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Many research-practice partnerships begin when two initially unaffiliated partner organizations decide to pursue collaborative work. Having formed a partnership between our respective offices within a federal agency, our experience is a bit different.

Three research grantees and four William T. Grant Scholars have been awarded grants to support their development as mentors to junior researchers of color. The awardees will mentor promising doctoral students and post-doctoral fellows in enhancing their methodological skills, publication records, and career networks. The mentoring grants program is designed to help Scholars and research […]

We are proud to announce four new grants to support research on reducing inequality in youth outcomes and one new grant to support research on improving the use of research evidence. Approved at the Foundation’s summer board meeting, these grants will build theory and empirical evidence in our two focus areas. The next deadline to […]

The Foundation is interested in funding studies that examine social movements as a strategy to target macro-structural inequalities that affect youth outcomes. Such studies might focus on youth-led movements or on adult-led movements that affect youth, but the central focus should examine the conditions or mechanisms through which movements can reduce inequality in youth outcomes.

In this chapter from What Works Now: Evidence-informed Policy and Practice, Vivian Tseng and Cynthia Coburn delineate the evolution of evidence use in the United States, specifically the ways that research evidence has been used in public education. From the narrow focus of the What Works agenda to the emergence of more holistic conceptions of […]

I share my reflections on the past decade of work in this area, as well as my current thinking, with the hope that we, along with fellow travelers on a similar journey, can find ways to forge a more productive path forward together. In the meantime, I welcome your feedback to improve our thinking and work, and I look forward to continuing to share what we are learning across sectors and countries.

In June 2019, Michigan’s Attorney General dismissed all criminal cases connected to the Flint water crisis. This crisis, which hit the headline news in early 2016, exposed as many as 8,000 children under age six to extreme lead levels in drinking water. Many Americans were left wondering: What effect would this have on the community, […]

In this webinar, held in August 2019, grants coordinator Sharon Brewster provides an overview of the Youth Service Capacity-Building Grants program, details eligibility and selection criteria, and answers participant questions.

For over three decades, research has shown that young people transitioning to adulthood from foster care in the United States have fared very poorly compared to their peers who have not been in care. This is the case across measures of well-being including educational attainment, employment and earnings, material hardship, and criminal justice system involvement. […]

The bottom line: universities can incentivize faculty to become engaged in responding to real-world problems and having a social impact. Join us in figuring out how to make this happen.

Although today much of the work to bring research to bear on important decisions that shape our lives and our environment is still focused largely on disseminating findings and communicating with those who will listen, we’re encouraged that a movement is growing to foster engagement and build meaningful, collaborative relationships.

These grants will support activities to strengthen the organizational infrastructure of nonprofit organizations in the five boroughs of New York City that provide direct services to young people ages 5 to 25. The long-term goal of the program is to help build stronger, more stable youth-serving organizations that will reduce inequality in youth outcomes.

The Institutional Challenge Grant has provided my colleagues and I at the Cornell Cooperative Extension-Tompkins County with an opportunity to expand an existing working relationship with researchers from Cornell University’s College of Human Ecology and work in partnership to develop strategies for mitigating the impact of the opioid epidemic on families and communities in upstate […]

When well executed, research-practice partnerships can be powerful mechanisms for producing relevant and useful knowledge and facilitating its integration into policy and practice to improve youth outcomes. But without taking intentional steps to avoid common hurdles, it’s likely that many partnerships will fail to fulfill this potential. In Five Ways RPPs Can Fail and How […]