Social Compact

About Social Compact

Social Compact is a non-profit organization that breaks down barriers to public investment in underserved urban areas. Since its founding in 1990, the organization has become a powerful force for change in overlooked urban markets by delivering the reliable, representative, and up-to-the-minute information about a community’s economic health needed to make critically important investments possible and partnering with investors, municipalities, and community leaders to leverage this valuable information in the decision-making process.

BETTER DATA = BETTER INVESTMENT

Over the last decade, Social Compact has focused its work on the development and deployment of a collection of innovative economic and demographic analyses custom tailored for inner-city neighborhoods. When these analytical tools, most often as part of a Social Compact DrillDown profile, are applied to a wide range of transactional data sets, the resulting information is an invaluable tool for attracting local investment. Findings have been successfully used by cities and businesses to provide quality financial and municipal services, encourage property as well as small business development, and attract retail investment.

Unlike most other methodologies, Social Compact’s analyses are not derived from census data and are calibrated to measure the vibrant, informal economies of underserved urban areas, integrating information about real estate, consumer expenditures, utility usage, bill payments and other critical factors. The organization’s groundbreaking research replaces outdated and outmoded, deficiency-based data on lower-income communities with current and reliable market analysis.

Cumulatively, Social Compact has identified:
• Aggregate household income $35 billion (22%) higher than census trend projections
• 350,000 more households than census trend projections
• 1.25 million more residents than census trend projections

BETTER NUMBERS = BETTER NEIGHBORHOODS

More than 20 cities have partnered with Social Compact to conduct analyses in over 350 urban neighborhoods. Because Social Compact is uniquely able to statistically capture the real-life picture of a community’s economic health, it can incisively identify and quantify opportunities in areas traditionally overlooked and underserved by businesses, financial establishments, and other services. Social Compact’s reports, and the investment that often follows, can catalyze the redefinition of a neighborhood’s business profile, create jobs, bolster the tax base, improve the availability of goods, and help create better-served, healthier, and safer neighborhoods.
http://www.socialcompact.org/