Peace & Recovery Initiative | Proposals Due June 13, 2025

Consumer Protection Research Initiative | Proposals Due June 15, 2025

Soft Skills Research Fund | Rolling / Ongoing Selection for Curated Portfolio

Peace & Recovery Initiative | Call for Proposals

The Innovations for Poverty Action Peace & Recovery Initiative (PRI), funded by UK International Development, supports rigorous impact evaluations, pilots, exploratory studies, evidence use and policy outreach support, and infrastructure and public goods projects to inform policies and programs related to the prevention of, responses to, and recovery from most forms of social and political violence as well as humanitarian emergencies, including:

• International and civil wars
• State-supported violence and repression, from mass killings to police brutality
• Electoral violence
• Riots, protests, strikes, and other collective action
• Intergroup violence, including ethnic and sectarian violence
• Terrorism and violent extremism
• “Recovery” responses after conflict or crises, including natural disasters

Supported projects will contribute to innovation and generalizable learning on program effectiveness, identify the mechanisms underpinning programming, and address potential barriers to impact. Priority areas of research include:

• Understanding and preventing individual-level participation in violence
• Understanding, combating, and reintegrating armed groups
• Addressing prejudice and building horizontal social cohesion
• Strengthening household and community resilience
• Building institutions, resolving disputes, and delivering justice
• Addressing root causes and preventing future crises

PRI’s ninth call for proposals is now open. Proposals are due on June 13, 2025. Please reach out to peace@poverty-action.org with any questions.
 

Learn More

Consumer Protection Research Initiative | Call for Proposals

IPA’s Consumer Protection Research Initiative (CPRI) 2025 Call for Research Proposals is now open. CPRI accepts proposals for large grants that fund rigorous impact evaluations, as well as smaller grants that can fund pilots, add-ons to existing studies, low-cost evaluations such as lab-based experiments, or evaluations relying primarily on administrative data (e.g., A/B tests or quasi-experimental evaluations using historical data).

Our primary focus is on evaluating interventions that reduce consumer risks and build trust in digital payments and credit products.

We fund work addressing four core research areas:

1. Fraud prevention and detection
2. High prices, price transparency, and market competition
3. Over-indebtedness and responsible digital credit, and
4. Complaints redress mechanisms.

This year, we are particularly interested in research that examines:

• Gender disparities in consumer protection, including solutions that may be particularly effective at mitigating risks and building trust for women.
• Studies focused on productive credit, particularly work focused on reducing risk for small business owners and smallholder farmers.
• The role of agents in promoting consumer protection in digital finance, for example in improving transparency, reducing overcharging, or preventing fraud.

Optional Expressions of Interest are due May 4, 2025, and full proposals are due June 15, 2025. Please reach out to consumerprotection@poverty-action.org with any questions.
 

Learn More

Soft Skills Research Fund | Curated Portfolio of Research Projects (ongoing)

IPA has announced new funding for research on soft skills for entrepreneurship and workforce development (read the announcement). Through this funding, IPA aims to support research in low- and middle-income countries that examines the relationship between soft skills and employment-related outcomes. Priority will be given to projects that respond to existing evidence gaps, incorporate a common framework for measuring soft skills and economic outcomes, and generate implementation-relevant evidence. For more information on research priorities, the definition of soft skills, outcomes of interest, and sample research questions, see the joint IPA-JPAL research agenda.

IPA will source research projects through two key approaches: 1) a competitive open call for proposals, to be launched in fall 2025 (details forthcoming); and 2) a curated portfolio of full-scale research projects.

For the curated portfolio, research projects will be selected on an ongoing, rolling basis and leverage IPA’s long-standing work in this area and our strong relationships with implementers and researchers.

These projects will be co-designed with leading implementers and researchers, focusing on:

• Developing research questions
• Collecting and analyzing implementation data
• Thoughtful use of soft-skills measurement

Projects will be selected on a rolling basis by an internal committee, prioritizing:

• Alignment with the research agenda
• Potential for policy impact
• Collaboration with interdisciplinary teams that are flexible, knowledgeable, and strategic in using soft-skills measures

Please contact epsd@poverty-action.org for more information.