ICC Israel Advocacy Grant Criteria

The ICC’s Israel Advocacy Grant program is a bottom-up initiative designed to provide seed-money for student-initiated Israel advocacy initiatives that produce a more positive view of Israel on campus. Projects should stem from the unique environment of the particular campus, contain specific desired outcomes and provide a strategy and specific mechanisms for measuring the outcomes. While grants may be awarded to support cultural engagement as a means to achieve an advocacy-related outcome, grants are not intended to support cultural engagement as an end in itself.

Successful grants will fall into at least one of the six following categories: 

• Advocacy training, policy education and traditional advocacy which may include reaching out to elected officials or policymakers, and/or bringing them to campus for student education and direct advocacy.
• Creative campus-wide messaging campaigns and high-visibility, public space engagement, through which students can advocate on behalf of Israel among their peers.
• Connecting Taglit-Birthright Israel alumni to pro-Israel advocacy initiatives on campus and/or encouraging alumni or other pro-Israel students to travel to and study in Israel.
• Creative, large-scale approaches to positively impacting public opinion on campus about
• Israel, educating about Israel’s situation or portraying Israel as a normative entity, for large segments of the student population.
• Projects that focus on a specific Israel advocacy related campus need by addressing the uniqueness of the college/university and that work with the campus culture, structure and/or administration to address that need.
• Online or print Israel advocacy journals.

ICC Israel Advocacy Grants are awarded for amounts between $2,500 and $7,500. They are provided to outstanding students who create, implement and evaluate value-added, outcomes-based, ongoing, innovative, strategic advocacy initiatives that make a significant impact on campus and meet all of the criteria below. Specific consideration will be given to projects that work within the campus’ unique culture and structure that address specific campus needs.

Project Reach 

• Initiatives must be aimed at changing the campus Israel climate. That is, they may reach and influence the thinking and/or behavior of a significant number of students who do not already participate in pro-Israel activity on campus; or they may focus on student activists who will subsequently develop broader pro-Israel programming or initiatives themselves are also acceptable.
• Applicants should indicate the primary ways that the initiative will reach students who are not already involved in pro-Israel activity and discuss how these students will be impacted through this initiative.

Project Sustainability

• Grant proposals must include a detailed plan for sustaining the project beyond the initiating student’s tenure on campus, including a compelling strategy and specific mechanisms for tracking and following-up with participants, maintaining the momentum of the project and measuring the success of the project in future years. 

Other Criteria

• Initiatives must support Israel as a Jewish and democratic state with secure and recognized borders and as a member of the family of free nations.
• Applications that demonstrate financial co-sponsorship and are first-time, start-up and unique are favored over applications that have been changed, improved or redesigned.
• Initiatives must provide interactions between participants, bringing students together as active participants in accumulating knowledge, skills, thoughts, feelings, memories or relationships.
• Artists, speakers, educators, musicians, performances and presentations may be included in order to advance the initiative’s specific, measurable advocacy-based outcome related to the creation of a more positive view of Israel on campus.
• Projects that showcase Israeli culture for its own sake, outside of the framework noted above, will not be considered for funding. A cultural offering can only be included in an initiative if it serves as a conduit for advancing a more positive view of Israel on campus and achieving the project’s advocacy goal.
• Food may not represent more than ¼ of the total funding requested for an initiative.
• Expenses contained in proposed budgets must be researched in advance of submitting the application. We will not consider applications whose budgets are based on best guesses or estimated amounts.

Deadlines
Grants for the 2010-2011 academic year will be reviewed on a rolling basis through March 14, 2011. Applications must be submitted at least 30 days in advance of the initiative’s beginning and at least two months before the last day of classes for the academic year.

Applicants will be contacted shortly after they submit grant applications by an ICC staff member to complete a student profile form that will be used for trend analysis, to provide a copy of a current resume and to set up a phone call to discuss the grant proposal in more detail. Applicants will be notified of funding determinations via e-mail 2-4 weeks after the grant application is submitted.

No Funding Will Be Awarded For

• Stand alone programs, such as concerts, speakers, parties, etc.
• A string of unrelated offerings that do not share the same objectives or contribute to the overarching outcomes of the grant proposal
• Cultural initiatives that do not advance a specific, measurable, advocacy-based outcome or produce a more positive view of Israel on campus.
• Initiatives developed by professionals
• Alcohol
• Travel or conference subsidies
• Fundraisers
• Promotional items
• Retroactive requests
• Israel festivals

Maximum Grant Awards
Students may apply for between $2,500 and $7,500 for a project that meets all of the aforementioned criteria. ICC staff reserves the right to partially fund any initiative based on the criteria above.

Publicity
**All advertisements, flyers, newspaper articles, Facebook pages and ads, brochures and other publicity materials must visibly state that the project was funded by the ICC Israel Advocacy Grant program and supported by the AVI CHAI Foundation.

Expectations of Grantees
If a student’s project is awarded funding, we expect that the grantee will:

• Identify a third-party evaluator for the project by the deadline enumerated in the approval letter.
• Complete a bi-weekly update to inform ICC staff about their project’s progress.
• Send copies of all publicity materials and media stories to ICC staff in a timely manner.
• Must be able to participate in one educational conference call during the spring semester.
• Complete all evaluations and respond to all inquiries in a timely manner.
• Employ strategies for tracking and following up with project participants once the grant has ended.

Questions? Contact:
Tracy Altman
(202) 449-6518