Research and Technical Assistance

The Riley Center for Livable Communities is supporting the Charleston County Community Development and Revitalization Department to provide research and programmatic support for settlement communities across Charleston County. In collaboration with the Gullah Geechee Heritage Corridor, this project is focused on advancing community development, educational outreach, and civic engagement, with an emphasis on historically underserved populations.

The Charleston County Public Library (CCPL) is committed to creating offerings that are responsive to the diverse needs, interests, and lived experiences of residents of the county. To ensure its offerings continue to do so, CCPL is undertaking a system-wide community assessment to guide future collection development and public programming efforts. The Riley Center is facilitating focus groups and conducting quantitative and qualitative data analyses to inform an actionable community assessment report.

The Just Home Project is a new grant initiative led by the MacArthur Foundation with support from the Urban Institute. The purpose of the Just Home Project is to fund innovative solutions to help close the revolving door between incarceration and homelessness. Charleston County is one of four jurisdictions in the nation to be selected to receive a planning grant for this project. As part of the local implementation effort, the Riley Center is conducting research and analysis to evaluate program outputs and assess progress toward the project's intended outcomes.

The Riley Center is assisting Calhoun County in the development of a comprehensive strategic plan to guide the organization's future direction and establish measurable goals for the upcoming fiscal year and beyond. This work includes conducting a SWOT analysis, facilitating strategic planning sessions, and providing follow-up training to support the implementation of the plan and the development of performance measures.

The Riley Center for Livable Communities is partnering with the City of Columbia Fire Department to support the development and administration of its promotional process for the ranks of Engineer and Captain.

The Charleston Metro Chamber of Commerce (CMCC) is committed to supporting a thriving business environment as a critical component of the region's economic success. CMCC has launched a project in partnership with the Charleston County Public Libraries and BCDCOG aimed at bringing together key regional stakeholders across the public and private sectors to identify ways that they can all collectively align education and training efforts to address the workforce needs of tomorrow. The Riley Center is facilitating stakeholder engagement activities, including SWOT and gap analyses, focus groups, and partner meetings, to identify critical challenges and opportunities. Following, the Riley Center will lead a collaborative strategy co-creation process to develop implementation frameworks, complete with performance metrics, evaluation strategies and accountability mechanisms.

The Riley Center is working with The Sustainability Institute to develop a better understanding of the need for critical home repair needs in the Accabee, Chicora Cherokee, Five Mile, Howard Heights, Liberty Hill, Union Heights and Windsor Place in Charleston County.

• My Sister's House is committed "to a shared mission to break cycles of domestic violence by providing comprehensive support, services, and education to our clients and community." The Riley Center worked with the organization to design and implement a client needs assessment and community awareness survey to guide programming and services - Looking Closer: Community Awareness and Domestic Violence in the Lowcountry. 

• Together SC: The Riley Center for Livable Communities partnered with Together SC on two major projects in 2024-2025. The first project involved a comprehensive evaluation of Together SC's 2025 Nonprofit Summit, focused on assessing the effectiveness of the summit in addressing the needs, challenges, and trends facing South Carolina's nonprofit sector. The second project involved conducting a statewide compensation and benefits study for the nonprofit sector. This initiative aimed to provide data-driven insights into salary structures, benefit offerings, and workforce trends among South Carolina's nonprofit organizations, supporting sector-wide efforts toward greater equity, transparency and sustainability. 

• Horry County: The Riley Center partnered with Horry County to support the development of a comprehensive strategic plan to guide the County's future direction and set organizational goals for the next fiscal year and beyond. This work included conducting a multi-phase process that began with SWOT analyses through facilitated sessions with department heads and employees, internal assessment surveys, and an employee engagement and climate survey. The project concluded with a series of facilitated sessions to update the strategic plan, resulting in a final written report outlining new or revised strategic focus areas, goals, strategies and performance measures. 

• Charleston Horticultural Society: The Riley Center supported Charleston Horticultural Society's comprehensive strategic planning initiative aimed at strengthening the organization's future direction and community impact. As part of this work, the Riley Center designed, administered and analyzed an online stakeholder survey, as well as conducted qualitative research through interviews with key community partners to better understand external perceptions of the Horticultural Society's value in the Lowcountry and to identify potential areas for expanded impact. 

• Camp Happy Days: The Riley Center partnered with Camp Happy Days to support the organization in re-envisioning its data collection strategy by mapping the relationship between existing survey data and program objectives, evaluating the effectiveness and alignment of survey methods with various events, and conducting research on comparable data collection practices used by similar organizations. This work aimed to enhance the clarity, efficiency, and impact of Camp Happy Days' data collection efforts, ensuring stronger alignment between survey tools and the organization's mission and outcomes. 

• Trident United Way: The Riley Center partnered with Trident United Way to develop a comprehensive measurement framework to support the organization's Boal Goal of moving 15,000 families out of poverty and into financial stability by 2035. Building on previous research conducted by the Riley Center, this project involved defining key program objectives, outcomes, and indicators of success for a coalition of regional partners. The Riley Center also provided recommendations for data collection, monitoring and reporting processes to track service delivery and evaluate progress toward improving financial security across the Tri-County region. 

