OVW Fiscal Year 2025 Research and Evaluation Initiative | O OVW 2025 172399

Opportunity Information: Apply for O OVW 2025 172399

The Office on Violence Against Women (OVW) Fiscal Year 2025 Research and Evaluation (RampE) Initiative is a discretionary grant program focused on building stronger, more practical evidence about what works to prevent and respond to domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault, and stalking. The central idea is to fund studies that can help communities and OVW-funded programs make better decisions about services for victims and approaches for holding offenders accountable. Instead of funding direct services alone, this opportunity is aimed at learning which strategies are effective, under what conditions they work best, and how they can be improved or replicated.

A major emphasis of the RampE Initiative is supporting partnerships between researchers and practitioners. That means projects are expected to connect people who generate evidence (such as universities or research organizations) with the agencies and organizations doing the day-to-day work (such as victim service providers, justice system partners, or community-based organizations). OVW is looking for projects where research questions are grounded in real operational challenges and where findings can be translated into usable guidance for the field, not just academic publications.

OVW is open to a wide range of research and evaluation approaches, which gives applicants flexibility to propose designs that fit their setting and the questions being studied. The solicitation explicitly allows qualitative studies, mixed-method research, quasi-experimental evaluations, and experimental designs. In practice, this means an applicant could propose anything from in-depth interviews and case studies that explain how and why a program operates as it does, to more rigorous impact evaluations that compare outcomes across different groups or sites. The throughline is that OVW wants credible evidence on the efficacy of strategies, including how programs serve victims, improve safety, increase access to supports, and strengthen accountability.

Because OVW notes that research and evaluation funds are limited, the program prioritizes topics where a stronger evidence base would most directly help OVW recipients use federal funds effectively. In other words, OVW is signaling that it wants proposals that fill important knowledge gaps for the violence-against-women field, especially where existing evidence is thin, mixed, or not easily applicable to the programs OVW funds nationwide. Competitive projects are likely to show a clear connection between the study results and real-world funding and program decisions, such as identifying best practices, refining models that show promise, or clarifying which approaches are effective for specific populations or contexts.

Eligibility is broad across public, tribal, nonprofit, and higher-education sectors, reflecting the program’s emphasis on collaborative research-practice work. Eligible applicants include state governments and units of local government (including counties and cities or townships), federally recognized tribal governments, tribal organizations, nonprofits with or without 501(c)(3) status (as long as they are not higher-education institutions in that nonprofit category listing), and both public and private institutions of higher education. The opportunity is administered by the U.S. Department of Justice, Office on Violence Against Women, and is listed under CFDA (Assistance Listing) 16.026 in the Law, Justice and Legal Services category.

Key funding details include an award ceiling of up to $5,000,000 per award, with an anticipated total of seven awards expected. The funding instrument is a grant, and the application deadline is September 23, 2025 (original closing date). The opportunity was created on August 20, 2025, and is identified by Funding Opportunity Number O-OVW-2025-172399. Applicants considering submission should plan for a competitive process that rewards strong methodological rigor, meaningful practitioner engagement, clear plans for use and dissemination of findings, and a compelling justification for why the proposed topic area is a priority for strengthening the national evidence base.

• The Office on Violence Against Women in the law, justice and legal services sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "OVW Fiscal Year 2025 Research and Evaluation Initiative" and is now available to receive applicants.
• Interested and eligible applicants and submit their applications by referencing the CFDA number(s): 16.026.
• This funding opportunity was created on 2025-08-20.
• Applicants must submit their applications by 2025-09-23. (Agency may still review applications by suitable applicants for the remaining/unused allocated funding in 2026.)
• Each selected applicant is eligible to receive up to $5,000,000.00 in funding.
• The number of recipients for this funding is limited to 7 candidate(s).
• Eligible applicants include: State governments, County governments, City or township governments, Public and State controlled institutions of higher education, Native American tribal governments (Federally recognized), Native American tribal organizations (other than Federally recognized tribal governments), Nonprofits having a 501 (c) (3) status with the IRS, other than institutions of higher education, Nonprofits that do not have a 501 (c) (3) status with the IRS, other than institutions of higher education, Private institutions of higher education, Others.

Apply for O OVW 2025 172399

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