Innovation Catalyst Grants

RIPL

Innovation Catalyst Grants

The Innovation Catalyst Grant Program is designed to assist governments with designing, building, and deploying innovative tech-and-science-driven solutions to public challenges.

Application Deadline: Rolling.

About the Innovation Catalyst Grant Program

The Innovation Catalyst Grant Program is designed to assist governments with designing, building, and deploying innovative tech-and-science-driven solutions to public challenges. The goal of the program is to accelerate applying cloud and contemporary technology and science to real-world challenges to empower governments to use data and science to innovate.

Winners of the Innovation Catalyst Grant Program partnership awards will receive full-service project management, technical, and scientific support to empower them to approach solving the public problem with which they are most familiar, with the aid of contemporary technologies with which they may not be familiar.

Grantees of the Innovation Catalyst Grant Program will work closely with RIPL to define and implement programmatic proposals that meet the goals of this Solicitation. RIPL will work with its partners to assume primary responsibility for successfully developing and deploying the envisioned product(s) and/or solution(s). This support includes but is not limited to:

- - Deployment of a secure cloud-based Research Data Lake, owned by partners, to optimize and join data for insights. 
  - Deployment of a portfolio of scientific policy solutions which can be effectively scaled across partners to improve lives. 
  - Design thinking workshops to develop human-centered solutions. 
  - Comprehensive user testing. 
  - Product design and development. 
  - Planning, stakeholder, and project management (including organizing and leading all sprints). 
  - Customized cloud architecture, cloud engineering, software engineering, creation and deployment of bespoke AI/ML algorithms, advanced econometric research, data science, data engineering and data visualization. 
  - Scientific causal analysis and evaluation of programs and policies. 
  - Additional technological and project management support as needed.

Award values will vary based on the scoped work as described in the initial grant award MOU and the proposed solution(s); however, the estimated value of an Innovation Catalyst Grant Program award is between one and two million dollars. Award values are subject to funding available to RIPL.

Eligibility

The Lead Applicant is the organization that wins an Innovation Catalyst Grant Program partnership award. The Lead Applicant may be any of the following kind of organizations:

- - A government entity (federal, state, local or another jurisdiction),
  - Nonprofit organization,
  - Educational institution,
  - Local or regional workforce or economic development entity; or
  - Another appropriate entity or public agency.

Application Process

Awards are made on a rolling basis and are scoped in project MOUs. These are often accompanied by a Data Use Agreement.

Final approval for each award shall be determined by the Chief Executive Officer of RIPL, based on the recommendations of the Review Committee. Upon request, RIPL will provide feedback on proposals that are not awarded grants. 

Proposals must be submitted with all required completed elements, including:

1. 1. Cover Letter (1 page maximum)
  2. Proposal Narrative (2 pages maximum)
  3. Partnership Description (1 page maximum)
  4. Data Use Description (1 page maximum)
  5. Ecosystem Description (1 page maximum) 
  6. Project Leadership Assignments (1 page maximum)
  7. Communications Plan (2 page maximum)

A full .pdf copy of the solicitation for the Innovation Catalyst grant proposals, including detailed information about proposal evaluation criteria and the required components of the application can be downloaded here to assist organizations in preparation of their application.

For more information regarding RIPL’s grant programs, please reach out to [email protected].

RIPL