OPERATIONAL PERSPECTIVE
How our work applies to the operational and portfolio side of an organization.
Community Intelligence, a primer for foundations and partners
How we apply trust to the work you already do.
We exist to bring trust back to the places it’s gone missing.* Community Intelligence reads which neighborhoods will receive an investment on a direct approach and which need a trusted local voice first, so grants, loans and programs arrive in a way people can accept.
*Trust rarely disappears. More often it relocates, from institutions to the relationships people can count on.
The problem we solve
Two neighborhoods can receive the same program with the same dollars and the same good intentions. In one, residents take it up. In the other, the money sits, even though the need is greater. The difference is usually the route: the offer arrived through a door that neighborhood doesn’t walk through.
Income, race and home values describe a neighborhood. They can’t tell you how it will receive something. We read that, for every census tract, from public data and with nothing about any individual person.
Floor Identification
Finds the neighborhoods a standard program will miss first: the least connected to institutions, identified before any money moves.
Reachability
Shows whether residents can get to where a service is offered, on foot or by transit. It is a separate map from poverty, and often a very different one.
These are our two decision tools in use today. Everything below applies them.
Across a foundation’s work
The decision each priority faces, and what a trust read adds to it.
Housing and anti-displacement
Where to place homeownership, eviction prevention and anti-displacement dollars.
Which blocks will take up help on a direct approach from a lender or agency, and which need a pastor, a neighbor or a block club first.
Early childhood
Where to build seats, support providers and promote child care subsidies.
Families who are eligible but unlikely to enroll through formal channels, and providers placed where parents can get to them.
Health and wellness
How to close gaps in maternal health, chronic disease and mental health.
Where clinics sit within reach but go unused, and where care has to arrive through congregations, barbershops and family networks first.
Economic opportunity and impact investing
Where small business capital, impact loans and workforce programs will reach owners in disinvested corridors.
A trust read beside the credit read, so capital moves through the lenders and intermediaries residents will work with.
Arts and culture
How to fold arts into planning and development so residents see themselves in it.
What each neighborhood will steward and celebrate, so cultural investment builds belonging rather than signaling arrival.
Environment and disaster recovery
Where recovery and resilience dollars go after a flood, fire or heat emergency, and how residents learn they qualify.
The households hardest to reach with recovery aid, and the local channels that can carry it to them before the next event.
Donors and civic leadership
How to bring donor-advised giving into line with shared priorities, and how to convene sectors around one picture.
A common map donors, civic leaders and partners can read together, showing where generosity lands and where it is missing.
Grant and investment portfolio
Whether the whole portfolio, across every program area, grantee and impact investment, is reaching the places it was meant to serve.
A single view of where the foundation’s dollars land against the floor and against reachability, so the board and staff can see gaps and overlaps across programs and rebalance with evidence.
Operations, data and grant administration
How to give staff, leadership and the board a clear, consistent picture of where grants, scholarships and investments go, without adding work for the team.
The read sits beside the foundation’s own grant data, matched at the census tract using addresses and service areas it already holds, so every program can see where its dollars land against the floor. No information about any individual is needed.
One read, used by the whole organization
Most tools serve one program. A trust map serves a foundation the way a foundation serves its region: as shared ground. The same read informs the program officer choosing a grantee, the adviser guiding a donor, the impact team sizing a loan, the policy team making a case to government and the operations team reporting to the board.
How an engagement works
Each step stands on its own, so a partner can stop at any point with something useful in hand.
We map your region tract by tract and mark the floor and reachability.
We match your current grants, programs and investments to the read, tract by tract, and show where they align and where they miss.
We work inside one live decision with your team: a grant cycle, a donor briefing or an impact deal.
We track uptake through the engagement and report what changed and what didn’t.
How we hold ourselves to account
We test the read against reality in public. Predictions are written down with numbers before any result exists, sealed and held by someone outside the analysis, and every result is reported. When a sealed prediction failed, we published it and narrowed our claim: we offer floor identification, and we do not claim to rank every neighborhood above the floor.
What we will not tell you
- Who, by name. Every reading describes a place, never a person. Finding the trusted people in a neighborhood is fieldwork the read informs.
- A ranking of every neighborhood. We find the floor reliably and leave the order above it alone.
- A live gauge. Each read is a structural picture refreshed over time and won’t catch a two-week swing.
- Anything finer than a census tract. Neighborhoods that share a tract read the same.
- A guess dressed as a finding. Where data is thin, we label the reading an estimate and hold back a recommendation.
We read communities for their strengths and how they are organized. A neighborhood that routes through relationships has a different door, and it can be reached.
Team
An exclusive joint venture of three organizations, with specialists across behavioral science, engineering, research and delivery.
Community as a Service: purpose, management and service delivery, with specialist lines in research, communications and advisory.
The behavioral science behind the read, held to a Hypothesis Register that governs every claim we make.
The platform that measures trust, built and run by a dedicated technical team.
Who does the work
Leadership: Kevin Starace, Founder/CEO, RFUTR, and Dr. Bob Raleigh, CEO, PathSight Predictive Science.
Trust is the infrastructure under every priority.
We don’t add a priority to your list. We read the one thing that decides whether the others land: which door each neighborhood will open, known before the money goes out.