Rappaport Institute Launches $2 Million Initiative to Tackle Greater Boston Policy Challenges

The Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston launched a new $2 million effort to tackle urgent local issues in Massachusetts — bringing Harvard researchers into closer collaboration with policymakers throughout the state.

Announced March 17, the funding, provided by the Rappaport Foundation, will support a handful of large, faculty-led research projects developed in partnership with local policymakers and practitioners.

The grant coincides with the Institute’s 25th anniversary and will fund multi-year projects of up to $500,000 each.

“The Rappaport Foundation made a generous $2 million grant to allow us to do three or four big research projects focused on solving important problems in the Greater Boston area,” said Jeffrey Liebman, director of the Rappaport Institute and a professor at the Harvard Kennedy School.

“We’ve made research grants for many years, but this initiative anticipates making several $500,000 grants for multi-year projects that will work on a really big and hard problem,” he added.

The Institute has identified three broad areas of focus: education, health care, and what Liebman described as “things that involve building things” — housing, transportation, and infrastructure.

But rather than issuing a traditional call for proposals, the Institute is first convening academics, policymakers, and local leaders to identify where research could have the greatest impact.

“We are convening an all day discussion,” Liebman said, “to try to identify what are the problems that could most benefit from the kind of research that Harvard can bring to the problems, and then to try to identify what the actual specific project should be.”

The first of those convenings, held in January, focused on education. Participants highlighted challenges ranging from early literature and career pathways to declining attendance in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.

For Liebman, the timing of the initiative is critical.

“Massachusetts has historically had some of the best K-12 educational outcomes of anywhere in the country” Liebman said. “But at the moment, it’s less clear that Massachusetts is still at the forefront of K-12 education and health care, and it seems like we are certainly facing tremendous problems in affordable housing and then the transportation system.”

The initiative is part of a broader push within Harvard, and the Kennedy School under the leadership of Dean Jeremy M. Weinstein, to make social science research more impactful and localized. Liebman said he hopes the funding will allow for more engagement with real-world problems.

“The goal is to make it easier for Harvard faculty, working with students to do research on social problems that actually makes a difference in solving those social problems,” he said.

Kathryn Carlson, the Institute’s executive director, emphasized that the effort is less about predefined projects and more about building the conditions for meaningful collaboration.

“It’s about how we better engage and how we get the resources to Harvard faculty to engage with the Commonwealth, with greater Boston, which is our mission,” Carlson said.

Instead of starting with academic proposals, the Institute is beginning with what Carlson called “collaborative agenda-setting.”

The program remains in its early stages. After the education convening, the Institute is preparing similar sessions on health care and infrastructure-related challenges. Grants will be awarded on a rolling basis.

Still, Carlson said the goal is to fund research that delivers tangible results on the ground.

“How do we not only live here, but be of service to the communities that we’re in,” she said.