Summary of Accomplishments of Applied Research & Development
International (ARDI)

Founding President, Carol L. Barbeito, Ph.D.

Background:
To meet the urgent needs of public benefit nonprofits for more, and more accessible, management assistance services, ARDI was established in January 1990 as a division of Support Centers of America (SCA).

Founder, Carol L. Barbeito, had been executive director of the Technical Assistance Center (TAC) in Denver, Colorado for 6 and a half years, and her experience there led to a vision supported by other nonprofit sector leaders, to establish ARDI with a mission to:

"Strengthen the leadership and management of public benefit nonprofit organizations so they will have increased capacity to improve their communities and global society. ARDI accomplishes this mission through advocating the importance of effective and efficient leadership and management and conducting applied research that creates, enhances and facilitates utilization of knowledge."

In 1994, ARDI received its 501(c) (3) status ruling from the IRS. In 1999, Founding President, Carol L. Barbeito, dedicated herself solely to her own learning services company, CLB & Associates. The ARDI Board of Directors merged the work on applied research into the Aspen Institute's Nonprofit Sector Initiatives lead by Alan Abramson. The work on strengthening the capacity of nonprofit organizations was integrated into The Center Point for Leaders organization newly formed and lead by Sandra Gray, former Vice President of Sector Effectiveness for INDEPENDENT SECTOR.

Accomplishments:
During its decade of work on its mission, highlights of ARDI’s accomplishments include:

• Compilation of a database of nonprofit management assistance providers in the United States and the launch of a project called Access: Management Assistance Providers which has resulted in the development of a national database of nonprofit management assistance providers that is currently accessible to the nonprofit community on www.centerpointforleaders.org.

• Compilation of five directories documenting existing multi-media resources for the nonprofit community, with a total distribution of over 300,000; the last published version, in 1996, contained 1,733 resources submitted by 422 publishers, nonprofit organizations, and others. ARDI continued to build the multi-media resources data base through 1999 and it is currently available at www.centerpointforleaders.org.

• Development of "The Directory of Management Support Providers", a directory of organizations that provide assistance to nonprofits in the U.S. and in Ontario, Canada, listing over 900 providers in an easy-to-use directory indexed by organization type, mission, management functions, service area, etc.

• Creation of "Management Assistance Services for Nonprofit Organizations: A Planning Manual," which provides background on the movement, case studies and tools and a planning process for leaders who are developing new management assistance initiatives or who wish to evaluate and further development such services.

• A two-year study which resulted in the report, "Guiding Action: Increasing Nonprofit Organizations’ Impact through Research on Management and Leadership," The report provides insight into the amount and type of research being done in the subject area, how research is accessed by nonprofit practitioners, topical needs for more research, and barriers and incentives to be addressed if research is to be a more strategic tool for the nonprofit sector and its organizations.

• Two conferences were held in conjunction with the Johnson Foundation at their Wingspread Center (in 1996 and 1997) which brought together representatives of diverse organizations within the nonprofit community to develop a model for the creation, translation, and diffusion of applied research on the nonprofit sector. The model facilitates a partnership approach between researchers and practitioners. A conference was held at the Rockefeller Brothers Fund Pocantico Conference Center which advanced this initiative further, and involved representatives from key leadership organizations in the sector.

• Development and publishing of a nationwide plan for translation and dissemination of basic and applied nonprofit management and leadership research to an example target market segment within the nonprofit sector, youth development organizations.

• Publishing the "Guide to Nonprofit Management and Leadership Bibliographies," a collection of bibliographies and catalogs on nonprofit management and leadership.

• Documentation of the needs of nonprofits and the resources they require in "Current and Emerging Nonprofit Management and Leadership Resource Needs," a report which identifies and ranks the nonprofit sector's perceived management and leadership resource needs in management topic categories.

• Authoring a book and two reports on nonprofit compensation issues:

  • "Nonprofit Compensation and Benefit Practices," which was published by John Wiley & Sons "Innovative Compensation Practices in the Nonprofit Sector," a report which details and provides model practices for nonprofit organizations

  • "COMP KEY: Effective Compensation, the Key to Nonprofit Success," a report comparing the compensation practices of nonprofits to those of government and business

• Development of three training packages:

• "Workshop for Effective Nonprofit Boards of Directors,"

• "Effective Nonprofit Board Leadership," a videotape training kit

• "Successful Proposal Writing Workshop," a one-day training package on writing and marketing a fundraising proposal

• The Aspen Institute’s Nonprofit Sector Research Fund and ARDI cooperated in a demonstration of the ARDI model for conducting applied research in nonprofit management.

• ARDI, the University of Denver, and the Rita Bass Foundation evaluated and defined a model for use of university intellectual capital for evaluation of the impact of nonprofit organizations and their projects.