Do Good Campus Fund

• Your summary should describe the issue you will address, your goals and expected impact, project activities, approach to experiential learning and inclusivity, and what makes your project innovative or creative. 

• What are your project’s goals and expected impact?
• What are your project’s activities? More specifically, what will you do to address the issue you described?
• List the milestones that connect logically to your goals and expected impact.
• How will you know if your project has been successful? Explain how one would evaluate the impact of your efforts. (Quantitative & qualitative metrics, collection methods)

• What about the project’s approach to addressing the issue is innovative or creative?
• How well does your project reflect the Do Good Community Commitments?
• How will you sustain the project after the conclusion of this Campus Fund grant?
• How will your project incorporate experiential learning?
• How many students do you estimate will be engaged in experiential learning through the project?

Applicants are encouraged to craft budgets that fit their goals. Applicants are welcome, but not expected, to supplement requested amounts with their own budgetary resources. 

Your budget should include all resources (personnel and material) required to complete your project, using this budget template. Make a copy of the file and follow the instructions on the first tab of the file. Applicants are required to work with the business manager or grant management staff for their unit (e.g., College, School, Department, Office, or Division) to plan the project budget effectively. Detailed instructions are in the Faculty/Staff Budget Guidelines and Eligibility tab, below.

We require having a single lead applicant identified but of course encourage applications from teams. Faculty and staff must initiate this process by collaborating with the business manager or grant management staff for their unit (e.g., College, School, Department, Office, or Division) to plan the project budget effectively. Student groups with university accounts must work with their faculty/staff advisor or school/college business manager. They will be able to offer valuable assistance in the planning phase and aid in anticipating needs as well as providing guidance on standard operating procedures in the unit of the lead applicant. 

All applicants are required to provide a detailed budget using the template linked above. Expenses must comply with your unit’s standard operating procedures. All projects must be initiated by the Summer or Fall of 2027 at the latest and are required to begin spending funds within six months of receiving the notice to proceed. Each grant has an expiration date of June 30, 2028. 

Below is additional information to clarify questions related to funding eligibility and to assist with budget planning. 

• Construct your budget to indicate the first and last month that will incur expenses.
• Allowable expenditures include personnel support requests, which may include stipends for existing UMD community members, temporary positions, hourly graduate and undergraduate student support, and other direct expenses related to project-specific development needs.
  • Personnel
    • Proposals should provide details about the responsibilities assigned to each team member, including students if relevant, and demonstrate how their collaborative effort will further the work proposed. 
    • Stipends for faculty and staff may be budgeted up to $5,000 per semester per individual or the equivalent of $15,000 over the course of a year. Collaborators' stipends may vary based on their level of involvement. Individuals can participate in multiple teams, but they can only receive a stipend from one Do Good Campus Fund grant. Additionally, the proposed budget must include prorated fringe benefits.
      • Exact details of disbursement are dependent on appointment type. Refer to your payroll experts for guidance. Generally, faculty and staff stipends are processed as nonteaching overloads via nonstandard pay or summer pay for faculty if the work proposed is above and beyond your current workload with the approval of your unit. 
    • Hourly pay for students (both graduate and undergraduate) must adhere to the unit’s or program’s stipulated rates per University policies. Prorated fringe benefits must be factored into the budget. 
  • Other Direct Costs
    • Professional development;
    • Travel expenses;
    • Food and event costs, except alcohol;
    • Miscellaneous (printing, equipment, etc.). 
• Grant work may commence immediately upon the creation of the USource account. Funding will be reimbursed towards the end of the Fiscal Year.
• Staff and faculty awards of all amounts will have a Workday USource created. It is a requirement to use the USource associated with the Campus Fund Project.  
• Student groups will have funds transferred directly to their existing account, sponsored USource account, or checks will be issued.
• Grant recipients are expected to comply with all Do Good Campus Fund requirements, including timely submission of required reports, responsible use of grant funds, and ongoing communication with the Do Good Campus Fund team. If these requirements are not met, or if grant funds are not spent in accordance with the approved project and university policies, the recipient's department or unit may be responsible for covering any unsupported or unallowable expenses.

• The funds will be allocated through the lead applicant’s home unit and placed in a unique USource account. The home unit will manage payments to team members, cover other expenditures, and maintain records.
• Upon the awarding of grants, we will work to establish a series of dedicated accounts for staff and faculty in Workday. Each grant recipient will receive an exclusive USource specifically for their grant. All financial transactions associated with the grant must take place within this designated account; salary and expense transfers should be limited to the extent possible. This approach is designed to facilitate accurate reporting for this key strategic initiative.
• The Do Good Institute and Academic Affairs will work with the relevant business managers to ensure the appropriate account features are incorporated. CBOs will receive a spreadsheet containing the comprehensive list of awardees for their respective College/School/Unit, along with access to the proposals, budgets, and award letters on Google Drive.
• Expenses will be reimbursed based on incurred expenditures. The reimbursement process will occur towards the end of the fiscal year. The business manager can expect a customer invoice (Foundation reimbursement) to receive the funds in June and again after the fiscal year ends. They will be responsible for ensuring that expenses align as closely as possible with the budget proposal. 
• Any remaining funds, should there be any, will be forfeited back to the Do Good Institute upon the conclusion of the project or the end of FY2028. Requests for potential no-cost extensions beyond this deadline, limited to 6 months, may be evaluated in exceptional situations, but approval is not guaranteed.
• The funds transferred will be in accordance with the budget outlined by the lead applicant, a process that will be verified during the selection process. Proposals may receive full or partial funding, and in the case of partial funding, a budget note will be included in the award letter to provide clarification.
• Goods acquired through this Initiative will be retained as the property of UMD.
• Furthermore, we kindly seek permission to reach out to the grantee after the project's completion to receive  updates, learn about the project's continued impact, and share future opportunities or communications.

