COVID-19 Challenge Grant

We are pleased to announce a challenge grant funding up to $15,000 for alumni of our program and other policy-oriented technologists to work on projects to mitigate the effects of COVID-19.

At the Aspen Tech Policy Hub, we take tech experts, teach them the policy process through an in-residence fellowship program in the Bay Area, and encourage them to develop outside-the-box solutions to society’s problems. We model ourselves after tech incubators like Y Combinator, but train new policy thinkers and focus the impact of their ideas. We’re building new ideas at the intersection of civic technology and policy making. You can see our past projects here.

While the focus of the Hub to date has been our 10-week full-time incubator fellowship, we have long planned to expand our programming to support the tech and policy ecosystem in other ways, including by supporting challenge grants for players across the ecosystem to propose timely projects. In light of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and the need for civic technologists to build new tools and policy solutions to support communities in need, we thought it was imperative to pilot this model and announce one such opportunity now.

As such, we are accepting applications from technologists for projects that will help mitigate the effects of COVID-19. Winning teams will be allotted up to $15,000 over three months to execute their projects​​.

We are looking for experienced technologist teams to propose projects to help mitigate the short and long-term effects of COVID-19.

Applicants are required to propose a project that will help mitigate the effects of COVID-19. Illustrative project topics might include (but are not limited to): Providing best practices on mitigating cybersecurity risks while small businesses are shut; Providing data analysis of and/or real time COVID-19 information to health care workers; Using emerging technologies such as virtual reality to mitigate the effects of social isolation; and Using automated systems to inform citizens about the status of the outbreak locally.

Applicants also must submit a timeline and budget for completion.

Before applying, please carefully review the program details, eligibility, and Frequently Asked Questions below. Please take your time and fill out the application thoughtfully; we recommend writing and editing drafts before transferring them to the application form. No decisions will be made about any applications before the application deadline.

We will make up to 3 grants of up to $15,000 (our budget currently maxes out at $30,000) after review of submissions through the platform below. Applications are due on March 30 at 11:59pm PT. 50% of the awarded budget is payable on award, with the remainder on completion of the project.

We thank Screendoor (https://www.dobt.co/screendoor/) for generously donating the application software and making it available to us in this important time.



Because of the short timeline to submission of projects, we have elected not to host webinars for this application cycle. If you have questions not covered in the detailed description and FAQ below, please email us directly at aspentechpolicyhub@aspeninstitute.org. We will update the FAQ with common questions throughout the application cycle.