The Work Is Hard Enough. Research Shouldn't Be.
Organizations serving justice-involved populations face a particular challenge: the decisions that matter most require evidence that is difficult to find and even harder to translate into action.
Staff is stretched, funding landscapes shift, and policies change faster than reports can track them. Demonstrating impact is especially difficult when outcomes are complex, long-term, and shaped by systems outside your control.
Rethink Research closes that gap. We provide strategic research, grant intelligence, and public records analysis so your organization can make informed decisions, pursue the right funding, and build the case for what works without adding to your team's burden.
Our primary focus is on organizations serving justice-involved populations, but we also support work in education, healthcare, and related fields where the same questions apply.
If you're facing a research or funding challenge you haven't been able to get your arms around, that's where we start.
Our Services
Strategic Research
Policy moves fast. Rethink's strategic research synthesizes legislation, policy trends, funding priorities, and program evidence so your organization can make confident, defensible decisions without spending weeks doing it yourself.
Public Records & Data Transparency
When you need more than a policy document, public records tell the real story. We use court records, agency documents, and FOIA requests to surface what is actually happening, giving your organization primary source evidence to support decisions, advocacy, or due diligence.
Rethink's TN Grant
Monitor Subscription
Stop sifting through irrelevant listings. Rethink's TN Grant Monitor delivers hand-curated, justice-focused grant opportunities so your team can focus on the grants that fit rather than hunting for them. Updated regularly, with funder context and alignment indicators built in.
CustoM Grant Research Projects
When you need more than a database, we scope targeted grant research to your specific situation. Funder analysis, 990 deep-dives, grant history reviews, and funding strategy development to support near- and mid-term planning.
About Wendy Davis
Founder & Principal Researcher, Rethink Research
For more than 20 years, I conducted over 1,000,000 court-based public record searches. That work provided a niche, ground-level view of how criminal justice data is created, shared, and used by the courts and other stakeholders.
As record systems became increasingly automated, my focus shifted to how this data moved across organizations and shaped decisions that affected people’s lives. I returned to graduate school to examine how justice-related policy influenced real-world outcomes, especially recidivism.
Through that process, I realized that effective, evidence-based interventions do exist. However, adoption depended on coordination and alignment across sectors. Today, I work with justice-focused organizations to provide research and analysis that supports decisions with generational impact.
If you are facing a research or funding challenge, let's talk!
Our Memberships
Want to Stay in the Loop?
Get occasional updates about our latest justice-focused research in Reentry, Prison Education, Diversion, and Workforce Development.
No spam. No data sharing. Just information that matters.