State and local government agencies collect an extensive amount of data in the normal course of administering their programs, often without the time or capabilities to use it to its full potential. The IMPACT (Innovative Models for Policy Acceleration and Collaborative Testing) Collaborative helps agencies tap into their data to answer high-priority policy questions, assess program effectiveness, and identify improvements that can expand economic opportunity and mobility for their residents.

How It Works

The IMPACT Collaborative brings together state and local agency staff members, MDRC researchers, and Coleridge Initiative data scientists to collaborate on high-quality tests of the effectiveness of programs in education, criminal justice, income support, and employment.

The IMPACT Collaborative is built around three interconnected goals:

1. Generating rigorous evidence and insights that can be put into action for state and local policies and programs
2. Building agencies’ capabilities to conduct their own evaluations and data-analysis projects
3. Increasing economic opportunity and mobility for individuals and families by turning evidence into action

Rather than simply providing training or technical assistance, MDRC and Coleridge use a “learning by doing” approach. MDRC researchers contribute deep expertise in evaluation design and analysis, while Coleridge delivers its Applied Data Analytics course and facilitates secure, collaborative work through its Administrative Data Research Facility.

Current Projects

In November 2024, MDRC and the Coleridge Initiative announced funding and research support for the first incoming group (or cohort) of IMPACT Collaborative members.

• In Mississippi, the Collaborative is supporting a combined research effort among four government offices. The Mississippi Department of Employment Security and Accelerate MS—the state’s office for workforce-development strategy and coordination—lead the project. This cross-agency effort is evaluating the effectiveness of current workforce-development programs for people who have been incarcerated. This work is part of a broader, statewide workforce-development effort supported by the governor’s office and the state legislature. The project focuses on barriers to employment, variation in regional labor markets, and paths to employment in priority sectors, as defined in the statewide strategy. The team is collaborating across government agencies to analyze these dynamics, integrating data on workforce programs, corrections, and employment. The establishment of new data-sharing agreements among government offices has been an early achievement for this project, creating the foundation for future collaboration.
   
• In Ohio, the Collaborative is working with the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services, in partnership with The Ohio State University, to see whether offering Reemployment Services and Eligibility Assessment (RESEA) services to people receiving both food assistance and unemployment insurance benefits can help them return to work more quickly and reduce their reliance on these benefits. The project builds on an ongoing study of RESEA services for the broader population of people receiving unemployment insurance benefits in Ohio. One important development so far is that staff members have identified the extent to which people receiving food assistance are already receiving RESEA services, providing a baseline the team will use to assess the potential reach and impact of the RESEA services for this population.
   
• In Pennsylvania, the Collaborative is working with several state agencies, with staff members from the Pennsylvania Workforce Development Board and the Governor’s Office of Policy and Planning leading the effort. The project will explore whether offering training and employment services in the same location where people receive food assistance and other assistance makes it more likely that they will enroll in both types of services, ensuring their basic needs are met while they receive support to improve their employment and wages. So far, the team has increased collaboration and knowledge sharing across offices, confirmed the feasibility and policy relevance of the project’s focus, and identified how this work relates to other efforts with similar goals of connecting Pennsylvanians with services through better-designed public-facing systems. 

How Agencies Benefit from Participating in the IMPACT Collaborative

The IMPACT Collaborative takes a "learning-by-doing" approach. Rather than simply providing training or technical assistance in isolation, it works alongside agency partners on real projects that matter to them.

Here are the specific benefits for agencies of participating in the Collaborative.

• Funding: Agencies receive funding to support their participation in Collaborative events that promote peer learning and leadership opportunities.
   
• Applied Data Analytics training: Agency staff receive boot camp–style data analytics and evaluation training. The curriculum, which uses real data from the state of Arkansas, covers evaluation basics and methods, project sustainability, and legal tips, and emphasizes using multiple data sets to analyze economic opportunity and mobility. The teams will take this class before they begin analyzing their own data, allowing them to apply what they learn right away. This immediate application both helps teams put concepts into practice while they are still fresh in their minds and deepens their understanding of the concepts by putting them to work in a live context.
   
• Dedicated coaching: Each agency is assigned a dedicated coach who meets with the team regularly, walking them through their project milestones; providing detailed suggestions and ideas on their ideas, written products, presentations, class homework, and other efforts; and even working directly on the analysis when needed.
   
• Other specialized training and technical assistance: Regular learning events designed for the agency members are offered virtually. Thus far, the IMPACT Collaborative has offered learning events focused on evaluation strategies, the basics of random assignment, the basics of statistics, data-sharing agreements, and coding collaboration. The learning events are customized to be highly relevant to cohort agencies and are provided in a timely manner to coincide with what teams are working on at that moment.
   
• Access to technical experts: Agency staff members also have access to a bench of national experts who can advise on design, implementation, and evaluation strategies, being mindful of each agency’s unique data infrastructure and needs.
   
• Cross-site dialogue and convening: Agency staff members have the opportunity to interact regularly with their counterparts in other IMPACT Collaborative grantee agencies to share experiences, challenges, and accomplishments, and also to attend an annual in-person event. The Collaborative’s first annual event happened in March 2025 in Arlington, VA. Teams learned about different evaluation strategies and spent time discussing approaches they could use for their own projects. Teams presented their projects, then others asked questions and offered ideas to help strengthen the projects. Teams appreciated the opportunity to spend time dedicated to their Collaborative projects, with minimal distractions, as a way to kick-start progress.
   
• A range of ways to work together: MDRC and Coleridge can work with agencies in a number of ways, including in an advisory role or hands-on with the data in Coleridge’s data-integration and analysis platform, the Administrative Data Research Facility, a state-of-the-art, FedRAMP-certified environment that enables easy collaboration.

Looking Ahead

MDRC and Coleridge are recruiting a second cohort of up to three teams of staff members from state and local agencies, and look forward to hosting additional cohorts in the future. Initial results from the first cohort of IMPACT Collaborative agencies will be published in early 2027.