MDRC Organizational Structure and the Demographic Composition of the Staff and Board

MDRC had 315 staff at the end of 2022. After shifting to remote work during the pandemic, MDRC moved to a hybrid work model in 2022, taking advantage of our four office spaces to promote in-person interaction among colleagues while also allowing staff to enjoy the considerable benefits of working remotely part time. About three-quarters of MDRC's staff lived in the New York metropolitan area and worked out of our New York City office. Seven percent of MDRC staff were in our California offices (Oakland and Los Angeles), and 6 percent were associated with our office in Washington, DC. The remainder worked remotely out of their homes around the country.

Sixty-six percent of MDRC’s staff had research, policy, and practice roles, which means that they worked on or directly supported our research, evaluation, and technical assistance projects. Twenty-two percent of MDRC’s staff performed administrative roles—such as finance, human resources, information services, and legal—or communications and development roles. Finally, 11 percent of staff were part of our senior management team, and they worked across departments. Senior management as of December 2022 included our president, vice presidents, directors, general counsel, chief information officer, chief communications officer, interim deputy chief financial officer, and other unit leaders.

As researchers who use rigorous methods to learn about policies and programs, we know that measurement is fundamental to diagnosing problems and tracking change. We also know that widely disseminating findings holds organizations accountable for refining and achieving their goals. Thus, we believe that to improve diversity, equity, and inclusion at MDRC, we should treat it as we would treat the problems we address in our research. This means careful measurement and transparency to promote accountability.

To that end, below we provide an overview of MDRC’s staff demographic characteristics, as of December 31, 2022. First, we provide context about our staff — specifically, how many of us work here, where we live, and the roles we play in the organization. Then we share our gender and race composition—two important measures of staff diversity, but by no means the only measures we care about. These statistics show that our staff are diverse in both gender and race, but we recognize that we still have significant room for improvement, and the section that follows provides a glimpse of what we are doing to get there. These statistics focus on diversity because it is easier to measure than equity or inclusion, but we hold each value in equal regard, and the activities outlined in the final section demonstrate some of our efforts to strengthen each of these mutually reinforcing values.

Gender and Race/Ethnicity Composition

The charts below show MDRC’s self-identified gender and racial/ethnic composition as of December 2022, which can be compared to data from December 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021.^[1] In 2022, 70 percent of MDRC's staff identified as female and about one-half of the staff identified as White, and the composition varied by the types of roles staff held. There was more gender, racial, and ethnic diversity among MDRC’s administration, communications, and development staff than among our research and senior management staff. We began collecting demographic data from the members of the MDRC Board of Directors in 2019. As of the end of 2022, 67 percent of the MDRC Board members identified as White, 20 percent as Black, 7 percent as Hispanic/Latinx, 7 percent as Other, and 47 percent identified as female.

Change the calendar year here: