Institutional Challenge Grant

Overview

The Institutional Challenge Grant supports university-based research institutes, schools, and centers in building sustained research-practice partnerships with public agencies or nonprofit organizations in order to reduce inequality in youth outcomes. The grant requires that research institutions shift their policies and practices to value collaborative research. Institutions will also need to build the capacity of researchers to produce relevant work and the capacity of agency and nonprofit partners to use research.

We welcome partnerships in youth-serving areas such as education, justice, child welfare, mental health, immigration, and workforce development. We especially encourage proposals from teams with African American, Latinx, Native American, and Asian American members in leadership roles. The partnership leadership team includes the principal investigator from the research institution and the lead from the public agency or nonprofit organization. 

The Institutional Challenge Grant asks grantees to pursue four goals: 

1. Grow an existing institutional partnership with a public agency or nonprofit organization. The research-practice partnership will have defined objectives, roles, and agreements, and will be built for the long term. In this way, the partnership will be mutually beneficial, enabling the partners to develop and pursue a joint research agenda that is relevant to the public agency or nonprofit organization’s work over an extended period of time. 

2. Pursue a joint research agenda to reduce inequality in youth outcomes. The partnership’s research will aim to build, test, or increase understanding of programs, policies, or practices to reduce inequality in the academic, social, behavioral, or economic outcomes of young people ages 5-25 in the United States. Specifically, the research agenda will seek to inform responses to inequality on the basis of race, ethnicity, economic standing, language minority status, or immigrant origins. 

3. Create institutional change to value research-practice partnerships within research institutions. The research institution will design a feasible strategy for institutional change that addresses observed  structural, motivational, and financial barriers that inhibit research-practice partnerships at the institution. By establishing structural supports and incentives that encourage skilled, mid-career researchers to conduct joint work with policymakers and practitioners, the institution will develop an environment for partnerships to thrive. 

4. Enhance the capacity of both partners to collaborate on producing and using research evidence. Through new experiences that foster deeper understandings of a given policy or practice context and deepen relationships with partners, grantees on the research side will enhance their capacity for participating in effective partnerships. At the same time, the public agency or nonprofit partner will enhance their own capacity to partner with researchers , as well as understand, conduct, and use research through activities such as technical assistance, infrastructure improvements, or staff training.

Eligible principal investigators are leaders at eligible research institutions.

We are most interested in supporting existing research-practice partnerships that will use the grant to continue learning and growing. While the competition is open to partnerships at different stages of maturity, the grant is intended to add significant value to what already exists. As a general guideline, the partnership should be far enough along to conduct the proposed work, but not so established that the grant adds little value to what is currently in place.

The total budget should amount to  $650,000 (including the combined direct and indirect costs for the full grant period). 
Indirect costs may not exceed 15 percent of total direct costs. 
Funds for the planning period may not exceed $60,000. 
Funding should be allocated for two years of a full-time equivalent fellowship. In addition, universities are required to fund one additional year of a full-time equivalent fellowship.