Randomized Controlled Trials to Evaluate Social Programs Whose Delivery Will Be Funded by Government or Other Entities

Overview

Arnold Ventures’ (AV) Evidence-Based Policy team invites grant applications to conduct randomized controlled trials (RCTs) of social programs in any area of U.S. policy in which:

(i) AV will fund the RCT, and government or another entity will fund the program’s delivery; and
(ii) The RCT meets the additional selection criteria set out below.

Our main goal in funding such RCTs is to build the body of programs rigorously shown to produce sizable, sustained effects on important life outcomes. We recognize how challenging this is: Surprisingly few programs are found to produce the hoped-for improvements in participants’ lives when evaluated in a well-conducted RCT. This Request for Proposals seeks to optimize the chances of success by prioritizing RCTs of programs with highly-promising prior evidence or other compelling policy reasons for a rigorous evaluation.

IMPORTANCE: Is the applicant proposing to evaluate a program –

• That is backed by highly-promising prior evidence, suggesting it could produce sizable impacts on outcomes of recognized policy importance – such as educational achievement, workforce earnings, criminal arrests, hospitalizations, child maltreatment, and government spending. For example, we specifically encourage applications seeking to replicate findings from prior rigorous evaluations that are especially promising but not yet conclusive—e.g., due to only short-term follow-up, a single-site study design, or well-matched comparison groups but not randomization. (Please provide full citations to the relevant prior studies as an attachment to the letter of interest.) As a threshold condition for “highly promising” evidence, applicants should show that the program can be or (preferably) has been successfully delivered under real-world implementation conditions, since effective implementation is usually necessary for a program to produce meaningful impacts

- or -

• For which there are other compelling policy reasons to evaluate its effectiveness – e.g., it is, or soon will be, widely implemented with significant taxpayer investment, and its impact on its targeted outcomes is currently unknown. Please note that, to meet this criterion, it is not sufficient to establish that the program seeks to address an important problem, or that the study will fill a gap in the research or test a theory. Applicants must also present a compelling policy reason, as described above, to evaluate the specific program.

We ask applicants first to submit a letter of interest (maximum three pages).

Submissions are accepted on a rolling basis; there is no deadline.

We recognize the need to expand and diversify the pool of researchers with RCT experience. Thus we strongly encourage researchers who are new to RCTs, including those from groups historically underrepresented in the research community – such as researchers of color and women – to participate in this funding opportunity. We therefore want to clarify that such individuals who do not meet the experienced researcher” criterion themselves may still serve as a study’s lead researcher as long as they partner with a colleague who does meet the criterion and will play a key substantive role in the study.