Technical Writing
MIHELP Grant
(**first three sections)
by Lisa Shaw and Ryan Shannon
Henry M. Jackson Foundation
November 21, 2006
A Short Summary
On September 15th, 2007, the Michigan Higher Education Land Policy (MIHELP) Consortium will hold a national symposium for the review of its progress. The goals of this conference will include increased visibility for the organization, a sharing of best practices, and an auditing of the programs put into place by the Michigan Metropolitan Initiative (MMI) and the MIHELP Consortium. While funding has already been secured for portions of the conference, the MIHELP Consortium needs additional funding for securing nationally-recognized speakers, for advertising, and for elevating the conference to a national level. The funds granted by the Henry Jackson Foundation will be used to these ends, connecting national and state policy makers with influential community members and academics in the public and private sectors.
Background of the MIHELP Consortium
The Michigan Higher Education Land Policy (MIHELP) Consortium is a research and outreach initiative that conducts policy research to improve the understanding of problems facing Michigan’s metropolitan areas and delivers a range of options and analytic tools that will assist policymakers and stakeholders in the improvement process.
The Michigan Metropolitan Initiative (MMI), a component of the MIHELP Consortium, has the opportunity to be at the forefront of applied metropolitan affairs research. By working directly with stakeholders and assembling multi-institutional, multi-disciplinary teams to pursue major competitive grants, MMI can deliver research, outreach, and teaching that is relevant to effective metropolitan policy making and facilitates local intergovernmental cooperation. The Michigan Metropolitan Initiative is designed to frame metropolitan issues in contexts that matter and provide relevant information, appropriate tools, and focused expertise to local, regional, and state stakeholders. A key component of the MMI is its online information system to provide access to the wide body of knowledge and information being developed as metropolitan policy science by the MMI and other research initiatives. This searchable resource for local decision makers will be modeled on systems widely used by federal data-rich organizations including USEPA, NASA, NIH, and others
The Michigan Higher Education Land Policy Consortium (MIHELP), headquartered at Michigan State University’s Land Policy Institute, is the only multi-institutional, multi-disciplinary, public-private consortium in the United States focusing on metropolitan land use. Drawing on more than 200 academics at three institutions – Michigan State University, Wayne State University, and Grand Valley State University, plus the resources of public sector consultants, MIHELP and its component initiatives are uniquely positioned to impact public policy, applied research, and cross-curricular development while being both robust and flexible enough to respond to the ever-changing needs of stakeholders, not-for-profit institutions, and local units of government.
The Need for Setting New Parameters: A Hopeful Outcome
The Need for Review
After two years, both the MMI and MIHELP Consortium have an opportunity to review the work they have completed and the areas, policies, and thinking they have influenced. In 2005, the Kellogg Foundation granted $400,000 dollars over two years for various research and outreach initiatives, and MIHELP has put the money to use in a variety of areas. After two years, the time has come to set new parameters for the future of those projects, and move their results into the daylight, so to speak.
To that end, the MIHELP Consortium will hold a conference in September of 2007. The “National Symposium on Metropolitan Policy Science” (tentative title) will take place over a single day, but will succeed in putting a capstone in the arch of the organization’s work over the last two years. Without such a conference, the project has the chance of a certain type of failure: that the research done might not reach the practitioners and policy makers who most need informed and honest data regarding the areas they wish to improve. Without the conference, these projects and others risk duplication and a stagnation of ideas. The work has been done, but the tone still needs to be set.
While the generosity of the Kellogg Foundation has assured that a small part of this conference will already be funded, the MIHELP Consortium and the MMI require that another granting organization heed the call to supply funding for a gathering of influential leaders and academics. The opportunity posed in this request is one that the granting agency will find most salient in terms of the broad effects. Simply by supplying the funds for a single-day conference, the granting organization will be unlocking the doors to years of important discoveries, millions of dollars of research, and countless hours of effort.
--------------------------------------
**This is only the first three sections of the grant. To view the grant it its entirety, please view the full pdf version.**
