Stanford Impact Labs Stage 1: Seed Partnerships Call for Proposals 2025-26
Stanford Impact Labs (SIL) enables teams of Stanford scholars to work with the public, social, and private sectors to tackle social problems using human creativity, rigorous evidence, and innovative technology. We advance this goal by catalyzing solutions-focused research and training on a diversity of social problems with the goal of achieving broad public impact. We call the teams that do this work “Impact Labs.”
Stage 1: Seed Partnerships
Stage 1: Seed Partnerships offers up to $350,000 to better understand the drivers of a social problem or co-design solutions. This funding is intended to deepen partnerships in a way that creates a clear path to testing solutions and putting those solutions to use at scale. These investments will be allocated competitively to teams that clearly define the social problem they wish to assess, demonstrate a committed partnership, and propose a research plan that lays the groundwork for a future solutions-focused research and development (R&D) cycle.
We anticipate that the strongest candidates for Stage 1: Seed Partnerships funding will fall into two general categories:
-
Teams with (an) established partner(s) collaborating on a research project to better understand the nuances of a social problem (such as in a new context or discrete population) with the goal of building evidence to design/propose a solution. Teams may also have sufficient evidence to understand the drivers of a social problem but wish to pilot an intervention before proposing a
large-scale R&D cycle and path to scaling. - Teams with (a) new partner(s) seeking support to develop a deeper relationship with their partner(s) and to develop a shared understanding of causes and drivers of the social problem that sets the stage for designing and testing a scalable solution in real-world settings.
At the end of the award period, we expect that teams will have:
- Be on track to publish research that can significantly advance their field and/or open new lines of scientific inquiry that other researchers will build upon
- Have demonstrated a clear and nuanced understanding of the causes and drivers of the social problem in the contexts being researched
- Have implemented a dissemination plan to share new insights with both the field of study and the field of practice
- Developed new and/or deeper relationships with both immediate partners and relevant decision-makers
- Have an actionable plan to implement an R&D cycle to test a scalable solution
- Identified key assumptions and initial insights about a pathway from an R&D cycle to impact at scale
More information
- Find the full RFP here.
- More detailed considerations are contained in the FAQ.
- Sign up for our virtual information sessions hosted on September 19th or September 24th
- Sign up for office hours with the investments team.
- We encourage you to learn more about our staged and sequenced approach, as well as which stage is right for you.
- This year we'll be piloting the use of application materials in select AI Tools. To learn more about safeguards in place and to opt-out see the RFP.
To be eligible to apply, each proposal must have at least one PI-eligible Stanford faculty member and at least one partner outside of academia who is committed to the proposed work. In Stage 1: Seed Partnerships, the relationship between the research team and partner(s) can be in the early stages. Reviewers will be assessing proposals and letters of collaboration for clear alignment in research aims and project goals. More information on successful Stage 1: Seed Partnerships awardees can be found on our website.
Information on the requirements of the award can be found in the RFP.
While SIL investments are flexible and largely unrestricted, the most compelling budgets will be those that prioritize partner needs in allocating resources and invest in community engagement, research, program management, and data collection or analysis.
