Community
initiatives--Aspen Institute
The Aspen Institute
ROUNDTABLE ON
COMPREHENSIVE COMMUNITY INITATIVES
REQUEST FOR
PROPOSALS:
SMALL GRANTS PROGRAM
The Aspen Institute
Roundtable on Comprehensive Community Initiatives for Children and
Families announces a Small Grants Program competition to fund research
to develop and test innovative ways of measuring social capital and
community capacity at the community level.
Using funds provided by the Annie E. Casey Foundation and the
John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Roundtable expects to
make 6-10 awards of $50,000 each and 1-3 awards of $100,000 each for the
period January 1, 2002 to December 31, 2002.
Initial concept papers are due by July 13, 2001.
Background
Information
The
Aspen Roundtable is a group of 30 leaders from the foundation,
government, academic and practitioner communities who meet twice each
year to analyze and assess the efforts of the comprehensive community
revitalization initiatives that are underway across the country.
The group aims to distill from these the common lessons that are
being learned and to identify cross-cutting problems.
One priority issue has been how to define key elements of the
process of community change and develop accurate measures of them that
can be used by practitioners, policymakers, funders and researchers.
Purpose
and goals of the Small Grants Program
The purpose of the
Small Grants Program is to advance the field’s ability to measure key
community-level aspects of social capital and community capacity, and
deepen the understanding of what these elements contribute to building
healthy communities and producing better outcomes for children and
families.
We
have a strong interest in developing measures that will be useful to
communities as well as to researchers, thus helping to break down
barriers between research and practice.
We are particularly interested in the development of measures
that make use of innovative techniques, tools or instruments;
multi-disciplinary approaches; and new electronic technologies.
We anticipate that community groups will be able to use the
measures developed by these grants to understand particular aspects of
social capital or community capacity in their communities and whether
they are making progress toward creating neighborhood conditions that
will lead to enhanced outcomes for children and families.
This means, for example, that a measure could become part of a
community-based organization’s own monitoring or tracking system, or
be incorporated into what staff actually do, perhaps with some help from
an outside researcher.
Measures must be
developed and tested in urban neighborhoods of concentrated and
persistent poverty in the United States.
Communities, in this case, refer to geographically defined areas.
We cannot fund projects where measures are so idiosyncratic or so
specific to the test site that they could not be used in other
low-income urban neighborhoods.
Topic areas of interest
Projects
should develop and test new measures of social capital and community
capacity. We also
have an interest in projects that propose to assess interconnections
among elements of community capacity or social capital, on the one hand,
and the physical, economic, or social conditions in a community, on the
other.
In both of these
categories, we strongly encourage projects that focus on measures that
would help to illuminate how race affects the development, distribution,
or application of social capital or community capacity.
Applicants might consider, for example, whether there are
distinctions in the way that social capital should be conceptualized and
operationalized for different racial and ethnic groups, or different
ways of conceptualizing and operationalizing capacity in communities
that are isolated or disempowered due to racial segregation.
Social
capital.
We are particularly interested in developing measures for
community-level aspects of social capital that are related to community
strength and well-being. These
are qualities or characteristics that link people together at the
community level and are thought to contribute to better outcomes for the
community as a whole. Examples
include, but are not limited to, concepts such as social connectedness,
attachment to others or to the place, social trust, a sense of community
identity, and faith in the neighborhood. We are interested in being able to document how social
capital is manifested across neighborhoods rather than how it produces
resources for individuals.
Community
capacity. We
are particularly interested in community-level measures that indicate
whether a community has the ability to define its needs and develop and
implement strategies to improve its well-being.
Examples of the types of capacities that we are interested in
include, but are not limited to, the community’s capacity to:
take action on its
own behalf or induce outsiders to take action on its behalf;
link with outside sources of information, power, or financing;
undertake
neighborhood-wide planning or agenda setting;
engage in collective
problem-solving and decision-making;
generate local leadership
that is effective and has legitimacy;
carry out the work of
community revitalization effectively.
We emphasize that
we are interested in projects that attempt to conceptualize and measure
these capacities at the neighborhood or community level, as considerable
work has already been done to develop ways of measuring capacity or
efficacy at the individual level and within organizations.
Developing
a conceptual construct of a community-level measure
We hope that
grantees will develop measures that will ultimately add to understanding
how social capital and community capacity are developed or actualized in
communities. A
challenging part of the process is the need to articulate a framework
that explains why a particular concept is important to measure at the
community-level, what it embodies or entails at the community level, and
what it is likely to lead to in terms of building stronger, healthier
communities and producing better outcomes for neighborhoods and the
families and children who live in them.
