Request for Proposals

1. Grant Information Form

The Grant Information Form requests information necessary for the consideration of your proposal (including contact information, grant project dates, amount of the grant, and 150 word proposal abstract).

The Grant Type to select is “Small Project”

This form requires contact information and signature for:

• The Project Director(s) (the person(s) responsible for providing narrative report on grants, typically the person(s) overseeing the administration of the grant and writing the project proposal to apply for the grant).
• The Financial Contact (the person responsible for receiving the check and providing financial reports of expenditures for the institution). This should be a different person than the project director.
• The Authorization Contact (the person authorized to sign grant requests for the institution).

In 1000 words or less, please address:

• The pedagogical question or problem that the small grant project will specifically address
• A set of goals for the project
• A description of the challenges and opportunities for teaching and learning that this grant would address
• A description and timeline of the proposed activities during the grant period
• A statement about how teaching and student learning will be impacted by the work of this grant project
• A plan for evaluation of the project both during and at the conclusion of the grant period
• A list of everyone directly involved with the project
• On final page: Provide a line item and narrative budget that indicates the main expense categories for the project and how the costs for each item were determined. Institutional indirect costs are not permitted for small grant project grants.

3. Institutional Letter of Support

A letter of support from the applicant’s dean or department chair indicating their support of the project and what they hope will happen at the school or within the department as a consequence of the grant. The letter should be signed on the institution’s letterhead. It can be scanned and attached to the online application.

Proposals could address issues such as:

• Student engagement with community projects or concerns
• Understanding the role of religions in the public square
• Facilitating difficult conversations in the classroom
• Student resistance to learning related to social justice and civic engagement
• Anti-racism work
• Religion or Theology and democracy and the 2020 elections
• Issues of freedom, liberation, and justice

Successful grants will demonstrate:

• A readiness to learn on the part of the project director
• A collaborative process with other faculty members (internal or external to the institutional or departmental setting)
• Attentiveness to student learning goals
• Attentiveness to the commitments, values, and contexts that are brought into the classroom by the students
• Attentiveness to the long-term “value-added” of an understanding of religion or theology – who do you wish your students to be in five years?
• A structure of evaluative learning where feedback from project participants (eg: students, other faculty, and community partners) is a regular and formative process for the project

Religion Departments
might tackle questions such as:

• how political, economic, and religious realities shape the ways that media communicates conflicts or engagements
• how to develop student capacities for engagement in the public square
• how to design multilayered conversations that attend to the variety of cultural commitments that are brought to conversations of current events

Faculty members might begin inter-disciplinary conversations with colleagues about the study of religion as it relates to public life or an informed citizenry, or they might develop creative ways to consider the topic within the overall curriculum.

Theological Schools
might tackle questions such as:

• how to prepare students for ministry in social worlds enmeshed in conflicted and conflicting realities
• how to engage productive conversations within congregations that are insular in their nature
• how to address public citizenry in emergent forms of ministry
• how to prepare students to become civically active in a radically pluralistic and multi-religious world
• how to teach a multi-religious, multi-ethnic student body to honor the other and the self

Final Reports

Final reports will include a full financial accounting of funds spent (from institutional business office) and a Narrative Report on what the project accomplished and what was learned about pedagogies for social justice and civic engagement.