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The NASH Catalyst Fund encourages broad engagement of system members in sharing promising practices that are leading to equitable student success outcomes scalable to fellow systems.

Its impact will be far-reaching but the concept is simple: through pooled philanthropic support, NASH can recognize and incentivize the development of our members’ big ideas that, once proven to work, have the potential to be scaled not only across a single system but amongst peers around the country.

The first round of the NASH Catalyst Fund included $275,000 to recognize hotspots of best practices that demonstrate interventions that are already underway and proving to be successful with the potential to have a catalytic impact in meeting NASH’s measurable goals.

We are proud to recognize our Cohort I Catalyst Fund awardees from across the nation:

Open Now: Refugee Resettlement Initiative Rolling Request for Proposals

Through this Rolling RFP, we are looking for NASH member systems to nominate interventions that represent positive deviance emerging at the system office and/or one or more institutions and is related to the Refugee Resettlement Initiative (RRI), which is a strong example of how our members can leverage systemness. Positive deviance is an approach to behavioral and social change based on the observation that in any community, there are people whose uncommon but successful behaviors or strategies enable them to find better solutions to a problem than their peers, despite facing similar challenges and having no more resources or knowledge than their peers.

Read the RRI Rolling RFP (.pdf)

Respond to the RRI Rolling RFP (.docx)

Student Group Eligibility

Attention students: Your work on the ground matters, and we want you to share your successes with the world. The NASH RRI invites student groups to apply to the Catalyst Fund, to build out initiatives on their campuses in support of refugee inclusion. We know being a student leader is hard work, and we want to make it easier to spread your work not only with your classmates but with student leaders across the U.S.

*Student-led groups, clubs, associations, or organizations that are institutionally recognized and in good standing are eligible for funding. Like all applicants to the Catalyst Fund, student groups should be nominated by their system leadership to apply, and the system must submit the application on the group’s behalf, as outlined in the “Proposal Submission” section. We recommend reaching out to your college or university student affairs office as soon as possible!

Read the RRI Rolling RFP (.pdf)

Respond to the RRI Rolling RFP (.docx)

Cohort I Request for Proposals

The first round of the NASH Catalyst Fund included $275,000 to recognize hotspots of best practices that demonstrate interventions that are already underway and proving to be successful – with the potential to have a catalytic impact in meeting NASH’s measurable goals. The Cohort I Request for Proposals closed on October 24, 2022. Stay tuned for award announcements!

Missed the webinar? Watch the recording today!

Just looking for the slide deck? Click here to download.

Read the Catalyst Fund RFP - Cohort I