You may have never heard of Community Research Partners, but that’s OK. It’s more important that it exists.
Founded in 2000 as a partnership of the United Way of Central Ohio, the city of Columbus, Franklin County and The Ohio State University, CRP was developed to collect, analyze and disseminate original and secondary data. It helps organizations in the public, philanthropic and nonprofit sectors understand community conditions, trends, resources and needs.
These self-described research geeks create reports like the Franklin County Youth Needs Assessment or The Columbus Foundation’s Benchmarking Central Ohio reports.
For the first decade, however, CRP’s financials were in constant question.
“When I came on board, we certainly weren’t financially stable. We didn’t have cash reserves or anything. That has changed over the last three and a half years because we have been able to identify a business model,” says Executive Director Lynnette Cook.
The organization has transitioned from being a traditional nonprofit with grant-funded projects to a social enterprise. Cook says about 85 to 90 percent of CRP’s revenue now comes from fee-for-service projects.
“I’ve said many times, I’m never going to compete with babies, old people and puppies,” she says. “There are lots of great and compelling causes out there for philanthropic contributions and that’s just never really going to be us — even though people say absolutely, we need high-quality data to make decisions about community needs. It’s not something that tends to be a compelling ask for a donation.”
The good news, though, is in many ways, CRP can achieve even better on its mission if the business side of things runs smoothly.
“It is easier to achieve on the mission when you are running as an efficient business — and that was a powerful learning experience,” Cook says.
Cost differentials
When CRP was founded, there wasn’t a direct link between a project and its cost. It was: “Here’s the research we need and we’ll figure out a way to do fundraising to support the cost of that,” Cook says.
Now, the organization has an Excel spreadsheet that details every possible research task. If it’s running a focus group, for example, the spreadsheet details the different ways a focus group could be run and breaks down the cost per hour.
When somebody is shopping for a car, you have to know whether they have the budget for a Lexus or a Toyota Corolla, she says.
“When you’re running a business, you cannot sell the customer a Lexus at a Corolla price,” Cook says.
