National Institute of Justice: Youth Mentoring Research and Evaluation

Overview

OJP is committed to advancing work that promotes civil rights and racial equity, increases access to justice, supports crime victims and individuals impacted by the justice system, strengthens community safety and protects the public from crime and evolving threats, and builds trust between law enforcement and the community. 

Mentoring is a prominent strategy for delinquency prevention and victimization recovery that offers at-risk youth structured support from older or more experienced mentors to provide positive role models and promote resilience. With this solicitation, in collaboration with the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP), NIJ seeks applications for rigorous youth mentoring research and independent evaluation projects that address one or both of the following two topical areas:

1. Barriers/impediments for youth involved in the justice system to access mentoring services.
2. Mentoring programs that serve youth involved in the justice system. 

Applicants to this solicitation must submit proposals that address one or both of these two topical areas. 

NIJ will give special consideration to proposals with methods that include meaningful engagement with the people with lived experience of the subject of study; including, but not limited to, justice practitioners, community members, crime victims, service providers and individuals who have experienced justice system involvement.

Applicants are encouraged to propose multidisciplinary research teams to build on the complementary strengths of different methods and areas of subject matter expertise. NIJ also seeks proposals that include consideration and measurement of issues of diversity, discrimination, and bias across age, gender and gender identity, race, ethnicity, religion, and sexual orientation, as applicable.

Applications proposing research involving partnerships with mentoring, juvenile justice, or other agencies, should include a letter of support, signed by an appropriate decision-making authority from each proposed, partnering agency. A letter of support should include the partnering agency’s acknowledgement that de-identified data derived from, provided to, or obtained through an award funded by NIJ will be archived by the grant recipient with the National Archive of Criminal Justice Data (NACJD) at the conclusion of the award. 

NIJ seeks proposals that include robust, creative, and multi-pronged dissemination strategies that include strategic partnerships with organizations and associations that are best equipped to ensure that research findings lead to changes in policies and practices related to the subjects of study. Special consideration will be given to proposals that dedicate at least 15% of the requested project award funding toward implementing such strategies.

In the case of partnerships that will involve the use of federal award funds by multiple partnering agencies to carry out the proposed project, only one entity/partnering agency may be the applicant; any others must be proposed as subrecipients. The applicant is expected to conduct a majority of the work proposed.

Applications must be submitted to DOJ electronically through a two-step process via Grants.gov and JustGrants. 
Step 1: The applicant must submit by the Grants.gov deadline the required Application
for Federal Assistance standard form (SF-424) and a Disclosure of Lobbying
Activities (SF-LLL) form when they register in Grants.gov at https://www.grants.gov/
web/grants/register.html. Submit the SF-424 and SF-LLL as early as possible, but no
later than 48 hours before the Grants.gov deadline. If an applicant fails to submit in
Grants.gov, they will be unable to apply in JustGrants. 
Step 2: The applicant must submit the full application, including attachments, in
JustGrants at JustGrants.usdoj.gov by the JustGrants application deadline. 

If seeking to be considered for the New Investigator/Early Career Opportunity, the
applicant should identify that it is submitting a New Investigator/Early Career proposal on
the title page of the application. 

Anticipated Total Amount to be Awarded Under Solicitation: $2,800,000.00

Anticipated Number of Awards: Total number of awards NIJ expects to make to be determined by the number of applications received and their merit.

Anticipated Maximum Dollar Amount of Awards: Maximum dollar amount for each award to be determined by the requirements of the research proposed in grants selected for award. Applicants are encouraged to propose budgets that match the research activities proposed, up to the full dollar amount anticipated to be awarded under this solicitation.

Period of Performance Duration: To be determined by the period of performance of awarded applications. Successful applicants will be expected to complete the work proposed within a five-year period of performance. 

Cofunding: An award made by NIJ under this solicitation may account for up to 100 percent of the total cost of the project. The application should indicate whether it is feasible for the applicant to contribute cash, facilities, or services as non-federal support for the project. The application should identify generally any such contributions that the applicant expects to make and the proposed budget should indicate in detail which items, if any, will be supported with non-federal contributions.