Applicants, please read carefully.
Effective immediately, we at the Abortion Conversation Projects are trying something new. We want to “workshop” your project idea before you submit an actual application. First, we want you to fill out our online idea form to tell us about your project idea. We will review and invite the projects we think could benefit from our input for a virtual brainstorming session. We will “workshop” it together.
So, what does “workshop” mean? Normally, we are not in favor of making nouns into verbs, but “workshopping” does capture a group process where we discuss, question, suggest, comment on an idea. Feedback, critique, brainstorm are other words that might mean the same thing.
In practical terms, we would invite you (more than one if you like) to present your idea briefly to a group of people with various skills, perspectives, and experiences. ACP typically meets on Zoom which can handle phone or internet connection. The meeting would be a small group discussing your project idea with the goal of making it better. Better means 1) addressing abortion stigma effectively, 2) getting the word out about it, 3) organizing your community to support it, 4) creating an evaluation to measure success.
Because this is the first year we’re doing this, we expect to choose a limited number of projects to move to the workshopping phase. From these, we will invite you to incorporate what you like of our feedback and submit a formal proposal for seed grants.
What are we looking for? What are we looking for? Good question! Of course we will be looking for projects we like. We like innovative approaches to reducing stigma on any of the levels that stigma exists (the personal individual, community, media, institution policy etc etc see link on site). We like grassroots community efforts that promote face to face conversation. We like projects that can be evaluated and show that certain strategies hold promise in lots of different settings. We like evidence!
We also believe that tapping into our expertise and experience is at least as important as the relatively small amounts of funds we can offer. The projects that have been able to engage with us have had the best results and the best chance at sustainability. Besides, this is the work we love the most.
What if you don’t get chosen? It’s not because you don’t have a great idea. Or even that we don’t like it. It’s that we want to pick projects where we can offer significant feedback. And we can still talk to you about your project on a one to one basis. Or, we could discuss re-submitting the proposal at the next cycle. We are a small board (want to join us?) and we have to use our time and talents in the most efficient way possible.
That said, send us your ideas! The form is pretty simple and writing your thoughts down will help in planning. We really want to hear from you.
Thanks for the work you do to challenge stigma!