The Corporation for National and Community Service today released a Notice of Funding Availability (NOFA) of up to $800,000 for the 2015 National Service and Civic Engagement Research Competition.

The broad objectives of the competition are to:

• Promote research on national service, civic engagement, and volunteering among researchers and practitioners
• Broaden the evidence base for programs using national service and volunteering
• Increase the availability of innovative research methods used to study to national service and volunteering

The deadline for applications is July 16, 2015 at 5:00 p.m. EST.  Successful applicants will receive awards of between $30,000 and $300,000 per year for 3 years. During the 2015 fiscal year, CNCS plans to award approximately $800,000 in awards to institutions of higher education.

This competition will support research projects in one of three priority areas:

• Economic benefits of national service, volunteering, and civic engagement
• Innovative research methodologies applied to national service models
• Measuring and exploring relationships among civic engagement, national service, and volunteering.

The research competition will support both new and seasoned researchers. Students working on dissertations are invited to apply, as are new scholars breaking into the field and established scholars with deep experience.

Awards can be used for research design, data collection, analysis and reporting. In addition, CNCS expects applicants to identify ways to disseminate their results across a broad spectrum of stakeholders, including policymakers, practitioners, other researchers, and the general public.