Common Sense by Emerald South
Impact Recon · research for people working on social problems

Find who's doing the work—and who backs it.

Start with a problem you care about. See the organizations tackling it, what they have tried, what the research says, and how the work was supported. Follow the sources before deciding whom to learn from, work with or approach for funding.

Research preview · Original sources linked · AI connection available in a private preview

A worked example

What Denver's supportive-housing experiment can actually tell us

For a Chicago nonprofit, a list of housing funders is only a start. The Denver study lets us separate evidence about the work from the roles of the organizations that delivered and financed it.

Read the Urban study ↗
What the study found

More time housed; fewer days in jail

In a randomized study of 724 people, those referred to supportive housing received 560 more days of housing assistance over three years and spent an average of 38 fewer days in jail than the usual-care group. The emergency-medical-service difference was not statistically significant.

Source: Urban Institute, 2021 ↗
Who did the work

Providers and intermediaries had different jobs

Colorado Coalition for the Homeless and Mental Health Center of Denver delivered the housing services. Corporation for Supportive Housing and Enterprise Community Partners served as pay-for-success intermediaries.

Source: Urban partner list ↗
Who backed it

This financing was not an open grant call

Eight private investors supplied $8.6 million up front. Denver made outcome payments tied to housing and jail-day goals. The Denver Foundation and The Colorado Health Foundation appear on the investor list; that role alone does not make them current grant prospects.

Source: Urban financing report ↗

The useful distinction: The evaluation supports learning from this Denver program. The partner list shows who carried it out. The financing record shows who took investment risk. None of those sources proves that a Chicago organization can apply to a Denver investor for a grant today.

For a Chicago nonprofit

Three different investigations

A useful answer separates learning from practitioners, finding local collaborators and checking whether any funder is genuinely approachable.

Learn

Ask how the model worked

Study the Denver providers' service design and the intermediaries' pay-for-success structure. Their named roles are documented; their availability for a new partnership is not.

See named partners ↗
Partner

Investigate a local operating model

Chicago's Center for Housing and Health describes a Flexible Housing Pool with community-provider subcontracts. Its page includes an older expansion notice, so check for a current opening before treating it as a live solicitation.

See the program ↗
Funding research

Test a route before calling it a match

W. P. & H. B. White Foundation names Chicago housing and accepts quarterly proposals. We have not verified a comparable supportive-housing grant or fit for a specific applicant, so this is a candidate to investigate, not a recommended prospect.

Check the foundation's guidelines ↗

No grant prospect was validated by this example. The Denver study does not predict another city's results.

How the research works

Follow the connection. Check what it means.

Our research joins public nonprofit records, reported funding, organization documents and impact studies. The graph helps locate possible connections; original records and current organization sources tell us what those connections mean.

Find the work

Start with a problem, an organization or a study. A shared topic helps us find leads to investigate; it does not prove two organizations worked together.

Name the role

Separate service providers, funders, investors, intermediaries and evaluators. A financing partner in one project may have a different role elsewhere.

Show the record

Link material findings to the original study, filing or organization source. Mark what the record shows, what needs interpretation and what remains unknown.

Read the method and data limits →

Work with the research

Built for a better next question

A nonprofit can learn from comparable work before deciding whom to approach. A foundation can see practitioners and evidence outside its familiar grantee list. A consultant can trace who supported a model and where the record stops.

The example above was assembled with internal research and original-source review. It shows the question this project is built to answer. The current AI connection helps with narrower research steps in ChatGPT, with source checks where the graph is thin.

Ask Azimuth about the private preview →