Resources
Background
Opportunity
Funders and Partners
Incubating Research Partnerships to Accelerate Policy Innovation
Research partnerships between universities and state and local governments can help communities adopt more effective ways of delivering critically important public goods and services like health, education, safety, clean air and water, and growth-oriented infrastructure.
Multiple funding sources can support these research and evaluation partnerships, including federal grants to state and local governments and philanthropic funds. Yet it is not easy for either government agencies or campus-based researchers to form these research collaborations.
The Policy Innovation Days initiative supports convenings designed to incubate impactful and funded research and evaluation collaborations between U.S.-based SSRC member universities and their state and local government partners.
Policy Innovation Days
OVERVIEW
Policy Innovation Days
Building Government Innovation Research Capacity
Supporting Policy Innovation Labs
Measuring the Social Returns to Government Innovation
Accelerating Climate-Protective Policy Innovation
Many university offices work closely with state and local government partners. Universities’ many institutional connections with state and local governments provide a valuable opportunity to engage public sector agencies in conversations about their research and evaluation needs, conversations that can lead to funded research and evaluation partnerships.
The Policy Innovation Days initiative, generously supported by Arnold Ventures, funds SSRC member universities to work with their state and local government partners to co-host events bringing together agency representatives seeking research and evaluation support, and campus-based researchers with expertise in causal policy and program evaluation. Planned in collaboration with state and local government partners and hosted on- or off-campus, Policy Innovation Days offer agencies the opportunity to define their research and evaluation priorities, allow researchers to engage with agencies on questions of data availability and quality, and enable agencies and researchers to incubate potential research and evaluation collaborations. Post-convening support is available for the development of funding proposals for these research and evaluation partnerships.
The SSRC provides planning, convening, and post-convening support for Policy Innovation Days. Funding is available for event costs including travel, lodging, space rental, and catering.
U.S. College and University Fund member institutions interested in this opportunity should reach out to PolicyInnovation@ssrc.org.