Deadline: 14-Nov-2025
The Entrepreneurship and Private Sector Development (EPSD) Program at Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA), with support from the Wellspring Philanthropic Fund has launched a new competitive fund to support rigorous research that explores how soft skills influence entrepreneurship and employment-related outcomes.
This opportunity aims to overcome challenges such as unclear identification of skills being studied, lack of comparability across projects, and limited focus on implementation details. Applicants are encouraged to address key evidence gaps, align with a shared framework for measuring soft skills and economic outcomes, and generate actionable insights for implementers and policymakers.
The initiative welcomes proposals from qualified research teams with at least one PhD holder or PhD candidate affiliated with a recognized research institution. Teams must demonstrate experience in conducting field research and applying impact evaluation methods. The call supports diverse study types, including qualitative and exploratory work, pilot studies, data analysis, nimble impact evaluations, supplementary funding for ongoing trials, longitudinal studies, and full randomized controlled trials.
Eligible projects must be based in low or middle-income countries and use standardized labor market outcome measures for comparability. They should align with a shared soft skills framework, share implementation details through progress reports, collect cost data, and make de-identified data publicly available within two years of endline collection. The selected projects must also disseminate results publicly through working papers, policy briefs, blogs, or website summaries.
Additional selection criteria emphasize experienced, multidisciplinary research teams, including economists, psychologists, educators, and local researchers. Studies should examine wellbeing, mental health, and long-term employment data, assess soft skills across multiple rounds, collect participant feedback, and ensure psychometric rigor in measurement tools. Preference will be given to teams that demonstrate strong implementation commitment, openness to scale-up, and willingness to share training curricula and data for broader analysis.
The deadline to submit Expression of Interest forms is November 14, 2025, at 11:59 pm EST. Accepted teams will be invited to submit full proposals by January 30, 2026, with notifications expected by April 1, 2026.
For more information, visit IPA.