden?
- How does better information visibility affect organizational decision-making?
Donor & Funder Behavior
- Does clearer outcome reporting influence donor confidence, retention, or willingness to contribute?
- What information is most useful to funders evaluating community impact?
Program Evaluation
- Can structured participation data improve the ability to evaluate programs over time?
- What indicators provide meaningful evidence beyond simple attendance or dollars distributed?
Education & Youth Outcomes
- How can participation in community or educational interventions be responsibly connected with longer-term outcomes?
- What data structures make longitudinal research more practical?
Public Health & Social Outcomes
- Where appropriate, can community participation data contribute to research examining social determinants, access to resources, prevention programs, or community well-being?
Health-related research would require appropriate research governance, privacy safeguards, consent, and institutional oversight.
Corporate & Community Investment
- Does greater outcome visibility influence corporate willingness to sponsor community initiatives?
- Can transparent reporting improve relationships between sponsors and recipient organizations?
Data Science & Measurement
- What patterns can responsibly be identified across participation, programs, resources, and outcomes?
- How can researchers distinguish meaningful indicators from vanity metrics?
Human-Centered Technology
- How does technology affect participation, trust, administrative burden, accessibility, and perceptions of transparency?
There are many ways to collaborate.
Independent Research Study
Researchers design and conduct independent research involving relevant aspects of Inclusion Forward.
Graduate Thesis or Dissertation
Potential research environment for master's and doctoral work.
Capstone / Practicum
Student teams investigate a defined research, evaluation, data, policy, or technology question.
Pilot Study
Test a research question with a limited number of participating organizations before pursuing a larger study.
Program Evaluation
Explore whether Inclusion Forward can support measurement of a specific community initiative.
Longitudinal Research
Investigate relationships between participation and outcomes over longer periods where appropriate data and governance exist.
Community-Based Research
Collaborate with organizations and communities in defining the questions that matter to them.
Grant-Funded Research
Explore joint or complementary proposals involving universities, foundations, government programs, or other funders.
Data & Measurement Collaboration
Develop better indicators, measurement frameworks, reporting methodologies, or responsible data models.
Technology Research
Study transparency technology, human-computer interaction, responsible AI/data use, accessibility, or civic/nonprofit technology.
A platform for asking better questions.
Depending upon the project, participating organizations, permissions, privacy requirements, and research approvals, collaboration may potentially involve:
- Platform access
- Research or pilot environments
- Structured program/activity information
- Participation measurement
- Outcome-tracking frameworks
- Reporting workflows
- Survey or feedback mechanisms
- Participating nonprofit/community organizations
- Technical collaboration
- Data architecture discussions
- Prototype research features
- Research-specific configuration
- Aggregated or appropriately de-identified information where permitted
- Support developing research instrumentation within the platform
Research access is determined project by project. Privacy, participant rights, organizational permissions, data governance, and applicable institutional requirements come first.
We aren't looking for predetermined answers.
Good research can confirm an assumption, challenge it, or uncover something we never considered.
Inclusion Forward welcomes independent findings. Our objective is not to commission favorable conclusions about the platform.
We are interested in understanding what works, what does not, what should be measured differently, and what researchers and communities can learn from the underlying model.
Help shape what gets measured.
Inclusion Forward is still early enough that research collaboration can influence how future measurement capabilities are designed.
Researchers may have opportunities to help explore:
- meaningful outcome definitions
- measurement frameworks
- longitudinal data structures
- survey methodologies
- participation indicators
- responsible data practices
- accessibility
- reporting methodologies
- evaluation frameworks
Instead of retrofitting research onto years of existing data, there is an opportunity to think about measurement from the beginning.
You don't need to have a finished research proposal.
We welcome conversations with:
- Faculty exploring a research question.
- Graduate students searching for thesis or dissertation opportunities.
- Students looking for meaningful capstone projects.
- Research centers interested in community data and social impact.
- Nonprofits seeking better ways to evaluate programs.
- Foundations interested in measurement and transparency.
- Public agencies studying community interventions.
- Evaluators developing new measurement approaches.
- Data scientists interested in responsible social-impact measurement.
- Corporate social-impact teams exploring better ways to understand community investment.
- And interdisciplinary teams whose work doesn't fit neatly into one category.
See something we haven't considered?
Some of the most valuable collaborations may not fit any category on this page.
If Inclusion Forward intersects with a research question, community challenge, evaluation model, academic project, funded initiative, or data problem you're already exploring, we would like to hear about it.
Tell Us What You're ExploringStart the conversation.
Bring the question. Let's explore it.
Whether you're considering a dissertation, pilot study, program evaluation, capstone, grant proposal, community research project, or something we haven't imagined yet, we're open to the conversation.
InclusionForward.com