Promise Neighborhoods

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Neighborhood Resident

If you would like to transform your neighborhood, this website can help.
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Neighborhood Organization

We provide help to organizations that are trying to bring about change in neighborhoods.
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Policymaker

We provide a summary of what is needed to help high-poverty neighborhoods ensure that every young person develops successfully.
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Scientist

We invite researchers who are interested in doing research to support change in high-poverty neighborhoods.
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Our job across America is to create communities of choice, not of destiny, and create conditions for neighborhoods where the odds are not stacked against the people who live there.

Barack Obama
on the Promise
Neighborhoods Initiative

Help for Promise Neighborhood Grant Writers

As an aid to people who are writing applications for the Promise Neighborhoods Initiative (PNI) Request for Applications (RFA), we have organized our website according to which web pages and website sections might be helpful in addressing each of the Absolute Priority Requirements for the Promise Neighborhoods Initiative RFA.  The linked pages have some specific resources or information that PNI applicants can use when addressing the noted RFA sections. Other linked pages and website sections may offer functional tools to assist connecting with potential research or service partners, other communities, or the PNRC itself. These might be important functional capacities to demonstrate in the noted sections of your PNI application. For example, the measures page provides a detailed set of measures of value to PN applications and an associated pdf document provides an organization of those measures according to the requirements of the RFA. Other linked pages and web sections simply may offer “food for thought” when addressing the noted RFA sections. We provide an annotated project narrative here to help in organizing proposals. We hope this is helpful to you as you write your PNI proposals.

Selection CriteriaAbsolute Priority RequirementWebsite
Need for the project (up to 10 points)1. Description of the neighborhood and level of distress
Quality of project design (up to 20 points)2. Description of how the applicant will plan to build the continuum;
3. Description of how the applicant will plan to use data;
4. Description of commitment to work with national evaluator; and
5. Description of indicators to be used for needs assessment
Quality of project services (up to 15 points)
Quality of project personnel (up to 25 points)6. Description of the applicant’s organizational capacity to plan and implement a Promise Neighborhood
Quality of management plan (up to 20 points)7. Description of how the applicant will plan to sustain and “scale up” the proposed Promise Neighborhood; and
8. Description of commitment the applicant anticipates receiving from partners, including Memorandum of Understanding1 described in paragraph 5(a) of Absolute Priority 1
Significance (up to 10 points)9. Description of how the applicant will plan to track available sources and funding levels of Federal, State, and local funds that could be utilized in the project; and
10. Description of how the applicant will identify Federal, State, or local policies, regulations, or other requirements that would impede the applicant in achieving its goals
Invitational Priority2
Unique Learning Needs, Quality Internet Connectivity, Civic Engagement, or Arts and Humanities

  1. The memorandum of understanding is submitted as a separate appendix and does not count against the 40-page limit for the Project Narrative.
  2. With an invitational priority, we signal our interest in receiving applications that meet the priority. However, we do not give an application that meets an invitational priority preference over other applications.