Research Projects

Our Research Projects apply ServCollab’s serving humanity logic to specific human needs. They demonstrate how the science and art of serving humanity can address urgent challenges and create new possibilities. Applying research insights and wisdom-driven frameworks to real-world contexts can help nonprofits, agencies, and communities design service systems that relieve suffering, improve well-being, and enable well-becoming. These projects evolve and grow as we learn, collaborate, and respond to the needs of underserved populations.

Improving Services for Refugees

Status: Ongoing

The global refugee crisis is humanity’s canary in the coal mine — revealing service systems failures that must be transformed.

This crisis is one of the most urgent humanitarian challenges of our time. With more than 140 million people displaced worldwide, refugees endure immense suffering as they leave their countries of origin and struggle to find safety and opportunity in host countries. Their journeys expose the service systems failures that will eventually affect us all.

During displacement — often lasting months or even years — refugees struggle to remain invisible to avoid being mistreated. Invisibility still leaves them vulnerable to mistreatment, abuse, violence at borders, exploitation by smugglers, forced labor, sexual violence, and extortion. At the same time, they are excluded from essential services such as medical care, food, water, shelter, and transportation. For children, the elderly, and people with illnesses or disabilities, these exclusions are especially deadly, turning displacement into a daily struggle for survival.

ServCollab contributes by connecting research to practice. Our work gathers and analyzes refugee experiences — such as those recorded in hotline service data — to make their needs more visible and to provide insights that nonprofits, international agencies, and local communities can use to design stronger, more humane services.

Our refugee research challenges old paradigms and calls for a new approach grounded in human values, ethics, and collaboration. Guided by the spirit of Ubuntu — “I am because we are” — the refugee crisis reminds us that humanity is interconnected. By addressing state-imposed vulnerabilities, poverty, and exclusion, we can move toward service ecosystems that are sustainable, resilient, and just for all humanity.

This ongoing research project develops new theories and practical approaches for understanding human identity, vulnerability, and service systems to better relieve suffering, improve well-being, and enable well-becoming.

From Theory to Practice: A Collaborative Approach to Social Impact Measurement and Communication

Status: Completed

Measuring social impact remains a major challenge for many nonprofit organizations. While organizations often collect extensive data, they frequently lack practical systems for measuring and communicating their broader societal impact.

This ServCollab research project brought together researchers and a refugee-serving nonprofit organization in the United Kingdom to co-create a practical social impact reporting toolkit. Rather than developing solutions independently, researchers and practitioners worked together over two years to identify challenges, design measurement approaches, and produce practical resources that organizations can immediately apply.

The collaboration followed a three-phase process:

Co-defining social impact
Co-designing a social impact measurement strategy
Co-producing a practical reporting toolkit

The resulting toolkit helps nonprofit organizations measure and communicate social impact more effectively through practical guidance, customizable templates, qualitative and quantitative measurement approaches, and reporting resources that support both organizational learning and funding decisions.

This project exemplifies ServCollab's collaborative research philosophy by demonstrating how researchers and practitioners can co-create knowledge that is both academically rigorous and immediately useful in practice.

Healing the Digital Divide With Digital Inclusion

Status: Completed

Digital technologies increasingly determine people's ability to access health care, education, social services, and economic opportunities. However, unequal access, skills, and outcomes continue to exclude millions of people from fully participating in society.

This ServCollab research project reframed the digital divide as a digital inclusion challenge that can be addressed through service. The research demonstrates how service organizations can foster human capabilities through inclusive service practices, enabling people to participate more fully in essential services and society.

Working across health care, education, and social service settings, the research identified practical service inclusion practices that organizations can implement to increase digital participation. These include redesigning organizational practices, empowering employees, building digital capabilities, strengthening social connections, and creating more inclusive service experiences.

The project demonstrates how collaborative service design can move beyond providing technology toward enabling people to develop the capabilities needed to participate confidently and meaningfully in an increasingly digital world.

Rethinking Service Systems and Public Policy: A Transformative Refugee Service Experience Framework

Status: Completed

The global refugee crisis presents one of humanity's most complex service challenges. Refugees interact with numerous public, nonprofit, and private service systems throughout their journeys, yet these systems often remain fragmented and difficult to navigate.

In 2021, ServCollab published its first collaborative research project, bringing together thirteen international scholars to develop the Transformative Refugee Service Experience Framework. The framework helps researchers, service organizations, and public policymakers understand how refugee experiences evolve from suffering toward well-being and how service systems can be transformed from hostile to hospitable.

The framework examines refugee experiences across three service journey phases—entry, transition, and exit—and three interconnected service system levels—macro, meso, and micro. This multidimensional perspective enables organizations to identify where service failures occur and where opportunities exist to improve refugee experiences.

Beyond introducing a new conceptual framework, the project provides practical guidance for governments, nonprofit organizations, and service providers to build more collaborative and hospitable service systems that better support refugee integration and human well-being.