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Maryland State Agency AI Projects (Public Benefit Innovation Fund) is sponsored by Center for Civic Futures (through philanthropic grant funding from various partners). Maryland state agency projects received grants to fund AI initiatives aimed at removing barriers and improving access to public services, including healthcare, food assistance, and unemployment services.
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Our PBIF Spring 2026 Open Call Launches Today! Here’s What We’re Looking For. Download the Call For Proposals | Deadline for Submissions is May 15 At Center for Civic Futures , we believe the hardest problems in public benefit delivery don't just need new ideas — they need real space to test them.
Government systems are under enormous strain right now. The complexity of administering programs like Medicaid and SNAP has grown significantly, and the people who depend on these programs can't afford for us to wait for certainty before acting. We have to be willing to learn in motion.
That's what our latest Public Benefit Innovation Fund (PBIF) open call is designed for. This year, we've structured the call around two distinct award tracks to better reflect where teams actually are in their work. Our Early Concept track will support teams testing a new hypothesis in a controlled environment — the kinds of questions that need room to breathe before they're ready for the real world.
Our Pilot track is for teams with a proven concept ready to be tested in a live government context, with the partnerships and implementation readiness to back it up. Both tracks matter, representing necessary stages in getting from a promising idea to lasting public impact.
Over the past few months, we’ve listened closely to the field to learn where strategic investment would make the biggest difference in helping government meet this moment. Through a partnership with collaborative design agency CivicMakers and support from AARP Foundation , we conducted a series of listening sessions with government agency staff, frontline caseworkers, nonprofit civic tech and policy leaders, and AI experts.
We heard one common theme loud and clear: the most pressing and urgent challenges facing government public benefit programs today are not new. What is new is the world of potential solutions that exist to address them. This open call will focus on projects that experiment with novel applications of emerging technologies to solve persistent problems in public benefit delivery: 1.
Improving backend processes to enable caseworkers to focus on people, not administrative tasks. 2. Using data effectively to comprehensively and simply connect people to services.
3. Modernizing tech infrastructure to enable the systems of the future. We’re also excited to be launching this open call in partnership with the Recoding America Fund .
While PBIF funds tech-enabled tools that improve public benefits delivery, the Recoding America Fund invests in the conditions that determine whether those tools can actually be adopted to drive impact.
This partnership reflects a shared belief that emerging technology will not succeed in improving outcomes without also addressing the structural and operational barriers that have long prevented governments from driving their own digital futures.
In the days ahead, we'll be sharing additional guidance materials with advice for applicants — including what makes a strong proposal and how to think about framing your hypothesis and learning goals. We’ll also be hosting a webinar on April 22nd for potential applicants to learn more about this open call and the application process.
If you have questions in the meantime, or want to talk through whether your project might be a fit, we'd love to hear from you. Reach out at info@publicbenefitinnovationfund. org .
Ready to apply? We can’t wait to hear from you. Introducing the AI in Action Awards Government is experimenting with AI.
It's time we celebrated that. Jessica Lax Joins Center for Civic Futures as Program Director for State AI Readiness Eleanor Davis Joins Center for Civic Futures as Director of the Public Benefit Innovation Fund Leadership What we do Resources Contact
According to the current listing, eligibility includes: Maryland state agencies and their partners. Projects focus on improving public services through AI. Nonprofits partnering with government entities may be eligible. Confirm the full requirements in the official notice before applying.
Maryland State Agency AI Projects (Public Benefit Innovation Fund) is funded by Center for Civic Futures (through philanthropic grant funding from various partners). Verify program details on the funder's official page before applying.
This opportunity targets applicants in Maryland. If your organization operates elsewhere, check the official notice for location requirements.
Start from the official opportunity page linked in this listing — it carries the sponsor's submission instructions.
NVIDIA Graduate Fellowship Program is a grant from NVIDIA providing up to $60,000 per award to PhD students conducting research that advances accelerated computing and its applications. Now in its 25th year, the program invites nominations from doctoral students pushing the boundaries of artificial intelligence, robotics, autonomous vehicles, and related fields. Recipients receive not only research funding but also access to NVIDIA technology, products, and engineering expertise, along with a mandatory in-person summer internship. Students are nominated by their faculty advisors and selected based on academic achievement and research area alignment.
CalSEED Concept Award is a grant from the California Energy Commission that provides $150,000 in funding to early-stage clean energy innovators in California. The program targets individuals, businesses, and nonprofits developing hardware, software, or integrated solutions at Technology Readiness Levels 2-4. Eligible technology areas rotate each cycle and have included battery recycling and reuse, long-duration energy storage, medium- and heavy-duty vehicle electrification, industrial electrification, and advanced EV charging. Applicants must be located in California, have under $1 million in private funding, and propose innovations that benefit California ratepayers. Concept Award winners also receive professional development resources and access to accelerator programs, and may compete for a subsequent $450,000 Prototype Award.
NIST SBIR Phase I - Advanced Manufacturing and Robotics is sponsored by National Institute of Standards and Technology. NIST SBIR Phase I - Advanced Manufacturing and Robotics is a grant from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) that funds small businesses with innovative research and technology ideas in advanced manufacturing and robotics.
NASA released a Broad Agency Announcement on April 17, 2026, that replaces the agency's traditional annual SBIR/STTR solicitation cycle with a phased-appendix model valid through September 30, 2027. Appendix A and Appendix B opened April 21 with a May 21 deadline; additional appendices will release throughout the BAA period. The shift breaks the once-a-year proposal cadence small businesses have planned around since the program's founding and demands a different operational posture.
Read articleThe May 29 OMB rewrite of 2 CFR Part 200 quietly rebuilds the pass-through entity compliance architecture. Proposed §200.332 strengthens subrecipient risk assessment, monitoring documentation, and remediation triggers. A new requirement mandates that every subaward be reported to SAM.gov with the reported records confirmed in performance reports — converting subaward administration from a back-office accounting function into a public-record certification regime. For the universities, state agencies, and national nonprofits that pass through more than half of their federal awards as subawards, the operational implication is a new compliance operating model that needs to be standing up by the October 1 effective date.
Read articleBuried in the May 29 OMB rewrite of 2 CFR Part 200 is the elimination of fixed-amount awards as a default grant instrument. Cost-reimbursement reverts to the standard. Here is what the change costs community-based nonprofits, pass-through subaward portfolios, SBIR Phase II direct-to-award structures, and the grant offices that have built workflows around milestone payments — and the comment-and-renegotiation strategy that has six weeks to land before July 13.
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