This program funds research studies that advance theory and build empirical knowledge on ways to improve the use of research evidence by policymakers, agency leaders, organizational managers, intermediaries, and other decision-makers that shape youth-serving systems in the United States.
Donor Name: William T. Grant Foundation
State: All States
County: All Counties
Type of Grant: Grant
Deadline: 08/02/2023
Size of the Grant:
- Major research grants: $100,000 to $1,000,000
- Officers’ research grants: $25,000–$50,000
Grant Duration: 4 years
Details:
The Research on Research Use
Prevailing strategies to bring research evidence into policy and practice rest on models that increase decision-makers’ access to rigorous evidence and incentivize or mandate the adoption of programs with evidence of effectiveness. Despite large-scale initiatives and major investments of this kind, research evidence remains under-used.
Recent scholarship points to the limitations of models that prioritize research production and dissemination without adequate attention to would-be users’ realities. Decision-makers may be experts on their systems, but, even with access to rigorous research, they may not have the capacity or resources to critically evaluate, prioritize, and apply the findings. What’s more, the research may not be relevant to their specific contexts or communities.
In order to harness the full power of research evidence, decision-makers need deeper engagement and support. Across disciplines and policy areas, studies are remarkably consistent in their identification of specific conditions that enable the use of research evidence:
- research is timely and relevant, addressing decision-makers’ needs and local contexts
- trusted relationships between researchers, intermediaries, and decision-makers enable collective sense-making of research and deliberation over how to use it
- evidence use is integrated into decision-makers’ existing routines, tools, and processes.
Proposed studies must pursue one of the following aims:
- Building, identifying, or testing ways to improve the use of existing research evidence.
- Building, identifying, or testing ways to facilitate the production of new research evidence that responds to decision-makers’ needs.
- Testing whether and under what conditions using research evidence improves decision-making and youth outcomes.
Types of Grants
- Major Research Grants: Studies involving secondary data analysis are at the lower end of the range (about $100,000-$300,000), whereas studies that involve new data collection can have larger budgets (typically $300,000-$600,000). Generally, only proposals to launch experiments in which settings (e.g., schools, child welfare agencies, justice settings) are randomly assigned to conditions are eligible for funding above $600,000.
- Officers’ Research Grants: Studies may be stand-alone projects or may build off larger projects. The budget should be appropriate for the activities proposed.
Funding Information
- Major research grants: $100,000 to $1,000,000 over 2-4 years, including up to 15% indirect costs.
- Officers’ research grants: $25,000–$50,000 over 1-2 years, including up to 15% indirect costs.
Eligibility Criteria
- Eligible Organizations
- The Foundation makes grants only to tax-exempt organizations. They do not make grants to individuals.
- They encourage proposals from organizations that are under-represented among grantee institutions, including Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), Hispanic-serving Institutions, Tribally Colleges and Universities (TCUs), Alaska Native-Serving Institutions, Native Hawaiian-Serving Institutions, and Asian American Native American Pacific Islander Serving Institutions (AANAPISIs).
- Eligible Principal Investigators
- The Foundation defers to the applying organization’s criteria for who is eligible to act as a Principal Investigator or Co-Principal Investigator on a grant. In general, they expect that all investigators will have the experience and skills to carry out the proposed work.
- They strive to support a diverse group of researchers in terms of race, ethnicity, gender, and seniority, and they encourage research projects led by Black or African American, Indigenous, Latinx, and/or Asian or Pacific Islander American researchers.
- Eligible Studies
- Only studies that align with the stated research interests of this program and relate to the outcomes of young people between the ages of 5 and 25 in the United States are eligible for consideration.
- They do not support non-research activities such as program implementation and operational costs, or make contributions to building funds, fundraising drives, endowment funds, general operating budgets, or scholarships. Applications for ineligible projects are screened out without further review.
For more information, visit WTGF.
