EGC Incubation Fund
The EGC Research–to–Policy Incubation Fund enables EGC faculty researchers to take advantage of high–potential, time–sensitive policy–focused research opportunities alongside opening many ways to directly involve Yale students, junior researchers, and international collaborators in research.
Investment Opportunity: EGC Incubation Fund
Under the leadership of its Director Rohini Pande, EGC has deepened and expanded its support for frontier research that answers questions important to policymakers, leaders, donors, and other key stakeholders in lower–income countries. Conducting high–quality, embedded development research, and employing novel data methods, can however be time–consuming and expensive. EGC now has an opportunity to catalyze a much larger set of research to answer priority questions facing lower–income countries.
The Incubation Fund is a key priority for three reasons:
- Recent changes to the global funding landscape mean there are far fewer resources available overall.
- Research needs to be responsive to urgent problems at hand in order to be useful to policymakers. The Fund's flexibility enables researchers to be more responsive to policy needs, including by leveraging new data sources, greater volumes of information, and cutting-edge techniques.
- Small, early-stage investments enable us to pilot and refine, identify solutions, and demonstrate proof of concept that we can leverage to show more traditional funders and justify larger investments in full-scale projects.
Incubation Fund resources have high leverage because they provide the agility and flexibility to respond to emerging circumstances. Fund resources can be utilized in numerous ways. Prospecting funds enable assessing vital new opportunities, pilot funds support building new projects, bridge funds sustain project activities and policy coordination while seeking larger-scale funding, and dissemination resources strengthen the bridge from research results to the kind of policy institutionalization that improves citizen wellbeing.
From Idea to Impact: Selected Highlights
The EGC Incubation Fund provides the flexibility to enable Yale researchers, students and in-country collaborators to catalyze high-potential, time-sensitive opportunities for impact. It has helped us support:
- Investing in Talent (Kenya): Often alongside funding research; we fund local research leaders. We supported Brian Murithi Humphrey, the field intervention lead of an EGC-tested preschool intervention program, to begin his PhD—a high-return investment, as Brian guides the scale-up of the program in collaboration with the County government.
- Saving Critical Work (India): When external funding abruptly collapsed for a project incentivizing farmers to conserve natural resources, the Incubation Fund stepped in. We bridged the gap, keeping the collaboration with policymakers alive and ensuring the results were not lost.
- Seizing Opportunity (Chile): We deployed rapid funding to help Lauren Falco Bergquist test the impact of industrial trade fairs on small firm growth—an opportunity that would have vanished without quick action.
To view all the opportunities supported by the EGC Incubation Fund, visit here.
Opportunities for Impact
The EGC Research–to–Policy Incubation Fund offers opportunities to advance evidence–based impact on some of the most pressing issues of the day. EGC welcomes flexible funding to strategically support key points in the research–to–policy process which would aid in achieving long–term policy change and impact.
To contribute directly with an online donation to the EGC Incubation Fund, visit Donation · Yale University · GiveCampus and follow the instructions below:
- Choose your gift amount
- Under Designation * Select Other on the dropdown menu
- In the required field labeled "Enter the area you would like to support", enter: Economic Growth Center Incubation Fund #39926
- Continue filling in the form to complete the process
To learn more and to explore opportunities to support ground-breaking research and policy impact through the EGC Incubation Fund:
- visit https://egc.yale.edu/about/support-our-work
- email us at egc@yale.edu
- reach out directly to Deanna Ford, Senior Adviser at the EGC, and Managing Director of Yale Inclusion Economics, at deanna.ford@yale.edu