Issue Lab is a new nonprofit organization that contributes to social change by archiving and publishing social research done by other nonprofits. As explained on their site:

Each year billions of charitable dollars are spent on nonprofit research, research which journalists, policy analysts, legislators, students, activists, and grant makers all rely on to effectively addresses complex social issues. And yet despite the widespread interest in this work and the billions of dollars spent each year to produce it, most nonprofit research remains unpublished, hard to find, underexposed, or archived in issue-specific information silos.

The nonprofit sector clearly needs a better solution than the current piecemeal approach to managing and sharing one of its greatest assets, while journalists, researchers, activisits, policy makers, educators, and the general publics need a much better solution for locating and accessing social research across issue areas. IssueLab is that solution.

Issue Lab also features a monthly CloseUp on a particular area and April’s focus is on Volunteerism. and check out the curated compilation of articles at http://www.issuelab.org/closeup/Apr_2008. And bookmark the site, it’s a great resource.