OpportunityTitle: Social Innovation Fund FY 2012
CategoryExplanation: The Social Innovation Fund focuses on three priority issue areas:  &#149; Youth Development;  &#149; Economic Opportunity; and  &#149; Healthy Futures.
AdditionalInformationOnEligibility: To be eligible for a SIF intermediary award, an applicant must:  &#149; Be an existing grantmaking institution or an eligible partnership;  &#149; Properly propose to be either a geographically-based or issue-based SIF that will focus on improving measurable outcomes;  &#149; Have a strong track record of using rigorous evidence to select, invest in, support, and monitor the replication and expansion of grantees;  &#149; Have a well-articulated plan to:  o Select, replicate and expand subgrantees that have been shown to have at least preliminary evidence of effectiveness; and   o Collaborate with a research organization to undertake rigorous evaluations to move subgrantees to at least moderate levels of evidence.  &#149; Have appropriate policies on conflicts of interest, self-dealing, and other improper practices; and  &#149; Demonstrate either cash-on-hand or commitments (or a combination thereof) toward meeting 50 percent of the first year matching funds, based on the amount of grant funds requested.  For example, a request of $1 million needs to be accompanied by documentation of $500,000 on-hand at the time of application.
Description: APPLICATIONS CANNOT BE SUBMITTED THROUGH GRANTS.GOV APPLICATIONS MUST BE SUBMITTED THROUGH THE CNCS eGRANTS SYSTEM: https://egrants.cns.gov/espan/main/login.jsp This Notice of Funds Availability (Notice) announces the opportunity to apply for Fiscal Year 2012 awards from the Social Innovation Fund. The Social Innovation Fund is administered by the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS), a federal agency that engages more than five million Americans in service through Senior Corps, AmeriCorps, and Learn and Serve America, and leads President Obama&apos;s national call to service initiative, United We Serve. In 2009, Congress passed the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act (SAA), the most sweeping expansion of national service in a generation. This landmark law not only expands service opportunities, it focuses national service on key outcomes; builds the capacity of individuals, nonprofits, and communities to succeed; and encourages innovative approaches to solving problems, including through the establishment of the Social Innovation Fund. The Social Innovation Fund is itself an innovative program that awards grants to existing grantmaking institutions, or &#147;intermediaries,&#148; who in turn subgrant funds to promising community-based nonprofit organizations to validate and grow outcomes-focused approaches to challenges facing local communities in three priority issue areas: &#149; Youth Development; &#149; Economic Opportunity; and &#149; Healthy Futures. The Social Innovation Fund directs resources toward increasing the evidence base, capacity and scale of the organizations it funds in order to improve the lives of people served by those organizations. The operating model of the Social Innovation Fund has been explicitly designed to advance these objectives and is distinguished by four key elements: (1) reliance on intermediaries with strong skills and track records of success to do the critical work of selecting, validating, and growing high-impact nonprofit organizations; (2) requirements that each federal dollar granted by the Social Innovation Fund be matched 1:1 by the intermediaries with money from private and other non-federal sources and that subgrants by these intermediaries be matched 1:1 by subgrantees; (3) requirements that all grantees engage each of their subgrantees in formal evaluations of program performance and impact; and (4) a commitment to knowledge sharing and other initiatives that advance social innovation more generally in the nonprofit sector.
GrantorContactEmailDescription: Direct email for questions about SIF competition.
GrantorContactText: Social Innovation Fund &lt;br/&gt;CNCS &lt;br/&gt;Pat Carpenter &lt;br/&gt;202-606-3223
CloseDateExplanation: The deadline for submission of applications is 5:00 pm Eastern Time on March 27, 2012. Applications must be submitted through the CNCS  eGrants system:   https://egrants.cns.gov/espan/main/login.jsp