EGAP Innovation Grants 2025

Overview

Overview

EGAP invites applications for a new round of Innovation Grants to support the development of tools, strategies, or resources that enhance the quality and integrity of research on governance and politics. These small grants are intended to spark and support creative, practical contributions to the research ecosystem.

Background
Evidence in Governance and Politics (EGAP) is a global research, evaluation, and learning network that promotes rigorous knowledge accumulation, innovation, and evidence-based policy in various governance and accountability domains. EGAP has served as an incubator to develop and promote innovations, including fostering the adoption of pre-registration, advancing methods for developing research design, organizing coordinated research efforts for evidence accumulation (see the Metaketa initiative) and generating pedagogical material for the implementation and analysis of experiments.

What We’re Looking For
In this round we will award up to five grants, each of approximately USD 10,000.

We seek innovative, public-good–oriented projects that improve research design, implementation, transparency, analysis, or the use or teaching of evidence in development contexts. Innovations can be targeted at researchers, at practitioners, or at partnerships. 

Projects may include, but are not limited to, innovations in the following categories:

  1. Research Design and Analysis Tools
    • Software packages or platforms that improve research design, diagnostics, or analysis
    • Interfaces or utilities that streamline complex design or analysis workflows
  2. Open Science and Reproducibility
    • New strategies for mainstreaming open science workflows
    • Procedures or tools that improve the preparation or analysis of replication packages
    • Templates or standards that reduce barriers to reproducibility
  3. Evidence Aggregation and Learning
    • Tools to synthesize findings across studies or identify gaps in the evidence base
    • Dashboards or systems to track cumulative learning in a field or sector
    • Methods to prioritize areas for future research based on existing evidence
  4. Research Uptake and Co-Production
    • Resources to help policy or implementation partners engage with or absorb research findings
    • Tools or guides to support researchers in co-producing evidence with partners
  5. Pedagogy and Capacity Building
    • Curricula, simulations, or materials for teaching causal inference or research design
    • Innovations in remote or scalable training on evidence generation or use

Eligibility and Conditions

  • The call is open to all; applicants do not need to be EGAP members.
  • Funds may not be used to support PI salary.
  • Collaborative proposals and cross-institutional teams are welcome.

Application Requirements
Applications should not be more than 3 pages in length and should include:

  1. A key idea – a concise statement of the innovation or contribution
  2. A development or prototyping strategy – a plan for creating the tool/resource
  3. A list of all co-applicants, including affiliations and email addresses
  4. A CV for each co-applicant

In addition, applications should include a detailed, one-page budget, including indirect costs and budget notes to explain each expense item.

Examples of eligible expenses include:

  • The hiring of research assistants
  • Costs related to software development
  • Meeting costs (though we will prioritize budgets that are not majority travel)
  • Indirect costs cannot exceed 9% of the budget

For any questions about expense eligibility, please email admin@egap.org.

A funded project should plan to produce:

  1. A proof of concept – a demonstration or early version showing feasibility
  2. A scale-up sketch – a vision for how the innovation could be scaled or adopted more broadly

Deadline
Apply by 5pm EDT, October 31, 2025.
Decisions will be announced by December 2025, and funds must be used within 12 months of the award.

Submit your proposal as a PDF to admin@egap.org, including “EGAP Innovation Grants 2025” as the email subject.



Selection Committee
Brice Bado
Chad Hazlett
Morgan Holmes
Macartan Humphreys (co-chair)
Cecilia Rossel
Daniel Rubenson
Santiago Tobón
Yamil Velez
Anna Wilke (co-chair)