Extending our grant time period by 6 months

(Tl;dr - we requested and received a “no-cost” or calendar extension. This grant now runs through September 2019.)

Several months ago I started thinking about whether or not to request a grant extension. You can see my thought process here. However, things have changed over the last few months. Namely, we have more work we want to do! We’ve decided to create a “partner” toolkit to accompany the “patient” toolkit we’re working on, and I now have an idea for how to best format this content so it’s usable (and design and content will also be open source) into the future.

As a result, our team decided to request the NCE (no-cost extension) to extend our grant time period another 6 months, into September 2019, making our grant period a total of 24 months instead of 18 months.

Here’s the request we submitted to RWJF:

Hello,

I am officially submitting a request for grant ID 74610 (“Opening Pathways”) to have a no-cost extension of 6 calendar months to further our project’s work.

1. We are requesting a new end date of September 2019 (6 month extension).

2. We have identified a second toolkit in addition to our primary endpoint toolkit (for patients) that we would like to create. We would also like the additional time to make an interactive tool to display and allow interaction with the toolkit content, rather than ending with static content, for the initial primary patient toolkit.

3. We will do the following in the extended time period: A. Create a second, complementary ‘partner’ toolkit for research partners working with patient innovators/researchers B. Develop an interactive format for use with both toolkits

4. This is some new work (the second toolkit) as well as an extension of the original work (the originally planned toolkit), due to additional timing desired to develop the toolkit content to be displayed interactively to improve accessibility of the content.

5. We aim to finish both toolkits & a version of the interactive display of the toolkit content by mid-August, with plans to distribute/promote/get feedback and iterate in the final month of the extension.

6. We will continue monthly calls to share progress with our program officer; as well as communicate with grant completion in September with our final project report to RWJF.

Thanks, Dana Lewis on behalf of the Opening Pathways team

And, the request was approved! So we’ll be continuing this work for the next few months as well.