Our Process
UNPKD's programming is built on interaction with our environment and input from our members. This page outlines the process that connects our research projects that form the main focus of our organization to the policy work, workshops, and mentorship that follow from it as part of our commitment to our partners and outreach.
Six Steps From Research to Impact
UNPKD's model moves in a continuous loop: each stage informs the next, and outcomes in the field feed back into new research and policy priorities. Through this cycle, we hope to be able to continuously inform ourselves of our region's economic environment and better understand how to tackle problems in it.
Field Research & Direct Engagement
UNPKD's research begins on the ground. Through structured interviews and roundtable sessions with a network of 150+ entrepreneurs across seven counties, we document how policy, culture, and economic conditions intersect in the daily experience of running a business and obtaining access to financing and expansion opportunities.
Cross-Sector Partnerships
This direct engagement is reinforced by an active network of 12 partner organizations and 15 legislators, community organizers, and economic researchers, ensuring our findings reflect perspectives from across the public, nonprofit, and private sectors. These partners help schedule, finance, and promote our events and research ventures.
Identifying Structural Gaps
Interview data and partner insight are synthesized to locate where access to entrepreneurship breaks down for underserved business owners, whether in capital, licensing, information, or professional networks, pinpointing the specific barriers our programming and policy work are designed to close.
Direct Outreach Through Workshops
Findings translate directly into action. UNPKD's workshops function as a direct-outreach complement to this research and to broader policy and economic reform efforts, bringing practical, curriculum-based support to the entrepreneurs and communities identified through our fieldwork. We structure our programs to reach people who would not otherwise have access to such resources, centering on advertising in local businesses, newspapers, and community spaces.
Networking & Mentorship Access
Beyond instruction, workshops connect participants with loan officers and established entrepreneurs, building lasting access to mentorship and professional networks, the relationships that often determine whether a business secures financing and survives its critical first years.
Strengthening the Private Sector
The cumulative result is measurable: stronger communal economic development and a more resilient New Jersey and American private sector, built through expanded access to opportunity. These outcomes, in turn, continue to inform UNPKD's research and policy priorities going forward.
Explore Our Published Research
Read the policy white papers, op-eds, and insight articles produced through this process, or see the partners helping to carry it out.