Posted on November 8, 2012

Foundation Center's IssueLab Knowledge Platform Launched

The Foundation Center has launched a new version of IssueLab, a Web site that provides free and open access to research about the world's most pressing social, economic, and environmental challenges.

Comprising more than eleven thousand documents spanning forty issue areas, from agriculture to immigration to welfare, the new IssueLab represents one of the largest collections of social sector knowledge in the world. Acquired by the Foundation Center last spring, IssueLab was integrated with PubHub, the center's online catalog of annotated links to thousands of foundation-sponsored reports, to create a unified knowledge platform under the IssueLab name.

The newly launched platform enables users to search and browse a huge variety of case studies, white papers, evaluations, fact sheets, issue briefs, annual reports, and toolkits by issue area, author, publishing organization, or geography and allows any organization to add its own research to the collection and/or share valuable resources with a broader audience. In addition, the platform offers customizable "Knowledge Centers" that individual organizations, coalitions, and networks can use to create and maintain online libraries of research as well as easily share their knowledge with new audiences.

"IssueLab's integration into the Foundation Center is a critical first step in our ongoing commitment to the spirit and practice of data sharing," said Gabriela Fitz, director of knowledge management initiatives at the Foundation Center. "This resource makes it easy for anyone to find, access, and share the collective intelligence of the social sector."