Award-Winning Civic Intelligence
The Diaspora's research desk.
The research arm of community power. We read the fine print on public money — for the people who pay it.
Validated by stakeholdersElected officials, community leaders, and industry titans
May 2026 cycle$7.8 billion authorized by voters
Original findingFirst to quantify PFC tax-base erosion
Who We Serve
Different mandates, one blind spot — the public-capital structures that decide whether your money builds power or quietly erodes it. Here is how we close it, by who you are.
Your capital moves toward community outcomes with no forensic read on the public-finance structures shaping them — and your prospect research runs on the same commodity tools as every peer. We bring both.
For funders & foundationsThe certification crisis is deciding which of your members can compete for public contracts. Reactive engagement arrives too late. You need the fine print before the vote and the tracking after it.
For chambers & coalitionsBetween the official statement and the advocacy noise, no independent, community-fluent read on the bonds and PIDs reshaping your region exists. That gap is where we sit.
See the platformOriginal Research & Platforms
Every engagement stands on work that already exists in public — built, published, and tested before any contract was signed.
$7.9 billion in bond authority across four North Texas jurisdictions, through eleven analysis routes any voter can use.
Visit the platformNine sections and 38 verified citations on how public capital is governed in North Texas — and where the oversight gaps live.
See the researchPublic Improvement Districts as instruments of community capital — who names them, who controls them, who benefits.
See the research$701MPer year, off the tax rolls
Public Facility Corporations — a Texas housing tool — now remove $701 million a year from Dallas and Tarrant County tax rolls. We were the first to put that number on the public record.
Source: Texas Legislative Budget Board data · Stress-tested against senior practitioner review
How Institutions Work With Us
$4,800 / year
Jurisdiction briefs, election-cycle alerts, and procurement trackers for chambers, coalitions, and funders.
Join the waitlistFrom $7,500 · 30–45 days
One question, answered at forensic depth, on your timeline.
Two institutions a year
Continuity for organizations that move capital and need the fine print read all year.
From $2,500 / day
Bond-cycle briefings and AI-for-civic-institutions training for boards and staff.
Insights
Field notes on municipal finance, community wealth, civic technology, and the governance of public capital — published across The Signal and Power by Design.
Development that pays dividends to the community already there — instead of pricing it out. Why ownership, not just affordability, is the real test.
Read the pieceInvestors call these neighborhoods too risky; philanthropy arrives in bursts. Evergreen capital is built to stay — and compound inside the community.
Read the pieceCommunities generate the data. The next question of power is who governs it — and who profits. A case for data sovereignty.
Read the pieceThe typical white family holds roughly six times the wealth of the typical Black family. Charity has not closed that gap — capital might.
Read the pieceThe Founder
Hawkins Civic Intelligence began as a question asked from inside the capital markets: who reads the fine print on public money for the people who pay it? The founder, Nicholas D. Hawkins, holds active FINRA Series 7 and Series 66 registrations, carries a decade of civic leadership from the NAACP to the National Urban League, and is completing his degree at Texas Southern University.
The research carries the rest of the résumé.