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With grant support from the Kresge Foundation, the non-partisan social-policy research organization MDRC will expand its pioneering efforts to build knowledge about the most cost-effective approaches to improve the lives of low-income individuals and to communicate research findings that can strengthen public policy and practice.

Kresge’s $800,000 growth capital grant, awarded in March 2008, will provide funding over three years for three main MDRC activities: research on performance-based scholarships, dissemination of research findings, and early childhood education.

“Kresge’s grant is having a profound effect in strengthening MDRC’s capacity to build stronger evidence across the education pipeline — from early childhood to community colleges — on how to improve the educational outcomes of low-income students,” says Robert Ivry, senior vice president of MDRC.

“Producing more definitive information on what works to improve school readiness, high school graduation rates, and college attendance and degree attainment is a cornerstone of a poverty-reduction strategy,” he adds. “We also are using the Kresge grant to deepen and broaden our dissemination activities so that the evidence from our research can inform public policy, improve practice in the field, and justify the sustainability and expansion of proven interventions.”

Created in 1974 as the Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation by the Ford Foundation and a group of federal agencies, MDRC is best known for mounting large-scale evaluations of real-world policies and programs targeted to low-income people. The organization first gained attention for its influential evaluations of state welfare-to-work programs.

Today, MDRC maintains offices in New York City and Oakland, California, where it works in a wide range of policy areas, including education (from preschool through post-high school); low-wage workers; family well-being and children’s development; behavioral health and disabilities; and anti-poverty strategies.

One-half of the Kresge grant will be used by MDRC to extend its research on the effectiveness of performance-based scholarships for low-income students – initially conducted at Delgado Community College in New Orleans – to four-year institutions that cater to communities and populations that are underserved. These institutions include members of the United Negro College Fund, the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities and the American Indian College Fund. The Gates Foundation also has committed $725,000 for the planning and reconnaissance of a large-scale demonstration of the Delgado Community College project.

Another $325,000 of the Kresge funding will help MDRC disseminate evidence-based, government-sponsored research findings more widely for broader public-policy debate. And the remaining $75,000 will support evaluation of the highly acclaimed Webster-Stratton approach to improving the emotional and behavioral readiness of young children to enter kindergarten. Based on research conducted at preschools in Newark, New Jersey, Kresge funds will supplement $2.9 million received to date from the Grable, Nicholson and Gund foundations.

The grant to MDRC exemplifies the foundation’s values-centered approach grantmaking and its exploration of funding methods other than its signature challenge grant, says Bill Moses, senior program officer and Education Team leader.

“We are helping to discover and promote best practices designed to encourage and nurture low-income people in the educational system from preschool through college,” he explains. “This grant also allows Kresge to access and evaluate new research as it emerges from one of the finest social-policy research organizations in the nation.”