• Union Pier Redevelopment: Following extensive community feedback, the City of Charleston and South Carolina Ports Authority reached an agreement in June 2023 to extend the planning timeline for Union Pier, with the goal of establishing a new plan that centers the needs and priorities of the community. South Carolina Ports Authority contracted the Joseph P. Riley Jr. Center for Livable Communities at the College of Charleston to facilitate a community-engaged planning process for Union Pier.

• Trust for Public Land: In collaboration with Trust for Public Land's 10-Minute Walk team, Riley Center faculty and staff developed, tested and validated a Park Equity Policy Framework and data collection tool to systematically collect information and describe the state of the field for policies aimed at increasing equitable access to park space. The tool was used to collect data for 25 U.S. cities, representing a variety of population sizes, geographic locations, and percentages of racial/ethnic minority residents. The tool was validated through interviews with city leaders in 19 of the 25 cities. 

• Together for Beaufort County: The Riley Center continued its partnership with Together for Beaufort County (T4BC) by building upon the 2021 Indicators Report that was created by the Riley Center. The 2021 report presented an overall glimpse of the status and environment of the following indicators in Beaufort County: health, social well-being, economy, environment and education. The Riley Center researched each childhood indicators by assessing Kindergarten Readiness data and providing a geographic context to public demographic data and early childhood services to better understand the landscape of education in Beaufort County. 

• Dorchester County Opioid Abatement Strategic Planning: The Riley Center successfully led a strategic planning process to support opioid abatement efforts in Dorchester County. In collaboration with the Deputy County Administrator of Public Safety, the Dorchester Alcohol  and Drug Commission and other key stakeholders, the Riley Center coordinated a comprehensive effort that included community engagement, stakeholder facilitation, data analysis, and strategic alignment. Over the course of several months, the Riley Center facilitated meetings, conducted outreach, and provided expert guidance to develop a unified plan addressing the county's most urgent opioid-related challenges. 

• The Challenge of Financing Resiliency: The Riley Center partnered with the Virginia Coastal Policy Center at William & Mary Law School to host a discussion on strategies and tools local government can use to finance resilience projects. Speakers included Mayor Joseph P. Riley Jr. along with experts in the insurance and banking industries, local government and the private sector. 

• Hurricane Dorian Resilience Assessment: The Riley Center partnered with the Charleston Resilience Network and the Charleston Metro Chamber of Commerce to increase understanding of how hurricanes impact local organizations. The Riley Center administered an electronic survey to Chamber members in Charleston, Dorchester and Berkeley Counties to assess damage sustained and perception of major storms. This survey focuses on the impacts of Hurricane Dorian, with questions that also address regional resilience, information reliability and response planning. 

• The Charleston YOUth Count is an initiative of the Riley Center and key community partners to count and understand the needs and assets of people under the age of 25 who are housing and/or food insecure. By documenting the size of this vulnerable population and scoping the nature of the services they need, it is anticipated that local, state, and national service providers will be better informed to act on their behalf. 

• Analysis of the Town of Mount Pleasant Arts Community: The Town of Mount Pleasant partnered with the Riley Center to gain a deeper understanding of its local arts community. To support this effort, the Riley Center conducted interviews with arts administrators, council members and residents, and developed both an arts inventory and a community-wide questionnaire. Findings were analyzed alongside existing research and best practices to produce a set of informed recommendations for strengthening and supporting the arts in Mount Pleasant. 

• Food Systems Change Initiative was a multi-agency collaborative directed by Dr. Olivia Thompson and the Riley Center, with funding provided by The Boeing Company. The initiative began in 2012 as a Charleston based farm-to-school program and has become a statewide effort to increase access to healthy local foods to food insecure youth, in particular. 

• Hunger-Free Summer Hubs Initiative brought together partners from the Lowcountry Food Bank, the Joseph P. Riley Jr. Center for Livable Communities at the College of Charleston, Feeding America, the Family Resiliency Center at the University of Illinois, and AmeriCorps VISTA. This collaborative team conducted a research study aimed at identifying strategies to increase participation in summer feeding programs across the Lowcountry Food Bank's 10-county coastal service area. The study resulted in data-driven recommendations to help expand access to nutritious meals for children during the summer months. 

• South Carolina Coalition for the Homeless - Point-in-Time Report: Every year, the PIT (Point-in-Time) count is performed as federally mandated by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development for all communities receiving federal funds through the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Grant Program. The PIT count takes an unduplicated census of people experiencing homelessness, sheltered or not, on a given night in January and helps communities better understand the magnitude and characteristics of their homeless population. 

• Lowcountry Graduate Center Educational Assessment: A comprehensive study using focus groups and surveys was performed for the Lowcountry Graduate Center in order to determine the interest and barriers to obtaining a graduate degree in the fields of advanced manufacturing and engineering, education and healthcare. 

• Tri-County Housing Blueprint: In coordination with the Charleston Trident Association of Realtors (CTAR) and the South Carolina Community Loan Fund, the Riley Center for Livable Communities helped to create a blueprint of actionable items to increase the number of housing units affordable to the region's growing workforce.