LEO’s Affiliated Researchers are scholars from across the country who share a commitment to using research to fight poverty. Coming from fields like economics, psychology, and public policy, they bring valuable expertise to LEO’s work—helping nonprofits understand what works and why. Their research isn’t just about publishing papers; it’s about equipping service providers with the knowledge they need to make a real difference. In this article, we highlight two of these researchers and the impact they’re making through their partnerships with LEO.
Craig Gundersen, the Snee Family Endowed Chair and a professor of economics at Baylor University, knows that LEO’s focus on nonprofit partners is unique. “These nonprofit groups, one of the things that they do is they’re really kind of a group that’s saying to people, ‘we love you enough to care about you, and we want to help you out in whatever way we can,’” he said.
Craig, whose research focuses on the causes and consequences of food insecurity and the evaluation of food assistance programs, has spent most of his research career evaluating government assistance programs. But the value of nonprofit-led food assistance programs should not be underestimated.
“People oftentimes don’t think a lot about charitable food assistance and how important it was, given that it’s the second largest source of free food after SNAP,” he said.
“People oftentimes don’t think a lot about charitable food assistance and how important it was, given that it’s the second largest source of free food after SNAP”
As one of LEO’s affiliated researchers, Craig is working on a project with LEO co-founder Bill Evans and the North Texas Food Bank. The team is trying to understand how to alleviate barriers to enroll in SNAP, or the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, the nation’s foundational hunger assistance program. Like most places, there are more people in North Texas eligible to participate in SNAP than actually enroll. The North Texas Food Bank implemented a text message reminder system to encourage SNAP enrollment and recertification.
Craig and Bill are studying the text message reminder system to determine if it can boost SNAP enrollment rates. “Part of the reason why we’re so excited about these text messages is, if they work, and we can show that they work, it’s a very low cost intervention,” Craig said.
Craig has been involved with LEO since 2017 and joined the North Texas Food Bank project more recently. His research on charitable food assistance meant he was well connected to several food banks around the country, including in Atlanta and Houston, and he wanted to develop a research project with a food bank partner. From the outset, the value that LEO provided for affiliated researchers was clear.
“This incredible apparatus of LEO allows the research affiliate to concentrate on doing the research. And that’s really exciting is to not have to worry about all these other things,” he said. Craig noted his appreciation for Lily Morrell, a senior research design manager at LEO, who handles everything from getting access to the necessary data to setting up enrollment processes to organizing travel to North Texas to meet with partners.
Craig is excited about another LEO project beginning this fall with the Houston Food Bank. Every year, millions of visits are made to the pantries in the Houston Food Bank system. Some people visit often while others visit infrequently. One concern is that those who visit less frequently may still be in need and, for various reasons, may not be returning to pantries. Craig and his fellow investigator, Chris Cronin, a professor of economics at Notre Dame, are examining whether text messages sent to individuals who haven’t visited a pantry in the last six weeks does lead to more visits in comparison to those not receiving text messages. Like the intervention being done by North Texas Food Bank, if this is shown to be effective, this would be a low-cost intervention to improve the well-being of vulnerable individuals.
Getting to know other affiliated researchers has also pointed Craig toward the intersections of his work and other projects. Though his specialty is food insecurity research, he watches other LEO projects with an eye on the spillover effects. If rental assistance programs allow families to stay housed and afford their rent, then they’re more likely to afford food, and so on. He’s looking forward to more research on the effects of food assistance for specific groups, such as those recently released from prison.
“LEO really has such a critical, critical importance to our efforts to help those who are most vulnerable, because for too long, we have had all these programs which nobody ever evaluated to see if they didn’t work. We need to be good stewards of our resources,” he said.
"LEO really has such a critical, critical importance to our efforts to help those who are most vulnerable, because for too long, we have had all these programs which nobody ever evaluated to see if they didn’t work. We need to be good stewards of our resources"
Katie Bollman, an assistant professor of economics at Oregon State University, understood that motivation from the outset. Before graduate school, she worked for a nonprofit that was facing a lot of needs with scarce resources. Katie remembers being impressed by the nonprofit leaders, who seemed to be holding back the ocean with limited tools.
Understanding how to best equip service partners was a key interest of hers in becoming an economist. Now, she works on two LEO projects.
The first is a partnership with Mary’s Place in Seattle, which provides eviction prevention and rental assistance for families who have experienced homelessness or extreme housing instability. Where Mary’s Place differs from other programs in King County, WA, is that they offer families the opportunity to return for services until they can stabilize and maintain their rent. The goal is that without a cap on financial assistance, families will be able to catch up and then solve their housing crisis. LEO’s study will measure the impacts of both traditional lower-cap, one-time financial assistance model and a high-cap, option to return model of financial assistance with the intention of evaluating which is better for reducing homelessness amongst vulnerable families.
Katie is also working on a project focused on providing legal counsel for youth in foster care in Indiana. Partnering with Child Advocates, LEO researchers are aiming to measure the effect of representation for older children in foster care on their home placement, educational outcomes, and interactions with the juvenile justice system.
In addition to making large-scale research projects easier, Katie said working with nonprofits at LEO helps her know that her research is making a difference.
“Each of these pieces of information tells us something about that specific context and that specific program, and it also is going to help us weave this broader tapestry of understanding of what works to help vulnerable people, even those outside of the specific context we’re looking at,” she said.
Most economics research, she says, goes off to an academic journal and hopefully will be presented to people who you think can use it. But at LEO, that information is immediately valuable—at least to the partner organization.
“In terms of that specific organization, they have information that is actionable and that … we think they will act on to make that narrow area concretely improved, relative to if we hadn’t done that study,” she said. “Things will hopefully be better when there’s better information for those specific people. That’s really cool.”
“In terms of that specific organization, they have information that is actionable and that … we think they will act on to make that narrow area concretely improved, relative to if we hadn’t done that study. Things will hopefully be better when there’s better information for those specific people. That’s really cool.”