Policy on NNIP Endorsement or Participation in Partner Proposals

Requesting Letters of Endorsement

Urban-NNIP staff are happy to consider requests from Partner organizations for letters of endorsement for proposals in cases where  Urban Institute's or NNIP's name will be meaningful to the funder or review committee. The proposed activities should be related to NNIP capacities and services. 

If at all possible, Partners should request the letter with two weeks notice and send a draft letter that staff may adapt. If more than one Partner is responding to a solicitation, Urban-NNIP staff will provide letters to all Partners that request one.

Mentioning NNIP network in local Partner proposals

• Urban-NNIP staff encourage Partners in all cases to mention Partner organization's affiliation with NNIP as a credential.  Partners may also describe NNIP as an established vehicle to learn about evidence-based/effective practices, stay innovative, use technology effectively, etc.  In either of these cases, there is no need for our approval.
• Several NNIP Partners have included in proposals using NNIP as a potential dissemination network for the findings and/or products or as an informal source of input/review.  If Partners plan to mention NNIP-related dissemination in a proposal, please send a short email a week before the proposal is submitted describing the project.  As always, Partners are free to post news to the NNIP Partners/Alumni private google group and the public NNIPNews google group and request that NNIPHQ tweet out releases.  Related to network in-person meetings, Partners can submit an ideas for a Camp session during the semi-annual meetings or suggest potential topics for plenary sessions at the Partner meetings, but those should not be promised as deliverables in a proposal without pre-approval.

Proposing Urban-NNIP staff participation in a project

Urban-NNIP staff would welcome opportunities to discuss the range of roles that Urban-NNIP staff or other Urban experts could play in proposed projects. Since NNIP general support funding is limited, generally Urban would need funding to cover our time and direct costs.

• This could be limited participation, such as attending or presenting at meetings or reviewing materials, as with Civic Switchboard. 
• Urban researcher have also designed and implemented larger cross-site or national projects together, as we did with Data Driven Detroit (see Turning the Corner or the federally-funded Community Health Data Project Services).
• In a few cases, Urban staff have worked in-depth with a single Partner on the proposal and implementation of projects.  These should be initiated with as much lead time as possible.  The roles on research design, data collection, analysis, report writing, and/or dissemination may be shared or divided.   Two examples where Urban researchers conducted joint in-depth research with one local NNIP Partner include:
  • Kathy Pettit and Urban junior staff partnered with The Data Center in New Orleans from 2009-11 to do three annual reports related to housing funded by the community foundation. Urban and the Data Center divided up the analysis and writing tasks to complete the report, and The Data Center took the lead on dissemination and community engagement.
  • Researchers in Justice Policy Center are partnering with DataSpark RI on an impact evaluation of a local restorative justice program in a Rhode Island School District funded by the National Institute of Justice. DataSpark maintains the state’s student longitudinal data system which will be used in the evaluation.