Do we really need another research report?

There's no point in theorizing without action.

Philanthropy I’m going to hold your hand when I say this, but we don’t need more research. Not until you cut the check based on the last 3 decades of research that told you to fund grassroots campaigns ran by marginalized communities.

— Tia Freeman via LinkedIn.

Being that I’m an academic at heart, I feel conflicted by this take. On one hand, I love a good research report. I genuinely believe in the power of research to shed light on problems and identify solutions. On the other hand, I agree with the sentiments of one commenter:

the amount folks get paid to produce these reports that say the same things with slightly updated language and yet the orgs doing the work are too “risky” miss me with that.

In other words, studies are easily funded, while the grassroots organizers who are working to solve the problems those studies identify have to jump through endless hoops for a fraction of the funding.

The same problems are studied year after year because they are never actually corrected. Theory has its place. But in this context, there’s no point in theorizing without action.

Building on Existing Bodies of Research

Part of the issue is that many reports don’t build on what came before. Often, reports I come across in the sector don’t include a literature review that shows what’s already been researched, unlike traditional research published in academic journals. They don’t “build” on top of each other the way scholarship is supposed to.

Without proper contextualization within existing research, we end up with reports that exist in isolation rather than adding to what we know. Knowledge should be built upon. Each report should show what we knew, what we learned, and what still needs to be answered. Instead, we get disconnected studies that say similar things in slightly different ways, easy to selectively cite but impossible to follow as a coherent body of evidence pointing toward solutions.

This Argument Isn’t New

During our chat about this topic, one of my subscribers mentioned that John McKnight and Jody Kretzmann made this exact point nearly 40 years ago when they developed the asset-based community development framework: funders direct money to researching problems they already know exist, rather than to existing assets and opportunities that lead to solutions. This keeps communities dependent and extractive systems intact.

Yet, the same patterns continue. According to this piece from Philanthropy News Digest, written by Hilal Baykara, grassroots organizing receives just 2% of human rights funding, while research and documentation to expose human rights violations and their perpetrators is the third-largest category of funding at 13%. In sum, documenting injustice receives over six times as much funding as organizing against it. Organizing should get just as much funding as research—if not more.

Application = Funding Solutions

When research provides a big-picture view of larger problems while highlighting solutions at the local level, it creates case studies and strategies that can be scaled to reach more populations and demographics. Research that validates community-centered approaches and helps scale those solutions is what application looks like. Research that documents the work without funding the solutions is extractive.

But application requires asking the right questions from the start. Dr. LaToya Hinton, who works with social enterprises on health equity research and funding, frames three essential questions that should guide any research:

• Who is the research about?

• Who will benefit from the research and data collected?

• Who is collaborating with the data collection process?

For example, in Dr. Hinton’s health equity work—particularly around mental health for marginalized communities—these questions determine whether research creates “long-lasting positive change for the populations that need it most” or simply extracts knowledge without resourcing solutions.

When community-based mental health data shows what’s working, like neuro-affirming care models and peer support for BIPOC neurodivergent adults, that research should translate directly into funding for the organizations providing those services, not just more studies about them.

When Research Becomes Exploitative

Too often, the communities being studied have no say in the questions asked, how findings are interpreted, or the steps taken toward application and implementation. The research extracts knowledge from communities, produces reports that sit idly on websites, and never circles back to resource the people who provided the insights.

Research about communities should resource communities. Jo, an anti-rape advocate who has spent years doing grassroots work, notes that she’s viewed as “a free resource.” Meaning, people extract her knowledge, her lived experience, and her crisis intervention expertise without reciprocity. Meanwhile, organizations affiliated with prestigious institutions get funded to do the same work (often poorly).

It’s exploitative to take knowledge, labor, and expertise from people on the ground without funding the solutions they’re already providing. Funding should follow the expertise on the ground, too, not just the institutional affiliation that’s often furthest removed from communities and the issues they face.

What Needs to Change

I don’t think I’ll go so far as to say we need less research, or anymore research at all. However, we do need:

• Research that builds on existing knowledge instead of starting from scratch, with proper literature reviews that show how new findings fit into what we already know—the way traditional academic research does.

• Research that happens with communities rather than about them, where community members set agendas and own findings (i.e., participatory action research).

• Research grounded in historical context, so we stop treating conditions as if they appeared out of nowhere.

• Funding structures that resource grassroots-centered solutions at the same scale as research about problems.

• Stronger partnerships between academics, nonprofits, and community organizers that bridge gaps between sectors.

Otherwise, research becomes nothing more than documentation. Meanwhile, the same issues will persist. But hey, at least we’ll have another report to explain why.

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