United States: Research Grants on Improving the Use of Research Evidence

Deadline: 10-Jan-24

The William T. Grant Foundation is offering grants to support research on strategies focused on improving the use, usefulness, and impact of evidence in ways that benefit young people ages 5-25 in the United States.

Research grants on improving the use of research evidence fund research studies that advance theory and build empirical knowledge on ways to improve the use of research evidence by policymakers, agency leaders, organizational managers, intermediaries, and other decision-makers that shape youth-serving systems in the United States.

Research Interests

• They welcome impact studies that test strategies for improving research use as well as whether improving research use leads to improved youth outcomes. They also welcome descriptive studies that reveal the strategies, mechanisms, or conditions for improving research use. Finally, they welcome measurement studies that explore how to construct and implement valid and reliable measures of research use.
• They welcome studies that pursue one of three aims:
  • Building, identifying, or testing ways to improve the use of existing research evidence
    • This may include:
      • Studies of strategies, mechanisms, or conditions that foster more routine and constructive uses of existing research evidence by decision-makers.
      • Studies that test the effects of deliberate efforts to improve routine and beneficial uses of research in decision-making.
  • Building, identifying, or testing ways to facilitate the production of new research evidence that responds to decision-makers’ needs
    • This may include:
      • Studies to identify strategies for altering the incentive structures or organizational cultures of research institutions so that researchers conduct more practice- or policy-relevant studies and are rewarded for producing research that decision-makers consider useful.
      • Studies to identify the relationships and organizational structures that lead to the prioritization of decision-makers’ needs in developing research agendas.
  • Testing whether strategies that improve the use of research evidence in turn improve decision-making and youth outcomes
    • This may include:
      • Studies that examine the impact of research use on youth outcomes and the conditions under which using research evidence improves outcomes.
      • Studies to identify and test other conditions under which using research evidence improves youth outcomes.

Funding Information

• Major Research Grants
  • $100,000 to $1,000,000 over 2-4 years, including up to 15% indirect costs.
  • Studies involving secondary data analysis are at the lower end of the range (about $100,000-$300,000), whereas studies that involve new data collection can have larger budgets (typically $300,000-$600,000). Generally, only proposals to launch experiments in which settings (e.g., schools, child welfare agencies, justice settings) are randomly assigned to conditions are eligible for funding above $600,000.
• Officers’ Research Grants
  • $25,000–$50,000 over 1-2 years, including up to 15% indirect costs.
  • Studies may be stand-alone projects or may build off larger projects. The budget should be appropriate for the activities proposed.

Eligibility Criteria

• Eligible Organizations
  • The Foundation makes grants only to tax-exempt organizations. They do not make grants to individuals.
  • They encourage proposals from organizations that are under-represented among grantee institutions, including Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Hispanic-serving Institutions, Tribal Colleges and Universities, Alaska NativeServing Institutions, Native Hawaiian-Serving Institutions, and Asian American Native American Pacific Islander Serving Institutions.
• Eligible Principal Investigators
  • The Foundation defers to the applying organization’s criteria for who is eligible to act as a Principal Investigator or Co-Principal Investigator on a grant. In general, they expect that all investigators will have the experience and skills to carry out the proposed work.
  • They strive to support a diverse group of researchers in terms of race, ethnicity, gender, and seniority, and they encourage research projects led by Black or African American, Indigenous, Latinx, and/or Asian or Pacific Islander American researchers.
• Eligible Studies
  • Only studies that 1) align with the stated research interests of this program and 2) relate to the outcomes of young people between the ages of 5 and 25 in the United States are eligible for consideration.
  • They do not support non-research activities such as program implementation and operational costs, or make contributions to building funds, fundraising drives, endowment funds, general operating budgets, or scholarships. Applications for ineligible projects are screened out without further review.

For more information, visit William T. Grant Foundation.