Deadline: 12 September 2017
The William T. Grant Foundation is currently applications for its Institutional Challenge Grant, encouraging research institutions to build sustained research-practice partnerships with public agencies or nonprofit organizations in order to reduce inequality in youth outcomes.
The purpose of this award is to encourage research institutions to build sustained research-practice partnerships with public agencies or nonprofit organizations in order to reduce inequality in youth outcomes.
Objectives
To achieve the purpose, research institutions will need to address four important goals:
- Build a sustained institutional partnership with a public agency or nonprofit organization that serves young people in the United States.
- Pursue a joint research agenda to reduce inequality in youth outcomes.
- Develop the capacity of the partners to collaborate and use research evidence.
- Create institutional change to value the partnership and its work.
Award Information
The William T. Grant Foundation will make a $650,000 award to a research institution to support a research-practice partnership for three years. The award may be renewable for an additional two-year term. The grant will provide:
- Up to $60,000 for 6-12 months of joint planning activities (e.g., refining protocols for partnering, selecting fellows, finalizing partnership agreements, etc.).
- Fellowship support for the equivalent of one full-time or two half-time fellows per year, for two years. In addition, the research institution must contribute the equivalent of one full-time or two half-time fellows for the equivalent of a one-year, full-time term.
- Up to three years of support for the partnership to conduct research to reduce inequality in youth outcomes.
- Resources to develop the capacities of both partners.
- Indirect cost allowance of up to 15 percent of total direct costs.
Eligibility Criteria
- The award will be made to an organization, not to an individual. Organizations can include university-based research institutes, schools or centers, research organizations, think tanks, or other such research institutions. Grants are limited without exception to tax-exempt organizations.
- The principal investigator should be a leader at the research institution. S/he should have visibility, influence on institutional policies and practices, and access to the resources needed to implement and optimize the award. S/he should also possess the skills needed to cultivate trusting relationships with leaders from the partner public agency or nonprofit organization.
- Eligible public agencies include state or local agencies and their departments and divisions. Nonprofit, tax-exempt organizations are eligible if they are open to the general public and provide services for youth ages 5 to 25 in the United States. Eligible agencies and organizations engage in work relevant to youth in the areas of education, justice, child welfare, mental health, immigration, or workforce development and have the resources needed to implement and optimize the award.
- Leaders from the public agency or nonprofit organization should have the authority and influence required to successfully institutionalize the partnership and the use of research evidence in the agency or organization’s work.
- Research-practice partnerships are defined as long-term, mutually beneficial collaborations that promote the production and use of rigorous and relevant research evidence. These partnerships take a long view and should extend beyond the life of any one grant, project, or leader. While the competition is open to partnerships at different stages of maturity, applicants will need to convince reviewers that the grant adds significant value to what already exists. We anticipate that it will be difficult for a well-established partnership with strong institutional support to make a convincing case that the award adds value. For younger partnerships, reviewers will seek promising initial evidence that the partners have successfully worked together in the past and have the potential to sustain a long-term collaboration.
- Fellows will primarily be mid-career researchers appointed at the research institution who collaborate with the public agency or nonprofit organization. We define mid-career as having received the terminal degree within 8 to 20 years of the date that the application is submitted. (This should be calculated by adding 8 and 20 years to the date the doctoral degree was conferred. For medicine, an institution should use the date from the completion of the first residency.) The fellow does not need to be an employee of the research institution, and can be recruited from another institution.
- Applicants may choose to appoint one fellow from the public agency or nonprofit organization. This should be a mid-career professional at the agency or organization who will be called on to facilitate the use of research. A mid-career professional has 8 to 20 years of cumulative experience in his/her current role.
How to Apply
Interested applicants must submit the required documents online via given website.
Eligible Country: United States
For more information, please visit Institutional Challenge Grant.