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Geographic space or location is an important aspect of many research topics in the third sector. Methodological advances have made it possible for scholars to better identify, assess, and account for the spatial aspects of their data. Such advances include Geographic Information System descriptive mapping of items such as density and location, Explorative Spatial Data Analysis, and Spatial Regression Analysis. This paper reviews a range of third-sector research questions that can be addressed with spatial analysis. We then briefly summarize social science and nonprofit scholarship as they relate to spatial analysis. We conclude by describing an exploratory spatial statistic as well as a spatial regression that can be used to illustrate the usefulness of these techniques.

American public schools experienced a substantial reduction of black-white segregation after the Supreme Court ordered the immediate desegregation of Mississippi schools in 1969. Past research has shown that progress slowed by the 1990s, with some arguing that segregation actually began to rebound. This study is the first to examine enrollment data for each decade between 1970 and 2010 for a comprehensive set of districts across the country and also the first to include data for 1980 for a national sample of districts. It provides definitive evidence that most desegregation occurred in the 1970s, with little subsequent change. It also addresses two questions about the desegregation process. First, how closely was it tied to court orders for a particular school district or for a neighboring district? Desegregation was greatest in response to a legal mandate, but it also extended to districts that never faced court action. Second, what was the effect of mandates on white flight? White student enrollment declined generally in these decades but more in districts that faced a mandate in the immediate past decade. White flight contributed to a modest increase in segregation between school districts, but desegregation within districts was sufficient to result in a large net decline at a metropolitan level.

For almost two decades now, cities around the country have been demolishing traditional public housing and relocating residents to subsidized private market rental housing. In this paper, we examine sense of place, consisting of both community and place attachment, among a sample of Atlanta public housing residents prior to relocation ( N  = 290). We find that 41% of the residents express place attachment, and a large percentage express some level of community attachment, though residents of senior public housing are far more attached than residents of family public housing. Positive neighborhood characteristics, such as collective efficacy and social support, are associated with community attachment, and social support is also associated with place attachment. Negative neighborhood characteristics, such as social disorder and fear of crime, are not consistently associated with sense of place. We argue that embodied in current public housing relocation initiatives is a real sense of loss among the residents. Policy makers may also want to consider the possibilities of drawing upon residents’ sense of place as a resource for renovating and revitalizing public housing communities rather than continuing to demolish them and relocating residents to other neighborhoods.

It has been argued that the effects of the desegregation of public schools from the late 1960s onward were limited and short-lived, in part because of white flight from desegregating districts and in part because legal decisions in the 1990s released many districts from court orders. Data presented here for 1970-2000 show that small increases in segregation districts were outweighed by larger declines districts. Progress was interrupted but not reversed after 1990. Desegregation was not limited to districts and metropolitan regions where enforcement actions required it, and factors such as private schooling, district size, and inclusion of both city and suburban areas within district boundaries had stronger effects than individual court mandates.

Research has shown that public housing residents have the worst health of any population in the USA. However, it is unclear what the cause of that poor health is among this population. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the association between public housing and health conditions: specifically, we ask if residents entered public housing already ill or if public housing may cause the poor health of its residents. The data used for this study come from the GSU Urban Health Initiative, which is a prospective, mixed-methods study of seven public housing communities earmarked for demolition and relocation ( N  = 385). We used the pre-relocation, baseline survey. We found that, while health was not the main reason residents gave for entering public housing, the majority of public housing residents entered public housing already ill. Substandard housing conditions, long tenure in public housing, and having had a worse living situation prior to public housing were not associated with an increased risk of a health condition diagnosed after entry into public housing. Our findings suggest that public housing may have provided a safety net for the very unhealthy poor.

This article uses data from an Atlanta-based longitudinal study following public housing residents from pending relocation through relocating between 2009 and 2010. Its purpose is to examine residents' satisfaction with the relocation experience and with their postmove home and neighborhood. In addition, we examine whether levels of relocation satisfaction or dissatisfaction were associated with any significant differences in destination neighborhood charactenstics. We build on previous research concerning prerelocation attachment to community and the hard-to-house. Findings suggest some consistency with previous research on levels of attachment to public housing communities and residents who fall into the category of the hard-to-house. Specifically, being older, having a disability, having longer tenure in public housing, and experiencing postrelocation financial strain are significantly associated with lower levels of satisfaction with the relocation process. Our findings, however, are far more mixed concerning the relationship between levels of satisfaction with the relocation process and destination neighborhood characteristics and pose some questions about poverty déconcentration and mixedincome assumptions. Policy implications are discussed.

There have been conflicting reports about changes in school segregation in the United States, with some suggesting that segregation is as intense now as in 1968. Data presented here show that the degree to which minority students are distributed differently than non-Hispanic white students across public elementary schools declined substantially between 1968 and 1990, and remained about the same level through 2000. At the same time, white students are becoming a smaller share of total enrollment, and this has two consequences. First, whites are increasingly exposed to racial and ethnic diversity in the schools that they attend. Second, minority students have fewer whites in their schools, even when they attend majority-white schools. These changes are important, but they do not constitute resegregation of public schools.

It has been argued that the effects of the desegregation of public schools from the late 1960s onward were limited and short‐lived, in part because of white flight from desegregating districts and in part because legal decisions in the 1990s released many districts from court orders. Data presented here for 1970–2000 show that small increases in segregationbetweendistricts were outweighed by larger declineswithindistricts. Progress was interrupted but not reversed after 1990. Desegregation was not limited to districts and metropolitan regions where enforcement actions required it, and factors such as private schooling, district size, and inclusion of both city and suburban areas within district boundaries had stronger effects than individual court mandates.

The Empowerment Zone and Enterprise Community Initiative (EZ/EC), funded by Congress in 1994, offered geographically targeted funding and tax incentives to distressed urban communities in the US. The mandated community involvement component of the programme was meant to separate it from traditional economic development initiatives, aligning it more fully with the core goals of community economic development. Did the programmatic strategies emphasise economic development more than fostering community partnerships or vice versa? The paper examines how much emphasis was actually placed on fostering community partnerships in the programme. It also assesses how effective this initiative was at achieving socioeconomic gains. Findings indicate that the more traditional community and economic development strategies received the majority of funding, despite the mandated requirement of building community partnerships. Nevertheless, the initiative resulted in modest decreases in poverty and unemployment. The lack of emphasis on the fostering of community partnerships in Chicago's zone did not render the initiative ineffective.