1. Best application advice:
Show why your program is innovative, be sure you plan to do the kind of evaluation that we fund (see page: http://www.rmyf.org/grants_evaluation_info.cfm), be realistic in the kind of results you expect to find, and have a plan of what you will do with whatever results you discover.

2. Can an international organization apply?
No, only organizations with IRS non-profit status based in the Greater Metropolitan Areas of Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, Madison, Milwaukee, New York City, San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington, DC are eligible.

3. Can an organization apply that doesn’t have a 501(c)(3) designation, but has a parent organization that is? Can a fiscal agent/fiduciary be used?
As a federal tax matter, if done properly, a gift through a fiscal sponsor or fiscal agent is considered a grant to that 501(c)(3) intermediary rather than a grant to the ultimate recipient. If done incorrectly, however, the IRS may disregard the intermediary and treat the grant as having been made directly to the non-charity. Being tricky, this would be considered on a case-by-case basis.

4. Can evaluators apply directly for funds to evaluate an innovative non-profit organization serving disadvantaged youth?
No. Only tax-exempt organizations that serve youth can officially apply. However, evaluators can help eligible nonprofits prepare the application.

5. Can the evaluator be one of our staff people?
We require that the evaluations we fund be conducted or overseen by a professional evaluator or someone with equivalent credentials, experience and expertise.

6. Can the evaluator we will use fill out the application?
We highly recommend that they answer or help answer many of the questions on our application. You will find that they usually are glad to help.

7. Do you fund operating expenses?
Not for evaluation grants but we do for replication grants.

8. Do you fund other kinds of evaluations besides logic model/outcome based?
Not currently.

9. Do you fund smaller programs that are run through large organizations, such as YMCAs or Boys’ and Girls’ Clubs?
Large nonprofits have to make a particularly strong case on how the program or service they wish to evaluate is innovative and why its existing funders have not funded the evaluation.

10. Do you fund State or Federal sponsored programs?
You will need to explain why the money isn’t available from the sponsoring government.

11. Do you have a required minimum number of youth in a program?
No.

12. Do you provide grants to organizations in any state?
No, only to the Greater Metropolitan Areas of Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, Madison, Milwaukee, New York City, San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington, DC.

13. Does the program have to directly work with youth?
What we care about is that grantee programs change the lives of youth, if there is a way this can happen without “directly working” with youth, that would still be considered.

14. Does the Ruddie Memorial Youth Foundation have an established policy on the percentage of indirect costs it will pay?
No. For example: we would consider paying a salary line item if that staff person is directly working on the evaluation.

15. How do we find an evaluator?
See page http://www.rmyf.org/grants_evaluation_info.cfm on our website.

16. I noticed you have a 5 million dollar budget cap. Is that specific to overall operating budget or project budget?
Overall operating budget. On rare occasions, RMYF offers Evaluation Grants to large nonprofit organization. However, large nonprofits have to make a particularly strong case on how the program or service they wish to evaluate is innovative and why its existing funders have not funded the evaluation.

17. If we have an internal evaluation department would we be expected to contract with an outside PhD researcher:
RMYF requires that the evaluation be overseen by someone with specialized evaluation training and experience. If you can show that your staff has professional specialized training and experience in evaluation, that is fine. Having someone with a PhD manage the evaluation is not a requirement. But, if the person(s) managing the evaluation doesn’t/don’t have a PhD, then it is critical that you convince us in the application that they know what they are doing and will produce a valuable report. The same is true regarding experimental design. We believe that this is often the most valuable type of methodology given the causality-focus of RMYF’s mission. But if you don’t plan on using experimental design, make sure you explain compellingly why your design is the best way to determine if your innovative practice is effective at helping youth reach their true potential (our mission). In sum, the most common way to meet our requirements is probably with a PhD director and a plan to use experimental design, but it’s not the only way. We understand that in some cases another approach might make more sense. The onus is on the applicant, however, to show this. In sum, as the folks making funding decisions, we just need to be assured that the evaluation will be done well and will produce findings that will truly help us learn how to help children reach their full potential. If you can convince us of that, you have met our evaluator requirements.

18. What age range do you consider “youth”?
RMYF considers youth to be 0-25 years old.

19. What are considered “allowable costs”?
Evaluators, costs directly assigned to the evaluation, and such. This excludes capital expenditures such as computers.

20. What do we mean by innovative?
Per RMYF’s definition, innovative programs use strategies or services for helping youth reach their full potential that are promising yet new, uncommon and untested.  In other words, innovative programs aim to effect meaningful change in youth through methods outside of current common practices.  It should be noted that RMYF Board members may not have expertise in your program's focus area. Thus, it is important to explain fully and with back up data, if possible, what makes your program innovative and on what basis the innovative component is promising.  Innovative services RMYF has funded include the following:

• An intensive weekend tutoring program for at-risk students
• A market-based entrepreneurial franchise system for delivering vital medications to third world children
• An apprenticeship-based school
• A strategy of hospital-based advocacy and community-based after-school programs to eliminate obesity and improve overall health in children
• A strategy for helping children in low-performing schools by providing talented, experienced teachers with support, incentives and a professional environment that make teaching in low-performing schools a viable career.

21. What is considered a small to medium-sized organization?
We give preference to organizations with an annual budget of less than $5 million. We have identified the “undiscovered by the funding community” as the niche we prefer to serve, especially given that one of our objectives is to help effective programs increase their sustainability.