COLLABORATIVE GRANTS IN MEDIA AND COMMUNICATIONS Proposals Due October 15, 2007 Necessary Knowledge for a Democratic Public Sphere Program http://www.ssrc.org/programs/media http://mediaresearchhub.ssrc.org WHAT The SSRC is pleased to announce a new round of small grants for academic-advocacy collaboration in the media and communications field. This project will provide grants of up to $7,500 for research that supports efforts to change the media / telecommunications infrastructure, practices, policies or content. The grants are intended for short-term work, completable and usable by advocacy partners within the next 4-12 months. Proposals for this round must be submitted online by October 15, 2007 by 5PM EST in order to be eligible for funding. Grant recipients will be announced by November 16, 2007. WHO Proposals must be: (1) Submitted by a US-based nonprofit advocacy, organizing or community group working on media and/or telecommunications issues. Groups with nonprofit fiscal sponsorship are also eligible. (A limited number of international non-profit organizations will be solicited by invitation only.) (2) Structured as a partnership with an academic researcher based at a university, college or other research institution. This can include advanced graduate students. There are no citizenship requirements for participants in these projects. CRITERIA Please review the list of criteria and the "Guide to Submitting a Proposal" posted online carefully before preparing your proposal. All projects must: * Be strategically useful in their proposed advocacy and/or organizing context. * Produce scholarship that meets academic standards. * Have a realistic workflow and timeframe. The selection committee will also favor proposals that: * Address issues of disparate impact on communities on the basis of race, class, gender, ethnicity, age or other identity/status category. * Have a clear plan for the application of the findings of the research in policy-making processes or advocacy campaigns to change the media / telecommunications infrastructure, practices, policies or content. Scholarship that facilitates field-building (i.e. curriculum development, tool-building, analysis of best practice) will also be considered. * Be useful for organizations, communities, and advocacy efforts beyond the applicant organization. * Build capacity-skills, tools, experience, access to data sets-within the "user" organization and/or community. * Use methods or models of research that have proved effective in similar contexts. * Reflect diversity in the staff or group involved with the project. * The committee will seek to fund a diverse mix of projects, including consideration of regional diversity, issue-area, scope (local, state-wide, national, etc), type of organization (national lobbying, grassroots community, transnational, etc.) and goals and methods (e.g., capacity-building, policy interventions, project or movement analysis, surveys and/or data collection, etc.) Bonus points for proposals that: * Involve collaboration between two or more advocacy/community groups in the project design and the plan of use for the research. * Use participatory methods to engage community and/or advocacy group members in framing the questions, data collection, and/or analysis. * Are related to issues of telephony, publishing, privacy, intellectual property, independent media, or spectrum. PROPOSAL STRUCTURE Please submit proposals via the online submission form at http://www.mediaresearchhub.ssrc.org/grants. The online proposal includes the following fields: * A short description (max. 100 words) of how the research will be used to advance public-interest change in the media/communications arena. * A general description of the research project (max. 1000 words). Please address the following: * What is the political/social change this project aims to achieve and how will it accomplish that aim? * What is the collaborative process and who are the people involved: at what stages, in what ways will they participate? * How is this project needed/innovative in relation to the existing/previous research and advocacy on the issue? * What is the timeline for project activities? * What is the final project you will share with SSRC upon completion of the study? * How will you assess and evaluate the process and success of this project? * How do you see other organizations potentially using the findings and products of the research project? * A description of the proposing organization (max. 200 words), including mission, constituency, geographical scope of work, and annual budget. * The name, institutional affiliation(s), research experience and CV of the academic partner. * A project timeline. * A budget of up to $7500, with itemized major expenditures. Budget items should include: * Other funding support - amount and source, including in-kind contributions * Personnel and consultants costs * Relevant travel * Relevant advocacy group costs * Dissemination, outreach costs PREVIOUSLY FUNDED PROJECTS You can find listings of other research projects that have been funded by the program online: * First Round of Small Grant Recipients http://programs.ssrc.org/media/collaborative_grants/smallgrants0806/ * Second Round of Small Grant Recipients http://programs.ssrc.org/media/collaborative_grants/smallgrants1206/ * Third Round of Small Grant Recipients http://programs.ssrc.org/media/collaborative_grants/smallgrants0507/ BACKGROUND The Collaborative Grants project is part of the Necessary Knowledge for a Democratic Public Sphere (NKDPS) Program of the Social Science Research Council, working in partnership with CIMA: Center for International Media Action and the McGannon Center for Communications Research at Fordham University. The program is funded by the Media, Arts and Culture program of the Ford Foundation. The NKDPS program is launching a series of funding opportunities to help increase the production, use and capacity for research to serve public-interest advocacy and organizing around media and communications. These mini-grants for collaborative advocacy- academic partnerships have been initiated to meet the short-term research needs of advocacy and policy actors. Past submissions that were approved in previous rounds can be viewed online at: http://www.ssrc.org/programs/media/collaborative_grants/ . Note that new applications do not have to work within the exact same range of topics as we encourage a diversity of issues that relate to the media and communications field. Several other funding projects will be launched in the next months, including a "Research Bounties" project that place prizes on advocacy-defined research and a larger program to support longer-term advocacy-academic research partnerships and training. For more information on the program, see http://www.ssrc.org/programs/media. For all program-related inquiries, please write to mediahub@ssrc.org . Subscribe to MediaResearchHub-News for program updates, research funding opportunities, and conference information at http://listserve.ssrc.org/mailman/listinfo/mediaresearchhub-news