2025 ACR/JAMS Notice of Funding Availability (NOFA)

The Association for Conflict Resolution (ACR) is pleased to announce this Notification of Funding Availability (NOFA) and request for initial proposal ideas for the 2025 funding cycle of the JAMS Foundation-ACR Initiative for Students and Youth.

The JAMS Foundation-ACR Initiative seeks to provide financial support for conflict resolution education and training (CRE) for Pre-K through 12th grade students and youth. The populations to be served by the funding streams will be both (1) youth in Pre-K through 12th grade age range and (2) adults working with these youth populations in ways that directly transfer CRE skills for adults to the youth populations.

The funding focus for the 2025 funding cycle intends to support:

The development of systemwide educational policies and procedures that integrate in conflict resolution training and education focused on school climate. Educational institutions play a critical role in the socialization of students. These institutions have been greatly impacted from the pandemic which required social distancing, and the use of online learning, both of which served as barriers to engaging with the broader community. The focused work will be to assist these institutions with the development of policy and practices that adopt elements of conflict resolution (Year 1) and then the implementation of these policies (Year 2).

The proposed project will build upon the current work of the school system’s current policies and practices regarding youth involved in fights, disruptive behavior, or violating school conduct rules, moving them to become more restorative in nature and focus on resolving the conflict with the least amount of disruption for the student, teacher, peers, and family. Priority will be given to school district applicants where 5% or more of their students in grade 6, grade 7, or grade 8 are learning at a grade level at least one year behind their age group in one or more academic areas of study.

There are three proposal priorities:

1. The proposed project will work with school districts to create policy and procedure change that embed conflict resolution skills and techniques, in both classroom and interactions among students, and interactions with the administration.
2. This policy and procedure change will reward students’ ability to be assertive in a manner that leads to cooperation not degradation, and lessen the reliance on detention, suspension, and expulsion and an expansion of conflict resolution practices district wide. These changes will strive to make normative non-violent communication, cooperation, and self-reflection, affecting all students in their district, or subset population of students.
3. Evaluation measures for the proposed project will include, at a minimum: 1) an increase in applied conflict resolution skills by youth, specifically for appropriate interactions with others in a manner that leads to cooperation and 2) a change in school disciplinary policy that adopts a more restorative frame when fights and other anti-social behavior arise among students, and, 3) an integrative, empathetic and responsive setting to meet social-emotional learning needs of students in post-pandemic conditions.

Priority will be given to school district applicants where 5% or more of their students in grade 6, grade 7, or grade 8 are learning at a grade level at least one year behind their age group in one or more academic areas of study.

The full NOFA, including the grant process and information on the informational conference call, is available at https://acrnet.org/resource/resmgr/docs/jams/2025_NOFA_Final.pdf.