Slingshot Memphis and MDRC announced a collaborative, working partnership in Memphis, Tennessee — the first of its kind in the region. Founded in 2016, Slingshot Memphis aims to create a demonstrable reduction in poverty by promoting a results-driven poverty-fighting ecosystem. MDRC and Slingshot are working toward several goals, including enhancing Slingshot’s impact measurement tools and methods, furthering the alignment of multiple stakeholders’ strategies to reduce poverty in Memphis, and co-publishing information about these efforts.

“Slingshot strives to assess, support, and fund its partners with the utmost objectivity, and we are continually refining our evidence-based approach,” says Slingshot CEO Justin Miller. “MDRC is providing in-depth technical assistance and expanding our capacity to assess a growing portfolio of nonprofit partner organizations in the most cost-effective and precise manner possible.”

“Our partnership with Slingshot builds on MDRC’s history of collaborating with innovative and strategic antipoverty organizations across the country,” said MDRC President Virginia Knox. “Supporting Slingshot and local organizations in Memphis in achieving their missions is a privilege and a responsibility, and we look forward to working together.”

“MDRC understands Memphis’s ‘untapped opportunities’ as it relates to estimating impact and directing resources — financial and otherwise — toward solutions with the greatest impact,” Miller said. “Solidifying a partnership with MDRC is the definition of being more bold and strategic. To reduce poverty in Memphis, we must target and establish best-in-class partnerships.”