Encouraging Innovation: Field-Initiated Programs Concept Paper | BJA 2016 8986

Opportunity Information: Apply for BJA 2016 8986

The "Encouraging Innovation: Field-Initiated Programs Concept Paper" grant opportunity (Funding Opportunity Number BJA 2016 8986) is a discretionary grant program offered by the U.S. Department of Justice's Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA). It is designed to support organizations that want to develop and put into practice new, creative, and strategic approaches that help local criminal justice systems prevent crime and respond more effectively to both emerging threats and long-running, chronic problems affecting communities across the United States. The core idea is to move beyond routine or well-established practices and instead test approaches that represent a meaningful improvement in how jurisdictions address crime challenges.

A central requirement of this opportunity is that proposed projects must address a recognized gap in the existing knowledge base on crime prevention and crime response. In other words, applicants are expected to identify what is currently not well understood, not well tested, or not adequately implemented in the field, then propose a solution that helps fill that void. The program also places strong emphasis on learning and replication: projects should be designed and implemented in a way that produces insights, tools, or methods other jurisdictions can learn from and potentially adopt. This means the work should not be a one-off local activity with limited value outside a single community; it should be structured so that its results, lessons learned, and practical takeaways can be shared and used elsewhere.

The opportunity is categorized under Law, Justice, and Legal Services, with CFDA number 16.817, and uses a grant funding instrument. The listed award ceiling is $400,000, meaning awards are not expected to exceed that amount. The original closing date for submission was March 29, 2016, and the opportunity record indicates a creation date of February 12, 2016. While the source data lists "ExpectedAwards: 0," the intent of the program description is clearly to solicit concept papers and proposals that can lead to funded innovation projects, so applicants would typically treat the ceiling and requirements as the guiding parameters for what could be supported.

Eligibility is divided into two categories, each with distinct applicant pools. Under Category 1, eligible applicants include public agencies that perform criminal justice functions, such as states, units of local government, and Indian tribes that perform law enforcement functions as determined by the Secretary of the Interior. This category also allows a wide range of public or private entities to apply, including for-profit companies, nonprofit organizations, tribal for-profit and nonprofit organizations, faith-based and community organizations, and institutions of higher education, including tribal colleges and universities. Under Category 2, eligibility is narrower and focuses on public or private entities such as institutions of higher education (again including tribal institutions) and national-level for-profit or nonprofit organizations, including tribal for-profit and nonprofit organizations. In both categories, for-profit organizations are permitted to apply, but they must agree to forgo any profit or management fee, which is an important condition for budgeting and contracting.

Overall, the opportunity is aimed at catalyzing practical innovation in the criminal justice field by funding projects that propose strategic, original solutions to real crime problems, generate knowledge that the field can use, and produce approaches that can be adapted and replicated by other communities. The emphasis on innovation, closing knowledge gaps, and producing transferable lessons suggests that competitive submissions would clearly define the problem, explain why existing approaches are insufficient, outline a novel strategy, and show how outcomes and learning will be captured and shared to benefit the broader criminal justice community.

• The Bureau of Justice Assistance in the law, justice and legal services sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "Encouraging Innovation: Field-Initiated Programs Concept Paper" and is now available to receive applicants.
• Interested and eligible applicants and submit their applications by referencing the CFDA number(s): 16.817.
• This funding opportunity was created on 2016-02-12.
• Applicants must submit their applications by 2016-03-29. (Agency may still review applications by suitable applicants for the remaining/unused allocated funding in 2026.)
• Each selected applicant is eligible to receive up to $400,000.00 in funding.
• Eligible applicants include: Others.

Apply for BJA 2016 8986

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