Kauffman Foundation: 2022 Knowledge Challenge

Note: The application opens January 18, 2022.

The 2022 Kauffman Knowledge Challenge seeks projects that generate practical, actionable, and rigorous evidence to inform decision-making and create systems changes needed to ensure individuals have the opportunity to achieve economic security, mobility, and prosperity. The 2022 Knowledge Challenge is intended to support activities that improve our understanding of entrepreneurship and generate practical, actionable, and rigorous evidence to inform decision making and change systems. Applicants will be asked to select a focus area. The two areas of focus are:

1. Systems and structures to support inclusive prosperity—Explore the infrastructure needed to support entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship. A more holistic understanding is needed of how structural conditions shape outcomes for entrepreneurs — particularly those whose race, gender, and geography have too often left them underserved by entrepreneurship and the economy more broadly — so that we can work towards greater inclusive prosperity. Especially welcome are submissions exploring wealth and income inequality, emerging trends in financing, and broader protections and social supports needed among entrepreneurs and aspiring entrepreneurs.
2. Equitable opportunities and the future of work—Explore how entrepreneurial activity might be structured as the economy emerges from the COVID-19 pandemic. Digital technologies, cloud computing, artificial intelligence, platforms, and algorithms are becoming increasingly ubiquitous, shaping the ways we work and live. What supports are needed to align entrepreneurial activity with the goal of inclusive prosperity? How might supports vary among differing forms of entrepreneurial activities such as self-employment, independent contracting, gig work, and employer firms? Proposals that explore such issues with an eye towards the future and what may lie ahead for entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship are welcomed.

Amount: Grants of up to $200,000 will be awarded for projects led by a single Principal investigator (PI), or up to $400,000 for projects led by a team of collaborating PIs, over a span of 36 months.

Eligibility: Proposals are invited from researchers at institutions of higher education or researchers who are part of a nonprofit organization.

Link: https://rfp.kauffman.org/

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