Resource Development Institute’s mission is to be a progressive innovator providing community leadership in research, evaluation, and consultation services to improve the quality of lives of vulnerable populations.
Resource Development Institute is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, founded in 1950 and based in Kansas City, Missouri, which provides local and regional leadership in data-driven evaluation, needs assessment, community research and community development for stakeholders. Many of RDIs projects are multiple year and get renewed for continued assistance/longitudinal analysis or result in repeat business based on the high level of satisfaction with the quality of the products and services received. The three principal groups of stakeholders served include:
Those involved in program operations (e.g., sponsors, collaborators, coalition partners, funding officials, administrators, managers, and staff);
Those served or affected by the program (e.g., clients, family members, neighborhood organizations, academic institutions, elected officials, advocacy groups, professional associations, and staff of collaborative or colleague organizations); and
Primary users of the research or evaluation (i.e., the specific persons who are in a position to do or decide something regarding the program).
An extensive history of partnering with multiple stakeholders on community-based projects;
An established reputation for conducting unbiased and totally independent assessments;
Wide-ranging experience in communicating research designs, methods, results, and recommendations to a extensive variety of audiences in a concise and coherent format, both verbally and in written reports; and
An established credibility with national, state, and local stakeholders and founders.
Resource Development Institute’s mission is to be a progressive innovator providing community leadership in research, evaluation, and consultation services to improve the quality of lives of vulnerable populations.
Contribute to a broader understanding of an array of social concerns;
Help enlighten the effectiveness of social programs and strategies;
Strengthen and enhance the larger service infrastructure by bettering products, personnel, programs, organizations, consumers and the public interest;
Encourage and guide the adoption of more effective competency-based local, state and federal social policies;
Respect the security, dignity and self-worth of respondents, program participants, clients, and other stakeholders with whom they interact;
Support strategic learning by encouraging integration of evaluation and other research and training feedback into decision-making about policy;
Empower all stakeholders by collecting data from them and engaging them in the learning process, allowing them to experience the excitement of new insights;
Provide information which will serve the identified and emergent needs of stakeholders;
Construct activities, descriptions, and judgments in ways that encourage participants to rediscover, reinterpret, or revise their understandings and behaviors;
Promote a culture of knowledge sharing among staff, grantees, collaborators and colleague organizations.
Bolster resiliency by using a continuous feedback process between program implementation and evaluation which encourages growth and improvement in both, enabling the program to promote resiliency in participants and become sustainable; and
For sixty-plus years Resource Development Institute (RDI) has conducted applied research and program evaluation methodologies, and provided technical assistance and training services to a broad range of locally-, state- and federally-funded projects regarding community coordination, criminal justice, education, environmental studies, family violence prevention, mental health education, public health, social justice, substance abuse prevention, youth development and other related social service issues. Due to this extensive expertise, RDI can play a powerful role as an independent, neutral evaluator in partnering with stakeholders who are facing increased demand for outcome-based results in a climate of dwindling resources, coupled with a growing need for services.
Program evaluation;
Training and technical assistance for developing research and evaluation capacity;
Survey administration;
Secondary data analysis;
Qualitative and quantitative data collection and analysis;
Management information systems;
Instrument development;
Facilitation of community-based decision-making; and
Advanced multivariate statistics.