The Council of State Governments (CSG) Justice Center, in collaboration with the Center for Policing Equity (CPE), is hosting a virtual learning community focused on providing support to community-led public safety programs on ways to better collect and use data for their programming.

The learning community will be hosted by the CSG Justice Center, and CPE, a leader in public safety redesign. It will include opportunities for mutual learning through peer-to-peer support and guidance from leading experts in the field.

Throughout the learning community, participants will have a chance to engage in process-oriented planning to better leverage data that can advance their program mission, identify needed resources, and promote sustainability. Sessions will cover key topics such as theory of change, logic models, data collection planning, data sharing, quality improvement, evaluation, messaging, and marketing.

Sessions will occur on Zoom 1:00-2:30 p.m. ET on the following dates:

• January 14, 2026
• February 11, 2026
• March 11, 2026
• April 8, 2026
• May 13, 2026

APPLY NOW.

When is the deadline?

Interested teams should complete and submit the application—which takes approximately 10 minutes—by 11:59 p.m. ET on November 10, 2025. A CSG Justice Center staff member will follow up with applicants by November 18, 2025.

If you have any questions, contact Emily Rogers at erogers@csg.org.

Who should apply?

This application is open to any interested in enhancing their use of data and building a strong data culture within their organization. For the purposes of this application, community-led public safety programs can either be community responder programs or community violence intervention and prevention initiatives:

• Community responder programs offer an additional option for first response. Composed of multidisciplinary professionals trained to address behavioral health and quality-of-life concerns, community responder programs provide a person-centered response to 911 and other emergency calls for service. Integrating community responder programs into first response systems ensures that all calls for service can receive the most appropriate response.
• Community violence intervention and prevention initiatives (CVIPI) use a public health approach to prevent and reduce violence by addressing its root causes and promoting long-term safety. These programs engage people at the highest risk of involvement in violence through strategies such as street outreach, hospital-based intervention, and intensive case management. Led by credible messengers with deep community ties, CVIPI is grounded in evidence-based and trauma-informed practices that provide mentorship, mediation, behavioral health supports, and connections to essential services.

Who should participate?

A dedicated project or program manager must attend each session and be the main point of contact. Depending on the session topics, the project or program manager can include additional representatives to attend alongside them, such as frontline staff, administrators, IT staff, community members, or elected officials.