NIJ FY23 Youth Mentoring Research and Evaluation | O NIJ 2023 171663

Opportunity Information: Apply for O NIJ 2023 171663

The NIJ FY23 Youth Mentoring Research and Evaluation opportunity is a discretionary research grant from the U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs (OJP), administered by the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) in collaboration with the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP). It funds rigorous youth mentoring research and independent evaluations that align with OJP priorities such as advancing civil rights and racial equity, increasing access to justice, supporting victims and justice-involved individuals, strengthening community safety, and improving trust between law enforcement and communities. The basic idea behind the solicitation is that mentoring is widely used for delinquency prevention and for helping young people recover from victimization, and NIJ wants stronger evidence about how mentoring works for youth who are involved in the justice system and what gets in the way of access.

Projects must focus on at least one of only two allowed topical areas, and proposals outside these areas are not eligible. The first topic is barriers or impediments that prevent or limit justice-involved youth from accessing mentoring services (for example, referral pathways, eligibility rules, supervision requirements, transportation, technology access, family consent issues, stigma, or coordination problems across courts, probation, schools, and community providers). The second topic is mentoring programs that specifically serve youth involved in the justice system, with an emphasis on rigorous research and evaluation approaches that can credibly assess implementation, outcomes, and impacts. Applicants can address one topic or both, but they must clearly anchor their design and questions in these themes.

NIJ signals several priorities about how it wants the research to be conducted. Proposals get special consideration when the methods include meaningful engagement with people who have lived experience related to the topic, which can include justice practitioners, community members, service providers, crime victims, and individuals who have experienced justice system involvement. The solicitation also encourages multidisciplinary teams so that projects can combine complementary expertise, such as quantitative impact evaluation, qualitative fieldwork, implementation science, youth development, criminology, and program operations. In addition, NIJ wants applicants to explicitly consider and measure issues tied to diversity, discrimination, and bias, as applicable to the project, across characteristics such as age, gender and gender identity, race, ethnicity, religion, and sexual orientation. In practice, this means not only describing who is served, but building equity-relevant measures and analyses into the research plan where feasible.

Partnerships are common and often necessary in this space, so the solicitation lays out expectations for working with mentoring organizations, juvenile justice agencies, and other relevant partners. If a proposed project involves such partnerships, the application should include a letter of support from an appropriate decision-making authority at each partner agency. Those letters are expected to acknowledge that de-identified data produced or obtained through the NIJ-funded project will be archived with the National Archive of Criminal Justice Data (NACJD) at the end of the award period, consistent with NIJ data archiving guidance. If an award is made, the grantee is expected to have a formal agreement in place with partnering agencies by January 1, 2024, and that agreement must include a provision to meet the data archiving requirements.

NIJ also places unusual emphasis on dissemination, meaning it wants findings to travel beyond academic publication and actually influence policy and practice. Applicants are encouraged to propose robust, creative, multi-pronged dissemination strategies, including partnerships with organizations and associations that are positioned to turn evidence into changes in mentoring practice, juvenile justice operations, or related policy. Proposals receive special consideration if they dedicate at least 15 percent of the requested project budget to implementing those dissemination plans, and that commitment should be clearly shown in the budget worksheet and narrative.

From an administrative and eligibility standpoint, this opportunity is offered as a grant under CFDA 16.560 within the Science and Technology and other Research and Development activity area. Eligible applicants are broad and include state, county, and local governments; public and private institutions of higher education; federally recognized tribal governments and other tribal organizations; public housing authorities; nonprofits with or without 501(c)(3) status; and for-profit entities (including small businesses). Where multiple agencies will use federal award funds to carry out the work, only one organization can apply as the primary applicant; other partners must be included as subrecipients. NIJ also states that the applicant is expected to conduct the majority of the work proposed, so the lead organization should not function primarily as a pass-through.

Key opportunity details include the funding opportunity number O-NIJ-2023-171663, an original closing date of May 30, 2023, and an award ceiling of $2,800,000. Overall, the solicitation is aimed at producing high-quality, policy-relevant evidence about mentoring for justice-involved youth, with strong expectations around partner engagement, equity-aware measurement, data archiving for transparency and reuse, and dissemination strategies that are resourced enough to drive real-world change.

• The National Institute of Justice in the science and technology and other research and development sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "NIJ FY23 Youth Mentoring Research and Evaluation" and is now available to receive applicants.
• Interested and eligible applicants and submit their applications by referencing the CFDA number(s): 16.560.
• This funding opportunity was created on 2023-03-15.
• Applicants must submit their applications by 2023-05-30. (Agency may still review applications by suitable applicants for the remaining/unused allocated funding in 2026.)
• Each selected applicant is eligible to receive up to $2,800,000.00 in funding.
• Eligible applicants include: State governments, County governments, City or township governments, Special district governments, Independent school districts, Public and State controlled institutions of higher education, Native American tribal governments (Federally recognized), Public housing authorities/Indian housing authorities, Native American tribal organizations (other than Federally recognized tribal governments), Nonprofits having a 501 (c) (3) status with the IRS, other than institutions of higher education, Nonprofits that do not have a 501 (c) (3) status with the IRS, other than institutions of higher education, Private institutions of higher education, For-profit organizations other than small businesses, Small businesses, Unrestricted.

Apply for O NIJ 2023 171663

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