Pitchfest: New York City

Pitchfest: New York City is an annual event designed to connect New York City government agency staff, university faculty, and civic fellows. On May 21st from 9:00-5:00 PM, agencies are invited to introduce themselves, and staff are encouraged to give low-stakes, two-minute pitches on short-term, high impact projects that could benefit from external expert support. After the event, the Pitchfest team works to “match” agencies with local experts—and we have up to $500K in philanthropic funding available to support eligible matches and projects. An agenda and full list of agency pitches will be published by May 15th. Attendees may attend the entire event or choose to attend only the sessions most relevant to them. The Pitchfest is co-hosted by NYCEDC, NYC Service, NYC Opportunity, and Town+Gown.

New York City is home to some of the world’s top research universities and technical talent, but city agencies do not have an easy way of tapping into that expertise. The Pitchfest aims to close that gap, harnessing the talent of New Yorkers to help the City implement more effective and evidence-based programs and policies. Now in its third year of operation, in 2025, the Pitchfest attracted participation from 23 city agencies and 250+ experts from all the city’s research universities. In 2026, we are excited to host a bigger, better-funded program—including the addition of a dedicated funding pool for projects that address poverty alleviation and promote economic mobility. Pitchfest: New York City is a non-profit program supported by The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, The Charles Revson Foundation, The Tow Foundation, and The Robin Hood Foundation. In addition, some universities offer supplementary funding for their own faculty.

The event is free and open to New York City agency staff, university faculty, and members of civic society interested in becoming Fellows of the program. The event will be held in Pfizer Auditorium at NYU Tandon located at 5 MetroTech Center; light refreshments will be provided throughout the day, courtesy of The SCALE + Lab.

Agency Staff

If you are an agency staff member who would like to submit a project, submit a pitch using the one-slide template here via email to [email protected] by May 8th. You will receive confirmation by May 15th that your pitch will be included in the event. Please consult the template for examples of effective pitches. It is okay if your project is just in the idea phase: this is a bottom-up process intended to encourage staff to share in a low-risk environment. Pitching does not commit you to following through on the project.

We welcome more than one pitch per agency. The first staff member from a given agency to speak should introduce the agency to the audience.

University Faculty

Faculty affiliated with New York City-based universities are encouraged to attend the event. After the event, we will circulate a form, which will ask you to indicate interest in specific projects and describe your relevant experience. Form submissions will be reviewed by agency staff, who will reach out if they are interested in collaborating with you.

Once a match is made, faculty may work with their agency partner to apply for up to $40K in funding to support their shared project vision. At this time, only faculty members who have Principal Investigator status at their university are eligible to apply for funding. Faculty who have already received funding from the Pitchfest are ineligible to apply. For more information on how funding decisions are made, see the section below.

Civic Fellows

Members of civic society—including university affiliates who do not have Principal Investigator status—may also attend and express interest in collaborating with agency staff after the event. If an agency opts to work with you, you will become a “Civic Fellow” of the program. Fellow projects are conducted on a volunteer, part-time basis (up to 8 hours per week). Successful fellows typically have at least 5 years of professional experience in technology, analytics, or consulting roles.

Funding decisions will be made by a judging panel composed of our agency and philanthropic partners. Funding applications are jointly submitted by an agency staff member and university faculty member. Each project is then evaluated for funding based on the degree to which it fulfills the following criteria:

• Addresses a priority need for a NYC government agency, with clearly defined outcomes.
• Includes a sound methodology that is likely to lead to credible findings.
• Is likely to influence an agency's programs, policies, or operations in the near term.
• Is likely to produce novel findings of interest to cities and researchers beyond NYC.
• Includes a letter of support from an Agency Commissioner or equivalent.

See here for examples of successful funding applications from last year. Note that questions will evolve slightly for this year.

Courtesy of The Robin Hood Foundation, we have a dedicated funding pool this year specifically for projects that help alleviate poverty and support economic mobility. For more information, see the section below on Poverty and Economic Mobility Projects.

In addition, some universities have supplementary funding for their own faculty:

• If you are a Columbia University faculty member interested in supporting a project that leverages data science and/or artificial intelligence, you may contact [email protected] at the Data Science Institute for more information.
• If you are a New York University faculty member ..., you may contact ... for more information.

Projects are intended to support current or future New York City government programs, policies, or operations. Projects can take many forms and can come from any agency, but all must demonstrate meaningful outcomes within a six-month time frame. Below are categories of past projects that were successfully matched through the Pitchfest.

• Evidence & Evaluation: Amass evidence and develop an evaluation methodology for current government interventions.
• Experimentation & Discovery: Conduct experiments and generate insights for potential future government interventions.
• Digital Tool Design & Prototyping: Build and prototype new digital tools, interfaces, or other digital assets.
• Data Analysis & Visualization: Process, analyze, and model data to inform agency decisions, potentially leveraging artificial intelligence.
• Process & Workflow Improvement: Optimize internal processes to improve agency efficiency or effectiveness.

Projects that require access to sensitive data (e.g., those requiring PII access or IRB approval) are still encouraged at the Pitchfest. We recommend that, following the event, agency staff and/or university faculty begin the process of obtaining necessary approvals, so that the approvals are already underway when project funding decisions are made in mid-September.

At this year’s event, Robin Hood—New York’s largest poverty-fighting foundation—is offering a dedicated funding pool specifically for projects that produce actionable insights from administrative data to alleviate poverty and support economic mobility.

New York City's affordability crisis is deepening hardships and exacerbating obstacles faced by low-income residents, making it essential that the government and its partners apply available resources as effectively as possible.

Administrative data, collected and held by government agencies as part of their routine functions, hold significant but often untapped promise to improve policy and practice. These records—generated through program enrollments, service delivery, and more—can reveal what's working, how to support residents more holistically, and where resources can be better targeted. Yet that potential goes unrealized when the data is siloed and inaccessible to those best positioned to act on it.

This funding opportunity supports projects that operationalize data in new ways to improve poverty-fighting results in any relevant domain, including education, job training, benefits access, or other areas. Eligible projects may involve data sharing and linkage across agencies, analysis to improve program targeting or service delivery, or research that surfaces patterns relevant to policy. Priority will be given to projects that are designed to yield measurable results within the project period and whose findings will directly inform decision-making going forward.

Robin Hood is interested in exploring topics like: What are the career and salary trajectories of NYC public school graduates who do not go to college, and which factors enable these graduates to secure good jobs and long-term economic security? To right-size this broad topic into an actionable, six-month project, an agency might propose looking at the effects of apprenticeships, and using the resultant data to refine its apprenticeship program offerings.

Poverty and Economic Mobility Projects should adhere to the one-slide template here, which includes more representative examples of eligible projects.

The process before and during the Pitchfest is consistent for all local experts. After the event, the process splits into two “tracks,” based on type of experts. See our web page here for a visual that explains this process in more detail.

If you still have questions about Pitchfest: New York City, please contact us at [email protected]. More information about the Pilot City program and our Pitchfest events can be found on our home page here. Agency staff may also schedule a 15-minute meeting with the Pitchfest team to ask any questions here.

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

5 MetroTech Center, 5 MetroTech Center, Brooklyn, United States

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