Greater Louisville Project

What Greater Louisville Project does

The Greater Louisville Project (GLP) is a civic research and benchmarking initiative founded in 2003 as a consortium of philanthropic foundations convened by the Community Foundation of Louisville. Operating from Louisville, Kentucky with a small staff (1-10 employees), GLP produces competitive city reports that benchmark Louisville's socioeconomic performance against peer metropolitan areas. Its analytical framework, known as the Deep Drivers of Change, organizes indicators across four pillars: Education, Health, Quality of Place, and Jobs.

GLP's core product is the Competitive City Report series, which uses quantitative methods — notably the Natural Breaks Algorithm and Z-scores — to position Louisville's metrics within peer-city distributions. The initiative has partnered with data providers including the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation for health indicators. Reports are released publicly at no cost, with the explicit mission of informing civic leaders, policymakers, and the general public rather than generating commercial revenue.

GLP's funding model relies on philanthropic grants rather than commercial sales, with the founding consortium structure distributing underwriting across multiple Louisville-area foundations. In 2023, after two decades of operation, GLP publicly announced it would "step aside" to create space for new community frameworks, signaling an institutional wind-down rather than a continued growth posture.

Name

Greater Louisville Project

Legal name

Greater Louisville Project

Website

https://greaterlouisvilleproject.org

Company type

Private

Founded year

2003

Operating status

Operating

Headcount range

1–10 employees

Short description

Greater Louisville Project is a civic research initiative founded in 2003 that benchmarks Louisville against peer cities across education, health, quality of place, and jobs, serving civic leaders and the public with free competitive city reports.

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Product category

Civic Data Research and Urban Policy Analysis

NAICS

Research and Development in the Social Sciences and Humanities (54172)

akta.pro primary industry

Community Development & Neighborhood Revitalization (CDBG, Place-Based Initiatives) (BPAIANAE)

Keywords

• Civic data research
• City benchmarking reports
• Urban policy analysis
• Community indicators research
• Peer city comparisons

Headquarters

HQ city

Louisville

HQ country

United States

HQ region

North America

Offices1 record

Markets served

GTM type

B2B

Offering type

Services

Cost components

Personnel, Operations, Technology or R&D, Marketing or Sales

Distribution channels1 record

Marketing channels2 records

Core offering

Greater Louisville Project is an independent, nonpartisan civic initiative that conducts data research and analysis benchmarking Louisville's civic progress against a set of peer cities. It publishes Competitive City Reports and applies a "Deep Drivers of Change" framework (Education, Health, Quality of Place, and 21st Century Jobs) using statistical methods such as the Natural Breaks Algorithm and Z-scores to support community-wide decision-making.

Product overview

Greater Louisville Project offers a portfolio of civic data research products anchored by its annual Competitive City Reports, which benchmark Louisville against peer cities across four Deep Drivers of Change: Education, Health, Quality of Place, and Jobs. The organization provides community data, research publications, and analytic tools designed to support civic action and long-term progress measurement for Louisville.

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Products and services

• Competitive City Reports
• Deep Drivers of Change Framework

Segments3 records

Ideal customer profiles3 records

Technology focussed No

API detail

Has API

No

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

Feature2 records

Partnerships

Two partnerships are on record, tiered core.

• Robert Wood Johnson FoundationcoreOthersFoundation providing data used in GLP's County Health Rankings analyses. GLP uses data from this foundation's County Health Rankings and calculates z-scores relative to Louisville's peer cities rather than all counties in each state.
• Peer CitiescoreOthersSet of cities selected by GLP that share common indicators, embody similar socio-economic characteristics, and provide data points for comparing factors influencing the Deep Drivers of Change.

Scale indicators2 records

Recent moves4 records

Regional players

• PittsburghTODAY: Regional indicators project benchmarking the Pittsburgh region's quality of life and economic competitiveness; near-identical functional model targeted at a different metro.

Broad incumbents

• Urban Institute: Major national economic and social policy research organization producing evidence-based research on cities, housing, health, and education; a much larger analog to GLP's social-science research function.
• Brookings Institution: National public policy research organization whose Metropolitan Policy Program produces city-level competitiveness and inclusion analyses; comparable intellectual orientation, far broader scale.
• Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning (CMAP): Regional planning body that integrates data, indicators, and benchmarking for the Chicago metro; broader in scope (official MPO) but analogous in combining civic data analytics with peer-comparison reporting.

Direct peers

• Boston Indicators: Civic research and data benchmarking initiative for the Boston region; highly comparable as an independent, data-driven project that produces indicator reports to inform civic decision-making for a single metro.
• City Observatory: Independent urban research organization focused on metrics-driven analysis of US city performance, economics, and land use; comparable mission of using rigorous data to evaluate city competitiveness.
• Measure of America (Social Science Research Council): Produces the American Human Development Index and community-level well-being analyses using social science methodology; directly comparable to GLP's Z-score-based multidimensional indices and benchmarking approach.
• SAVI (The Polis Center at IUPUI): Community information system serving the Indianapolis region with neighborhood-level data, indices, and benchmarking tools; comparable civic-data-platform mission targeted at a specific metro area.

Emerging players

• Kids Count (Annie E. Casey Foundation): National and state-by-state data project tracking child well-being indicators with rigorous methodology; comparable in producing standardized indices of community well-being, but focused on a single demographic domain.

Others

• Vibrant Cities Lab: Joint initiative of the American Planning Association and the Urban Land Institute providing data and tools for evaluating urban vitality and placemaking; an adjacent data-driven civic resources initiative.

Market position

Strengths3 records

Weaknesses4 records

Competitive moat3 records

Key risks5 records

Key highlights5 records

Customer concentration

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Profiles1 record

Funding overview

Funding rounds

Investors

Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

M&A

Investments

M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

Frequently asked questions about Greater Louisville Project