Cisco Grants Office: August Funding Updates

Part of a monthly series of insights on upcoming funding opportunities from Cisco Grants Office.

SMART Reopens in August: What to Know

 The Department of Transportation’s Strengthening Mobility and Revolutionizing Transportation (SMART) grant is slated to return in August for a second round of Stage 1 proposals. SMART supports the deployment of advanced smart city technologies that will address a transportation-related need in a community. SMART is unique in that it’s a two-stage grant program. Stage one grants will provide funding for planning and prototyping a project. With stage one funds, recipients will be expected to develop partnerships with necessary stakeholders, determine the feasibility of wide-scale deployment of the smart city technologies, and at the conclusion of the grant, determine whether or not to proceed with their concept. Ideally, successful concepts can be scalable and can serve as a blueprint for other governments that need to address similar issues in their communities.

The first round of SMART was extremely popular: the DOT received 392 applications and eventually funded 59 projectsfor a total of $94 million. Given the popularity of SMART’s first round of funding, we expect there to be an equally robust amount of interest and competition for its second round.

The competition will likely be stiff in part because the SMART grant is relatively easy to complete. Unlike many DOT grants, the FY22 application was seven pages. Moreover, stage one applications do not require a match component.

So what are some of the things you can do to help improve your chances of getting your project successfully funded?

·      Explain Your Problem Clearly: Proposals will in part be scored based on their technical merit, including how well they identify and explain the problem at hand, how appropriate the identified technologies are for solving the problem, and what the expected benefits of the project are (including how they will be demonstrably better than the status quo). You will want to ensure that the problem you’re looking to solve is clearly defined and that you have clear documentation for it.

·      Enable Collaboration: Collaboration is a key for SMART projects. The guidance states “Successful projects will seek to build sustainable partnerships across sectors and levels of government as well as collaborate with industry, academia, nonprofits, and other traditional and non-traditional partners. Successful projects will also support the creation of good-paying jobs with the free and fair choice to join a union.” It’s critical to begin developing these partnerships and to strategize how different stakeholders may help with the development of this prototyping plan and its eventual implementation.

·      Clear Implementation Strategy: The award period for this grant is 18 months. Thus, you will need to demonstrate you can hit the ground running if you’re awarded these funds. This means that you’ll need a clear and feasible work plan with a thorough and realistic timeline. Consider any possible challenges or delays you anticipate possibly facing and detail how you might address them.

For more information, be sure to monitor the SMART program website. It also contains a variety of useful resources and project examples to help you begin to think about what project might be best for your government to pursue.