Indianapolis

The Polis Center at IUPUI

The Polis Center, at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, is an applied research center within the IU School of Liberal Arts. The Greek word polis means city, and accordingly Polis concentrates on issues related to metropolitan Indianapolis and other mid-sized American cities. Polis is multidisciplinary, community-oriented, entrepreneurial, and creative in its approach to problem solving. Polis' strengths are in community-based research and analysis and in advanced information technologies, especially geographic information systems (GIS). Working in partnership with other organizations, Polis addresses issues of mutual concern, and with its network of relationships, strives to bring together disparate groups and interests to find common ground.

The Center's purpose is to build understanding of community issues from a variety of perspectives. With a preference for working collaboratively, The Center often serves as the managing partner for gathering and analyzing information, and making it available in a useful and understandable form. Polis aims to help others create a vision of common good and to realize this vision through the use of practical tools and methods. Polis has experience in community development, religion, government, social services, information management, arts and culture, and other areas. The Polis Center has a dedicated staff of 35 full-time employees and working relationships with many other talented and accomplished people, in Indianapolis and across the country. The Polis Center staff has particular experience in managing large complex projects involving a number of participating organizations, and in gathering, organizing and analyzing data collected from multiple sources.

SAVI Community Information System (SAVI)

The SAVI Community Information System (www.savi.org) began in 1995 as a joint project of The Polis Center at IUPUI and United Way of Central Indiana to support human services planning.  Its mission now is to help organizations and researchers make data-informed decisions by 1) providing reliable, geographically precise data about communities; 2) creating actionable information; 3) developing tools for data analysis; and 4) building capacity of nonprofit and community-based organizations (CBOs) to use data effectively.

SAVI (Social Assets and Vulnerabilities Indicators) contains over 10,000 indicators on social, economic, and physical conditions of Central Indiana communities developed from over 30 data providers and makes the data freely available through a web site (www.savi.org).  Users have the ability to view data profiles, search, map, and analyze over 20 years of data about 2,000 defined areas in the 11-county Indianapolis MSA, including but not limited to neighborhoods, school districts, ZIP codes, townships, and numerous other geographies.   SAVI also builds capacity of nonprofit and community based organizations to use data effectively for strategic planning, community assessments, program planning, evaluation, grant development, research, service area assessment, needs assessment, heath services evaluation, and so much more. 

SAVI is created and managed by The Polis Center, a center in the IU School of Liberal Arts at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, for the United Way of Central Indiana, as community trustee.