We require a written statement of support from your Dean, VP, supervisor, or group sponsor.

This statement may take the form of a document on letterhead or an email with a clear timestamp and signature block. Please submit the statement as a PDF.

For your convenience, we’ve provided a template for the support letter that you’re welcome to use or adapt.

The statement must include the following:

• The author’s credentials and their relationship to you.
• Their support for your proposal.
• Their belief in your ability to deliver on this proposal if you are awarded funding.

• The Do Good Learning Principles are: experiential, inclusive, innovative, social impact-oriented and in service of humanity. The Students Change the World exhibit provides leading examples of student groups advancing these principles. Additionally, the Do Good Campus Fund will help significantly advance the University of Maryland’s Fearlessly Forward strategic plan. 

• Applications are welcome from University of Maryland, College Park, student groups, individual full-time faculty and staff, and teams of University of Maryland, College Park, faculty, staff, and/or student groups. Teams may be interdisciplinary, multi-unit, and/or multi-school/college.
• Alumni and part-time faculty and staff of the University of Maryland, College Park, are not eligible to apply for the Fund.
• Applicants not affiliated with the University of Maryland, College Park, are not eligible to apply for the Fund.
• Past Campus Fund applicants who did not receive funding are encouraged to re-apply.
• Past Campus Fund grantees are not eligible to re-apply for funds for the same or substantially similar already-funded project at this time.

• Yes, applicants may collaborate with part-time faculty/staff and/or public, private, and/or nonprofit stakeholders outside of the University of Maryland, as long as the applicant(s) themself(ves) is/are student groups and/or full-time faculty/ staff from the University of Maryland, College Park.

• Student groups do not need to be officially recognized by the Student Government Association in order to apply. However, successful student group applicants will need to be well positioned to sustain a grant process that will span at least two academic years (the application period during the 2026-2027 academic year and the award/ impact period during the 2027-2028 academic year).

• The lead applicant is the individual submitting the application form through the Wizehive online application portal. For team applications, this needn’t be the individual contributing all or even a majority of the effort for the project, but it must be someone directly involved in the project who is a full-time staff, faculty, or student at the University of Maryland, College Park campus.
• For applications where a student is the lead applicant, that student must not be graduating before May 2028.

• It can, but it doesn’t have to. While the origin of an eligible project must be a University of Maryland-based full-time faculty, staff, and/or student group, their scale of impact is unlimited. A successful project’s impact may be local, global, or anything in between.

• No. Applications will be considered holistically in terms of their potential for fulfilling the Do Good Learning Principles. We offer applicants the option of noting additional sources of funding in their application if they wish, but do not require. In any case, we ask that an applicant’s budget clearly indicate how they will spend the funding specifically requested under this grant.

• While we cannot anticipate the guidelines for future years of the Do Good Campus Fund, we expect successful applicants may be able to re-apply in future years with an appreciably different request for funding or to scale up a project funded in this round. Requesting additional funding for the same project or activities would generally not be considered sufficient.

• The purpose of the Do Good Campus Fund is to support and enhance a variety of academic programs and co-curricular approaches to social impact across campus and to enable any full-time faculty and staff or student group to scale their social impact.

Visit the Do Good Campus Council page to meet the members. 

• Applicants may serve as a lead or supporting applicant on as many projects as they wish. However, an individual may only serve as the lead applicant on one project selected for funding in a given Campus Fund cycle. If an applicant is involved in multiple competitive proposals, the Selection Committee will likely reach out during the screening process to ensure they have the capacity to successfully execute multiple projects.

• No. Student groups can only apply for a maximum grant of  $5,000. Applications with grants requesting between $5,000 - $35,000 are only for staff and faculty.

• Graduate Assistants may apply as a staff member, therefore you may apply for a higher amount, between $5,000 - $35,000.

• No, but there are limitations on the number of stipends you can receive. (See the “Faculty and Staff Eligibility and Budget Guidelines” section above.)

• The impact of the grant can be of any scope, whether that is local, national, international, etc., as long as the lead applicant is affiliated with the University of Maryland.

Yes!

• If the project is student-led, there are other programs that you can apply to, such as Mini-Grants, Accelerator Fellows, and Do Good Challenge programs. Faculty and Staff-led projects are not eligible to apply for other DGI programs.

• Our team works with the grantees to help them plan their projects and amplify their impact during the grant year as much as possible.

• USource account requests are submitted in June and depend on your response to the Campus Fund Grant Acceptance (Google) form. The accounts are set up for deficit spending as they will be reimbursed at the end of the year.

• Yes. Project leads have the flexibility to make budget adjustments as needed, provided there is no material change to the project’s goals, activities, or intended outcomes. Budget reallocations of up to $500 between budget categories may be made without prior approval.  Reallocations exceeding $500, or any changes that would materially affect the project's goals, activities, or associated expenditures, must be discussed with the Do Good Campus Fund team before proceeding.

• The unspent funds will be returned to The Do Good Campus Fund account at the end of the grant year. Awarded funds can't be transferred for the following year.