The NREIC Community CLEARINGHOUSE
Evidence takes many forms. The NREIC Community Clearinghouse makes space for all of them.
For decades, program clearinghouses have shaped what counts as “evidence” in public systems. Models like Blueprints, FFPSA, and the California Evidence-Based Clearinghouse prioritize academic research designs and rank programs based on scientific rigor. While these systems have value, they often exclude the vast landscape of community-designed strategies, cultural practices, and lived-experience-driven solutions that have supported wellbeing for generations.
The NREIC Community Clearinghouse helps to rebalance the evidence ecosystem.
Rather than ranking programs or privileging one form of evidence over another, the Community Clearinghouse documents and elevates practices in all their forms. It recognizes that evidence comes from many sources: community testimony, cultural knowledge, practitioner expertise, narrative evidence, observable change, and academic evaluation.
Each profile offers a multidimensional view of a practice or program. Rather than assigning ratings, profiles provide contextual descriptions that help communities, funders, policymakers, and researchers understand fit, relevance, and cultural grounding.
Governed collaboratively by NREIC staff, members, and community contributors, the Community Clearinghouse centers the authority of practitioners, elders, cultural leaders, and people with lived experience. These are the voices that have historically been excluded from defining what counts as evidence in public systems.
The result is a new kind of clearinghouse. The Community Clearinghouse is a platform for recognition, preservation, and resource alignment and it helps to ensure that solutions rooted in culture, identity, belonging, and lived experience have a rightful place in the national evidence ecosystem.
Profiles of Programs and Practices
There are 6 domains that the NREIC Community Clearinghouse collects information about for programs and practices that are submitted. These domains honor community knowledge, protect community ownership, avoid the need to apply a rating or hierarchy to the practices and programs, and work to clarify core functions and core cultural elements without applying a singular top down, academic, or Western lens.
Profiles of Programs and Practices
There are 6 domains that the NREIC Community Clearinghouse collects information about for programs and practices that are submitted. These domains honor community knowledge, protect community ownership, avoid the need to apply a rating or hierarchy to the practices and programs, and work to clarify core functions and core cultural elements without applying a singular top down, academic, or Western lens.
NREIC Community Clearinghouse Domains
Community Origins & Cultural Alignment: Understand the cultural stewardship, authorship, and alignment of the practice.
Community Need & Intended: Clarify why the practice exists and who it benefits.
Description & Core Components: Provide a clear understanding of the practice and its essential elements.
Community-Defined Evidence of Benefit: Document community knowledge and evidence that the practice is impactful.
Implementation Conditions: What It Takes to Do This Well: Outline resources, relationships, and conditions needed for successful implementation.
Adaptation, Boundaries & Ethical Governance: Protect cultural integrity and guide responsible adaptation.
Financing: Pathways, Resources and Guidance
The NREIC Community Clearinghouse supports communities to deliver the practices they choose by providing resources on funding pathways and innovative funding strategies, while preserving cultural integrity.
Financing: Pathways, Resources and Guidance
The NREIC Community Clearinghouse supports communities to deliver the practices they choose by providing resources on funding pathways and innovative funding strategies, while preserving cultural integrity.
Historical/Current Funding of the Program or Practice
- Information originates from what is provided by the community making a submission to the Clearinghouse
- Includes information about:
- Grants, public funding, tribal or local funds, in-kind support used to enable the Program or Practice to-date
- Staff, materials, facilities, or other resources that have been funded to make delivery possible
- Challenges to funding the Program or Practice
NREIC Guidance on Funding Approaches:
- NREIC curates guidance on potential funding ideas for future users
- Blended or braided funding combining multiple sources
- Partnerships with foundations, national, or local funders
- Community-driven approaches to funding that respect cultural values and ethical ownership
- Link to finance coaches such as Mainspring Consulting for formal support when needed
Building the Clearinghouse
The Clearinghouse is currently in development as part of an ongoing effort to document and share community-rooted programs and practices. Program and practice profiles, along with additional tools and resources, will begin to be added throughout 2026 as the Clearinghouse continues to take shape in partnership with communities.