It is possible, for example, that different forms or types of
social capital or community capacity may be more important than others
in producing particular types of outcomes.
Another part of the
measurement challenge is defining a concept and its community-level
measure in a way that goes beyond simply aggregating its manifestations
at the individual or organizational level.
For a number of the dimensions of social capital and community
capacity, a key question at the community level is whether it is
sufficient to have a high average level of a particular characteristic
in the community, whether the characteristic needs to be distributed in
a particular way across the community, or whether both are required to
improve the community’s ability to produce better outcomes.
In order to address this question, we need to have reliable ways
of measuring the distribution as well as the presence of key
characteristics in a community.
Applicants for the
Small Grants Program awards are required to make a case for the
construct validity of the measure they will work on and to explain the
significance of the concept they are measuring to the process of
community change and how the measure might be interpreted.
The following are examples of the types of issues that might be
addressed in developing such a framework. They are illustrative only,
and should not be taken as suggestive of our priorities for measurement
development.
To use the concept
of social trust as an example: At
the community level, social trust or trust in other people can be broken
down into trust of others like oneself (intra-group trust) and trust of
others not like oneself (inter-group trust).
It appears that social trust is
unevenly distributed across racial and class lines.
Experience suggests that it is more challenging to organize a
neighborhood where there is much intra-group trust but not much
inter-group trust, as shown in heterogeneous neighborhoods with many
tightly woven peer groups. It
is therefore useful to know not just whether residents trust their
neighbors, but who their neighbors are, and what types of neighbors they
trust.
To take an example
relating to community capacity: It
appears that in communities that are wealthy or have a high level of
resources, things can get done without a high level of participation.
A small-number of well-connected individuals making a few phone
calls may be all that’s needed. In
contrast, in low-income communities it may be necessary to mobilize a
significant show of strength in order to create attention and get
results. The ability to
mobilize may be an indication of neighborhood strength; but a frequent
need to mobilize may be an indication that the neighborhood is
relatively low on other measures or forms of capacity.
Methodological concerns
Current measurement techniques rely heavily on the use of
surveys. Several
difficulties have been noted with this approach:
Surveys are quite expensive to develop, field, and analyze and
require a high level of technical expertise to be done well and yield
reliable data. In addition,
they do not always focus on gathering information about issues that are
of key importance to the people who are actively engaged in the work of
community building on the ground. All
of this makes it difficult for residents and practitioners to be
actively involved in developing research and making use of the findings.
Projects that propose to use survey measures should address these
concerns in their rationale.
We strongly encourage
applicants to propose projects that involve community residents and
practitioners in the design process and/or in data collection and
analysis. We also have a
particular interest in projects that develop and utilize alternative
methodologies, techniques, and instruments.
We would therefore welcome projects that make use of new
technologies, such as hand-held computers and Geographical Information
Systems, to collect or analyze data and simultaneously help to build
research capacity within the community. We would also be interested in projects that propose an
innovative use of existing
data sets (e.g., administrative, census or survey data collected for
another purpose) to create indicators of social capital or community
capacity. We encourage the
development of indicators based on qualitative approaches or
methodologies. In this case, tools such as guides for participant
observation, content analysis and unobtrusive measures would be needed
to ensure the indicator’s applicability
and use in other settings.
Testing strategies
Our intention is
that the measures developed by the Small Grants Program will be
replicable in urban communities beyond those where they are developed.
Pilot testing strategies and approaches must be discussed in the
concept paper and full proposal. While recognizing the cost limitations of the grant
awards, we nevertheless encourage applicants to field the measure in
more than one neighborhood or to use triangulation to substantiate the
conclusions drawn from the measure under development. The pilot test
should also be designed to support the construct validity of the measure
(“does this measure what we claim to measure?”), and to document
reliability ("do repeated measurements yield the same results?”).
Alternative approaches and criteria to establishing reliability
and validity for non-quantitative approaches or innovative methodologies
may also be acceptable but need to be explained in the concept paper.
The Application
Process and Timetable
There
is a two-stage application and review process.
Applicants are asked to submit a short concept paper by July 13,
2001. The concept papers
will be reviewed both by members of the Advisory Committee and Aspen
Roundtable staff. Approximately
25 finalists will be notified in September and asked to submit a full
proposal (of no more than 10 pages) later in the fall.
The full proposals will be reviewed and rated by the Advisory
Committee members. The
grant period will begin January 1, 2002.
Final reports will be due by March 30, 2003.
Grant award levels
Two levels of grant
awards are available: awards
of $50,000 each and awards of $100,000 each.
