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New Insights and Innovation: Responsive Mode Funding
| Deadline: | 5pm on 11 September 2008 for outline proposals |
|---|---|
The Foundation is inviting ideas for proposals addressing areas within the broad remit of the Foundation. We are seeking projects with a clear element of originality, not routine research nor repetition of existing research.
Proposals must have relevance to our mission to ‘search, demonstrate and influence, providing evidence, solutions and ideas that will help to overcome the causes of poverty, disadvantage and social evil’ and be within one or more of our overarching aims:
- Poverty: to examine the root causes of poverty and disadvantage and identify solutions
- Empowerment: to identify ways of enabling people and communities to have control of their own lives
- Place: to contribute to the building and development of strong, cohesive and sustainable communities
JRF’s remit is UK wide and we are interested in all four countries of the UK and their different approaches to policy and practice.
Insights and innovation
The purpose of this call is to encourage original ideas within the JRF’s remit that are outside of our defined programmes of work. We view this as an opportunity to encourage fresh thinking around new or emerging issues in policy or practice, to generate innovative and imaginative ideas or be groundbreaking in some way. In short, we are looking for inspired proposals. These may be relatively small to enable groundwork and the development of thinking to take place or more substantial investigations.
Our preference is to fund projects that have a wide significance, beyond the local or routine and have the potential to influence policy or practice.
Budget
Our capacity to fund projects costing more than £100,000 is limited. Our main goal is to seek a few high quality projects which are innovative or provide fresh thinking and are methodologically sound rather than one or two expensive projects.
We do not have any preconceptions about the design of proposals. However, the suggested design must be appropriate to meet the aims of the proposed project. Our focus is on value for money rather than cost per se.
How to apply
There is a two stage process with the first stage being a short written outline proposal. The purpose is to save the time of both applicant and the Foundation, by ensuring that only applications that have a reasonable chance of success reach the full application stage. Outlines – of no more than three sides of A4 - must be submitted on the accompanying template (with the format unchanged).
At this stage we are primarily interested in:
- ensuring the idea is relevant to the JRF’s Strategic Plan;
- ensuring that the idea is fresh, groundbreaking, or dealing with an emerging issue;
- fully understanding the issue or problem you wish to address
- clear objectives and aims for the project;
- reassurance that the design and methods will be appropriate to address the objectives;
- be certain of the potential to influence policy and/or practice;
- an indication of cost.
The outline will be considered by the Director of Policy and Research and other internal members of staff. The most relevant staff according to knowledge and expertise of the subject area will be involved. On occasion external advice may be sought if required at this stage.
Having considered your outline we will advise you whether the Foundation wishes to progress to considering a full application or not. Due to the number of outlines anticipated it will not be possible to give feedback on outlines for this call, nor on ideas prior to submitting an outline.
Full proposals, should you be invited to submit one, will be assessed against the Foundation’s usual criteria for assessing proposals. Full proposals will be subject to both internal and external assessment prior to a recommendation for funding or not to the December meeting of our Trustees.
The timetable for proposals is as follows:
- Deadline for receipt of outline proposals: 5 pm on 11 September 2008
- Notification of shortlisted proposals: 19 September 2008
- Deadline for receipt of final proposals: 2 pm on 20 October 2008
- Trustees’ Meeting: 2 December 2008
Requests for an extension to these deadlines cannot be considered.
Outline proposals should be submitted by email to:expressions@jrf.org.uk.
