Arnold Ventures: Rigorous Impact Evaluations of Student Success Programs and Practices in Higher Education
The Higher Education initiative seeks to identify and scale effective practices that improve student success and address equity gaps in higher education. Arnold Ventures works to continue building the evidence base and to secure policies and investments to scale up what works. This Request for Proposals—a joint effort of AV’s Higher Education and Evidence-Based Policy initiatives— seeks grant applications to conduct rigorous impact evaluations of programs and practices (“interventions”) to promote college success in the United States that fall into one of three tiers:
(i) The intervention is backed by promising prior evidence suggesting it could produce sizable impacts on important student success outcomes (e.g., student learning, persistence, degree or certificate completion, job placement, post-college earnings, and debt burden);
(ii) The intervention is widely adopted in practice, but has not yet been rigorously evaluated and its impacts on key student success outcomes are thus largely unknown; or
(iii) The intervention is growing in use and likely to become widely adopted, but has not yet been rigorously evaluated.
We ask applicants first to submit a letter of interest (maximum three pages). Applicants whose letters are reviewed favorably will be invited to submit a full proposal (maximum six pages). There is no deadline for submitting a letter of interest; applicants may submit a letter at any time via email to StudentSuccessRFP@arnoldventures.org. We will notify applicants within approximately one month whether they are invited to submit a full proposal (full proposals must be invited).
Due: rolling deadline
Amount: unspecified, recent Higher Ed grants range from $200K- $2M