Both are for a research period of 12 months beginning January 1,
2002. Applicants should
bear in mind that we plan to make a greater number of
awards (6-10 grants) in the $50,000 category than in the $100,000
category (1-3 grants).
Eligible
applicants
We welcome
applications from the following individuals or groups:
independent researchers, researchers affiliated with a research
institute or an institution of higher education, staff who work for
consulting or evaluation firms, community groups or organizations with a
research capacity or a research partnership.
We have a special interest in applications from
researcher-community partnerships that have a history of working
together and in which the community plays a strong role, and from
partnerships of senior and junior researchers.
We also strongly encourage applications from persons of color and
from researchers from a wide variety of disciplines.
Guidelines for
writing the initial concept paper
All grant
applicants must submit seven (7) copies of the concept paper that is a
narrative of no more than three single-sided, single-spaced pages of
12-font type that includes the following:
A detailed
explanation of a) how the concept(s) is(are) operationalized, b) how the
measure captures social capital or community capacity at the
community-level of analysis, and c) its significance for the community
building field (e.g., why this operationalization of social capital or
community capacity matters to community well-being).
An explanation of the
process to be used for developing the measure.
An explanation of the
methodologies and strategies that will be used to establish the
validity, reliability, and replicability of the proposed measure.
Projects that propose to use qualitative measures should specify
the alternative criteria to be used to test the measure, and explain the
legitimacy of the approach.
An explanation of how and
why the measure will be useful to communities.
All grant applicants must also
submit the following:
Seven (7) copies of a one-page attachment describing the
applicant’s relationship to the community or communities to be
studied, the experience and capacity of the key staff who will work on
the project, and the capacity of the institution with which they are
affiliated, if any. If
the project involves a partnership, the roles, experience, and
capacities of both partners should be explained.
Seven (7) copies of a
one-page budget statement explaining the total estimated cost of the
project and how the project funds will be used.
A contact information
sheet listing the name of the primary contact, and the mailing address,
phone number, fax number, and e-mail where he or she can be reached
during the period July 13 to September 30th.
For specific types of proposals the following information
should be supplied:
Projects that involve a research-community partnership must
include seven (7) copies of a one-page letter of support from the
partner who is not the principal investigator.
Projects that involve
analysis of existing data sets must identify the data sets to be used,
and give assurances about when they will be available to the researcher
and how much work will be required to make them usable for the project.
This information must be included in the three-page narrative.
Projects that propose to
piggyback a Small Grants research project onto an on-going research
project or build on previous research must explain what it adds and
specify an identifiable product that will be completed within the
12-month research framework. This
information must be included in the three-page narrative.
Projects that plan to
merge the Small Grant Award with funding from other sources should
identify the sources and amounts of the other funding and clarify what
the Roundtable grant would pay for and what it adds to the project.
This information must be included in the one-page budget.
Selection criteria
Concept papers and
full proposals will be evaluated according to the following criteria:
Significance of the
concept to be measured to the field of community change as explained in
the applicant’s discussion of the project’s construct validity.
Relevance/usefulness of
the measure to practitioners and community partners.
Likely replicability of
the measure in other communities, and soundness of the methods for
checking the measure’s validity and reliability (or alternative
constructs).
Feasibility of completing
the research within the timeframes and cost limitations of the award.
Restrictions on the
use of funds
Grant projects are
limited to an indirect rate of 10 percent.
Small Grants project funding should not be used to pay for
computer hardware.
Research phase and products
The
research award period will run for 12 months beginning January 2002.
We anticipate that during this period there will be at least one
meeting of all the researchers, Aspen Roundtable staff, and the members
of the Advisory Committee to report on progress and discuss common
themes and issues.
By
March 30, 2003, grantees are expected to produce a written narrative
describing how the award was used and what was learned.
This paper should include an explanation of the findings and how
they should be interpreted; an assessment of how well the measure
performed and how it can be used by other communities and researchers; a
discussion of how the measure fits into the larger conceptual construct;
and a documentation of the partnership arrangement and what was learned
from the experience. Grantees
are also expected to submit their data with full documentation to a
public archive.
We anticipate that the Small
Grants Program will publish the work that has been accomplished.
Possible venues include publishing the final narrative reports in
a single volume or in a special issue of a relevant journal, or having
an Aspen Roundtable publication that synthesizes the measurement work
that has been done in the individual projects.
Questions
about the Small Grants Program should be sent by e-mail to dianac@aspenroundtable.org.
We will consolidate queries and post answers to the most
frequently asked questions at our web site http://www.aspenroundtable.org.
This document may
be read online at
http://www.aspenroundtable.org/proposals/RFP_Draft_text.doc