Welcome!

Please consider the following project requirements before proceeding:

Eligibility: Eligible organizations can be any human service entity that provides programs or direct services to families, such as secular and faith-based nonprofits, individual reentry or other corrections-related facilities (e.g. a city or county jail or state prison); and city or county government agencies. Organizations that are based outside of the United States are not eligible.

Deadline for application submissions: Sunday, October 9, 2022, at 12:00 A.M. EDT.

Timeline: In determining your organization’s ability and capacity to succeed if selected, keep in mind that organizations will have approximately ten months after selection to recruit dads to participate in the program and complete it before the deadline to serve at least 30 dads (August 15, 2023).

National Fatherhood Initiative® (NFI) seeks applications from organizations that want to start or expand the evidence-based InsideOut Dad® program with incarcerated fathers in the community or communities they serve. NFI seeks applications from organizations that:

• Have in place an established relationship with one or more corrections-related facilities to continue or start operating the InsideOut Dad® program, including the appropriate clearance from one or more facilities to run the program.
• Provide services to inmates in one or more corrections-related facilities.
• Have a designated staff or volunteer and a backup in place to implement the InsideOut Dad® program.
• Do not currently use the InsideOut Dad® program and want to implement it for the first time or currently use the InsideOut Dad® program and want to expand the number of dads served with it.

Background

NFI’s mission is to increase father involvement by equipping communities and human service organizations with the father-engagement training, programs, and resources they need to be father-inclusive. In pursuit of its mission, NFI builds the capacity of human service organizations that seek to begin or enhance fatherhood programs to improve the well-being of their communities. A vital aspect of this capacity-building effort has been the expansion of NFI’s evidence-based InsideOut Dad® program, which has become the most widely used program in the country for incarcerated fathers.

Three assets are critical to increasing a father’s involvement in the lives of his children:

• Increased awareness and knowledge of how to be a good father
• Development of self-efficacy in the skills that mark a good father
• A high-quality relationship with the mother of his children (i.e., a good co-parenting relationship)

A fourth asset is particularly vital for incarcerated fathers—the ability, while still incarcerated, to build and maintain relationships with their children and families. Research shows that those familial ties help formerly-incarcerated individuals avoid returning to prison after release (e.g., to avoid recidivating).

Independent third-party evaluations have shown that the InsideOut Dad® program increases those four assets in diverse racial and geographic populations.

As a result of the InsideOut Dad® program’s popularity and effectiveness, NFI has acquired funding to expand the use of the program.

NFI will equip 25 human service organizations throughout the country to start or expand the use of the InsideOut Dad® program. The organizations must meet the four criteria identified in the Introduction section of this RFA.

NFI will train 50 facilitators (staff or volunteer plus one “backup” facilitator), two from each organization, to facilitate the program. NFI will provide the organizations with free training and material resources to effectively run the program (i.e., curriculum kits, fathering handbooks, additional web-based training, and technical support). NFI will not provide funds to hire staff, pay stipends to volunteers, or for use in acquiring or using other resources to run the program (e.g., a facility in which to facilitate groups).

To equip the selected organizations to run the program, NFI will:

• Conduct a live InsideOut Dad® training institute delivered via webinar on Wednesday, November 16, 2022, from 11 A.M. to 4:30 P.M. EST. NFI will train one person as the primary facilitator and one person as a backup facilitator per organization.
• Provide each organization with one InsideOut Dad® Complete Program Kit. (Each kit contains all the curriculum components needed to run the program, such as one Facilitator’s Manual, Reentry Manual, flash drive with supporting resources, and 10 Fathering Handbooks.)
• Provide each organization with 20 extra Fathering Handbooks.
• Require each primary facilitator to complete the online, on-demand training called the Effective Facilitation Certificate™. Acquiring this certificate will increase the ability of the facilitator to implement the program effectively.
• Provide each primary facilitator (and backup facilitator should they step into the primary facilitator role) with free, ongoing, customized technical assistance via phone and email as they implement the program.

Eligible organizations can be any human service entity that provides programs or direct services to families, such as secular and faith-based nonprofits, individual reentry or other corrections-related facilities (e.g., a city or county jail or state prison), and city or county government agencies. Organizations that are based outside of the United States are not eligible.

Organizations must have the following capacities and abilities:

• The capacity to begin running the program (i.e., start InsideOut Dad® groups) no later than November 28, 2022. This deadline will be approximately one week after attending the training institute.
• The capacity to have a minimum of 15 dads complete the program by the first reporting period that ends February 19, 2023.
• The capacity to have a minimum of 30 dads complete the program by the second (and final) reporting period that ends August 15, 2023.
• The ability to implement the program with fidelity (e.g., run all 12 sessions of the program) for at least two cycles.
• A primary facilitator who will complete the Effective Facilitation Certificate™ prior to attending the InsideOut Dad® training institute. A facilitator can complete the online training in as little as six hours.
• A backup facilitator who can step in for the primary facilitator (e.g., if the primary facilitator is sick and can’t facilitate a session or the primary facilitator leaves the organization during the project).
• The ability to report on process measures associated with running the program (e.g., the number of dads who complete the program, number of children impacted, etc.) by the end of the two reporting periods (February 19, 2023, and August 15, 2023). NFI created a simple online form to ease the submission of the first and final reports.

Application Deadline: Applications are due to NFI by 12:00 A.M. EDT on Sunday, October 9, 2022.

After receipt and review of applications to determine whether organizations are eligible for selection, NFI staff will:

• Discard applications from organizations that fail to meet the criteria specified in the Introduction section of this RFA.
• Review applications from eligible organizations and select 25 to participate in the project. NFI plans to select organizations during the week of October 9, 2022, and inform the selected organizations no later than the week beginning October 17, 2022.

NFI will place an emphasis on selecting organizations that most convincingly show they have:

• An existing relationship with the facility or facilities where they will implement the program, including the appropriate clearance from that facility or facilities to run the program.
• The capacity to start running groups by November 28, 2022.
• The ability to have at least 30 dads complete the program by August 15, 2023.
• A primary facilitator and a backup facilitator who are already on staff or who already volunteer for the organization.

In determining your organization’s ability and capacity to succeed if selected, keep in mind that organizations will have approximately ten months after selection to recruit dads to participate in the program and complete it before the deadline to serve at least 30 dads (August 15, 2023).

Please note that NFI will not inform organizations not selected to partner in this project of the reason they were not selected (e.g., applications deemed ineligible or not as strong as those of selected organizations).

If you have any questions about this RFA, please email NFI Program Implementation Specialist Ave Mulhern at amulhern@fatherhood.org. Do not email or call anyone else on NFI’s staff. To ensure the best chance of a same-day response, the ideal time to email your questions to Ms. Mulhern is Monday – Friday between 8:30 A.M. and 5:00 P.M. EDT.

If you would like to participate in this exciting opportunity, we welcome your application for this project!