NNIP Partner Organizations
NNIP Partner organizations all commit to ensuring that their communities have access to data and the skills to use information to advance equity and well-being across neighborhoods. They serve as data translators and navigators, educators, convenors, collaborators, and voices for change. NNIP partner organizations vary in institutional structure and funding, but they all aim to be a permanent, ongoing resource to their community. Specifically, they:
- assemble, transform, and maintain data
- disseminate information and apply the data to achieve impact; and
- build community data capacity to understand conditions and improve outcomes.
NNIP partners specialize in assembling and transforming local administrative data from public agencies that cover many sectors, such as records on births, crimes, properties, or students' education. They use data publicly available through open data portals or confidential data that require special protections. Using these data, partners create actionable and relevant indicators at the neighborhood-level to demonstrate how conditions vary within a place. The data are also updated over time to reduce the costs of data assembly for any one project and to track trends in communities.
In applying the data to achieve impact, NNIP views data as a tool that can bring stakeholders together to make progress on ambitious community goals. NNIP partners aim to provide independent analysis driven by the data and to be critical consumers and understand how each data source can be used and how it shouldn’t. But we recognize that data are shaped by the biases of the people and institutions that create them and have been used to harm people and communities. Data collection and analysis should abide by principles that prioritize justice, respect for people, and community benefits. We know involving people and communities represented in the data in the collection, interpretation, and dissemination of information will lead to better data, conclusions, and decisionmaking.
Finally, NNIP partners build community data capacity so people can access and use data to inform efforts to understand outcomes and improve outcomes where they live. Examples of activities include partners conducting training on data and technology, collaborating with local governments on open data, or holding community events to promote the use of data.
NNIP Alumni Program
Relationships are the foundation of NNIP. The NNIP alumni program furthers our mission to help local communities use data to shape strategies and investments so that all neighborhoods are places where people can thrive. The program consists of people who had previously been affiliated with the network, either at a partner organization or through the Urban Institute, and who have moved on to other organizations or retired but wish to continue to stay connected.
Our alumni are critical to the partnership as they continue to contribute their knowledge and experience to the network. They also bring NNIP values and lessons to their new organizations and share perspectives and insights gained from their new experiences and institutions.
About the Urban Institute
The Urban Institute coordinates NNIP, in collaboration with the elected Executive Committee. As the network’s coordinator, the Urban Institute:
- strengthens the ability of local organizations to expand the use of data through peer-learning activities and new partner development;
- learns about innovative methods and practices through NNIP cross-site projects and exchange with people with expertise outside the network; and
- elevates insights and innovations from NNIP communities through publications and presentations.
The Urban Institute is a research-to-impact institution founded on one simple idea: To improve lives and strengthen communities, we need practices and policies that work. From advancing well-being to fostering shared prosperity, leaders across sectors are working every day to create brighter futures for all people and communities. For more than 50 years, Urban has delivered evidence and solutions that drive meaningful change, and this remains our charge today.