“Demonstrated buy-in” can be any contribution or signal of support from the university that will help the project sustain its impact. This includes, but is not limited to, contributed university funds, support from university leadership, and collaboration between departments, faculty, or other groups.

Applicants may demonstrate university buy-in via letters of support, written evidence of collaboration between university entities (an informal MOU), or evidence of cash or in-kind contributions from the university.

Proposals at this level must have specific commitments from their university and any named partners. The commitments may be in the form of cash contributions (either the value of the effort that university-paid personnel is expending on the project or money from a university gift, endowment, or other unrestricted funds) and/or in-kind support (real property, equipment, supplies, and other expendable property, or goods and services).

The Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion criteria state that the “section will be used to determine if the proposed project addresses one or more barriers to equity and access related to Public Interest Technology based on best practices, and does the team have an existing record of serving diverse, underrepresented, and marginalized populations.”

The questions ask the principal investigator to: 

• Please define or describe the target community of your project (250-word maximum)
• Please describe how the demographics of those benefiting from the project compare to the demographics of the larger population in that (often geographic) area (500-word maximum)
  • What are the major barriers to equity and access related to Public Interest Technology, as your institution and project team undertake the proposed project?  
  • In what ways will your project’s objectives and method address those barriers?
  • Describe how the proposed project will conduct recruitment, engagement, and retention activities of historically excluded communities.
  • What sources of bias is this project subject to? What mitigation strategies will be employed to combat bias and generate more equitable outcomes?
  • What record do you have of serving ethnically, racially, socioeconomically diverse, and underrepresented populations? If not yet in place, describe how you would use this funding to engage, serve, and collaborate with those populations in ways that are informed by best practices.

As explained in the RFP, there is a difference between a partner and a collaborator. In a partnership, there is a formal relationship where there is more of a co-mingling of resources defined by different partnership arrangements (MOU, MOA, Letters of Commitment). Individuals retain their authority and a separate structure is developed to oversee or manage the engagement.

Partnerships. The project has meaningful and equitable partnerships with one or more of the following entities:  

• Other educational institutions in their proposals, including those that are not part of the PIT-UN University Network, in particular, Minority-Serving Institutions (MSIs) as well as two-year, community college institutions 
• Other educational institutions, including those that are not part of the PIT-UN University Network, affinity groups, or organizations that focus on non-tech disciplines including, but not limited to, ethnic studies, disabilities studies, history, humanities, and social sciences 
• Community organizations that have a specific focus on workforce development and/or creating career pathways for populations currently underrepresented in public service or science, technology, engineering, or math fields.
• Affinity groups or organizations that support academic leadership among communities of color  

Meaningful and equitable partnerships may include, but are not limited to: 

• Memoranda of Understanding (MOU), Memoranda of Agreement (MOA) for internships, apprenticeships, and practica 
• Articulation agreements
• Past collaboration on a previous funding opportunity with letters of support
• Documentation of community listening sessions, focus groups, and training sessions

 Note that you will need to upload letters of commitment (MOAs, MOUs, and letters of support) from all named partners with this application.  

• For each partnership, describe how you have cultivated a meaningful and equitable relationship with the partner entity. See “Evaluation Criteria” for guidance on meaningful and equitable partnerships. If this project includes a partnership with one or more additional universities, please describe how the partnership will operate, including the division of labor.

• Name of the partner institution
• Name of the point of contact at the partner institution
• Phone number and/or email address for the point of contact
• Brief description of the partner institution’s mission and work
• Description of the role the partner will play on the project and how the partnership would enhance or expand the impact of the project
• A list of deliverables that the partner institution will be responsible for (if applicable)
• The amount of monetary support the partner will provide (if applicable)
• The type and value of any in-kind support the partner institution will provide (staff time, facility space, supplies, equipment)

Upload a document briefly explaining the reason.

The Challenge will accept informal in-text citations (e.g., hyperlinks) in place of traditional citations; additionally, you may submit a Works Cited or Bibliography in the “Supplemental Uploads and Principal Investigator Relevant Work” section, though this is not required.

All templates are housed in our Submittable application portal and can be downloaded from this website in the section called Download the 2023 PIT-UN Network Challenge Forms and Evaluation Criteria

There is a 10-page limit for uploads. The following documents are required as part of the application and do not count toward the 10-page limit:

• Proof of Legal Status/IRS Letter of Determination
• Project Budget
• Most Recent Audited Financials
• Institution’s IRS Form 990 (if co-submitting a proposal, each institution must submit its own Form 990) 
• List of Board of Directors or Board of Trustees
• List of Main Staff Members for the Project

Note that these are subject to file size limitations as determined by the Submittable application platform and are listed below each “Upload a file” button in the relevant section of the platform.

The following documents are required for all formal partnerships and do not count toward the 10-page limit.

• MOA, MOU, and Letters of Commitment

For applications that checked the box “My project is also a Data Science” you may either answer the question in the long answer field with a 750-word limit or upload a PDF document that is no longer than three (3) pages. The uploaded document must answer the same questions as the long answer question and may include any relevant visuals, diagrams, figures, graphics, and the like. You will upload this document right after the long answer field in the PDF Upload as an alternative to keying in the supplemental questions for Data Science Projects”

Any additional documents that support the content of your application are optional and do count toward the 10-page limit. Any documents in this section should be referred to somewhere in the answers to your application questions.

• NVF Child Safeguarding Policy Information Sheet

As stated in the Year 4 Challenge RFP, budgets should be inclusive of an indirect rate of 20% of total direct costs.

Within these parameters, we offer the following additional guidance:

• Applicants are not required to claim the 20% indirect costs.
• If applicants do choose to claim indirect costs, these must be capped at 20% of the requested grant amount from NVF/PIT-UN (not of the entire project, should applicants be seeking funding for the same project elsewhere).
• The Challenge acknowledges that most institutions of higher education have federally negotiated rates that are significantly higher than 20%. You may apply the unclaimed indirect costs (the difference between your university’s rate and 20%) as matching funds.
• Keep in mind that the Network relies on substantial institutional support for Challenge projects as a means to grow public interest technology as a field. We appreciate that covering the real costs required to run institutions does represent one form of institutional support. However, proposal evaluators will primarily be looking for evidence of institutional support via leveraged resources that the institution will bring to bear directly on the project’s success. Please see the “Institutional Support” criterion for more detail.

The NVF budget template should include cost-sharing. Please be sure to distinguish which/how much of a project’s planned expenses will be covered by the PIT-UN funding in relation to the total project budget.  If any of the funding from the PIT-UN award will be regranted from the primary institution, this should be reflected on the Subtotal Subgrants section of the budget template.

The PIT-UN Year 5 Challenge RFP will give extra consideration to projects that center the needs of communities that have historically been denied access to new technologies, been systematically left out of conversations at the intersection of technology and policy, and have been denied opportunities to join the technology workforce, in efforts to further the positive social impact of technology for all communities will be prioritized. 

Projects that can demonstrate a strong commitment to justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion in both project design and reach will be prioritized by receiving a higher number of points out of the 35 total possible points under that evaluation criterion. In addition, when determining the final portfolio of awarded applications, evaluators may choose to include an application that has a strong justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion component.

You may join one of our Open Office hour zoom calls on Fridays starting on April 7th, 2023 to ask your questions or direct all specific questions regarding your proposed project to info (at) pitcases.org

The deadline for submission is May 15, 2023. The grant period for projects is from October 1, 2023 through January 30, 2025.

Selections are expected to be made by September 2023. Funding is expected to be dispersed by October 1, 2023.