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Spencer Foundation — Large Research Grants on Education

  • Up to $500,000 over 1–5 years
  • Deadline: June 20, 2019 for letter of inquiry
  • For intellectually ambitious research projects oriented to improving the practice of education by addressing the most pressing questions and compelling opportunities

Russell Sage Foundation — Visiting Scholars Program

  • $62,500 (half term), $125,000 (full term)
  • Deadline: June 27, 2019
  • For select scholars in the social, economic and behavioral sciences to pursue their research and writing while in residence at the Foundation's New York headquarters
  • Eligibility: social scientists who are at least three years beyond the Ph.D.

Spencer Foundation — Small Research Grants on Education

  • Up to $50,000 over 1–5 years
  • Deadline: July 1, 2019
  • For rigorous, intellectually ambitious and technically sound research projects that will contribute to the improvement of education, broadly conceived. Proposals welcomed from multiple disciplinary and methodological perspectives, both domestically and internationally, and from scholars at various stages in their career.

Instagram — Well-being and Safety Research

  • Up to $50,000
  • Deadline: July 3, 2019
  • For proposals to help Instagram better understand user experiences that foster or harm the well-being and safety of our communities and societies. This includes but is not limited to: understanding problematic issues facing our communities, developing better policies, assessing possible interventions to protect our communities, and identifying the mechanisms (e.g., social support, social comparison) through which Instagram usage directly impacts well-being.

The Americana Foundation — Grants

  • Up to $50,000
  • Annual deadlines for concept letters:
    • July 10
    • October 10
    • January 10
    • April 10
  • Areas of interest:
    • agriculture and natural resources (includes sustainability and education)
    • American heritage (includes training/staffing for museum curation/conservation)
  • Preference for Michigan applicants, but a few grants are made across the country

National Geographic Society — Early Career Grants

  • Up to $10,000; usually $5,000
  • Deadlines:
    • July 10, 2019
    • October 9, 2019
  • For early-career investigators. Projects must align with one of these areas of interest:
    • The Human Journey
    • Wildlife and Wild Places
    • Our Changing Planet
  • Eligibility: no more than five years professional experience; requires no advanced degree or previous project lead experience

National Geographic Society — Requests for Proposals

  • Up to $70,000 (usually under $30,000), over up to two years
  • Deadlines:
    • July 10, 2019
    • October 9, 2019
    • January 9, 2019
  • For projects in these areas:
    • Documenting Human Migrations
    • Uncovering Human Origins in Asia and Africa
    • Species Recovery
    • Big Cats Conservation
    • Making the Case for Nature
    • Reducing Marine Plastic Pollution
    • Participatory Science
    • Conservation Technologies
    • AI for Earth

The Leakey Foundation — Research Grants

  • Up to $25,000
  • Annual deadlines:
    • July 15
    • January 10
  • For research related specifically to human origins, including paleoanthropology, genetics, primate behavior and the behavioral ecology of contemporary hunter-gatherers. Priority to exploratory phases of promising new research projects.

Alexander von Humboldt Foundation — Sofja Kovalevskaja Award

  • ~$1,850,000 over five years (up to six awards will be made)
  • Deadline: July 31, 2019
  • For top-rank junior researchers whose work has already been internationally recognized as outstanding. To spend five years building up a working group and working on a high-profile, innovative research project of their own choice at a research institution of their own choice in Germany. All disciplines. Applications from women particularly encouraged.
  • Eligibility: doctorate or equivalent degree completed “with distinction” after July 31, 2013

Retirement Research Foundation — Responsive Grants

  • Usually under $100,000; as high as $135,000 recently
  • Annual deadlines for optional letter of inquiry (for feedback):
    • June 15
    • March 15                      
  • Annual application deadlines:                    
    • August 1
    • February 1
    • May 1
  • For projects that have a significant focus on adults ages 65 and over, in the following areas:
    • Advocacy Achieving enduring social change around issues that affect older Americans
    • Direct Service Improve availability and quality of community-based and residential long-term services and supports
    • Professional Education and Training Increase the competency of professionals and paraprofessionals who serve older adults
    • Research Seek causes and solutions to significant problems for older adults (but not biomedical research)

William T. Grant Foundation — Research Grants on Reducing Inequality 

  • $100,00 to $600,000 over two or three years
  • Deadline: August 1, 2019 for letters of inquiry
  • For research on programs, policies, and practices that reduce inequality in youth outcomes; and research that identifies, builds, and tests strategies to improve the use of research evidence in ways that benefit youth.

William T. Grant Foundation — Improving the Use of Research Evidence

  • $100,000 to $1,000,000 over two to four years
  • Deadline: August 1, 2019 for letters of inquiry
  • For research on programs, policies, and practices that reduce inequality in youth outcomes; and research that identifies, builds, and tests strategies to improve the use of research evidence in ways that benefit youth. Projects involving secondary data analysis are at the lower end of the budget range, whereas projects involving new data collection and sample recruitment can be at the higher end. Proposals to launch experiments in which settings (e.g., classrooms, schools, youth programs) are randomly assigned to conditions sometimes have higher awards.

Brady Education Foundation — Existing Program Evaluation

  • Annual deadlines:
    • August 1
    • December 1
    • April 1
  • Funding for up to three years to evaluate the effectiveness of programs designed to promote positive cognitive and/or achievement outcomes for children (birth through 18 years) from underserved groups and/or low-resourced communities (minority ethnic groups, low-income families)

Brady Education Foundation — Outcomes for children

  • Annual deadlines:
  • To develop new programs or evaluate existing programs for promoting positive cognitive and/or achievement outcomes for children (birth through 18 years) from underserved groups and/or low-resourced communities (minority ethnic groups, low-income families).
    • August 1
    • December 1
    • April 1

Sociological Initiatives Foundation — Grants

  • Up to $20,000
  • Deadline: August 16, 2019 for short concept proposals
  • Areas of interest:
    • Projects that address racism, xenophobia, classism, gender bias, exploitation, or the violation of human rights and freedoms
    • Research on language learning and behavior and its intersection with social and policy questions, including: literacy, language loss and maintenance, language policy, language and national security, bilingualism, language and gender, language and law, language disabilities, language and health, language and education, different language cultures, second language acquisition, and dialects

John Templeton Foundation — Grants

  • Up to $234,000 for small grants program, more for large grants program
  • Deadline: August 16, 2019 for online funding inquiry
  • To support research on “the basic forces, concepts, and realities governing the universe and humankind’s place in the universe.” Interest in the intersection of scientific notions (e.g., complexity, emergence, evolution, infinity, and time) and moral and spiritual concepts (e.g., altruism, creativity, free will, generosity, gratitude, intellect, love, prayer, and purpose). There are six grant programs:
    • Science and the Big Questions
    • Character Virtue Development
    • Individual Freedom and Free Markets
    • Exceptional Cognitive Talent and Genius (in mathematics and science)
    • Genetics
    • Voluntary Family Planning

Sociological Initiatives Foundation — Participatory Action Research Projects

  • Up to $20,000
  • Deadline: August 16, 2019 for concept papers
  • For projects that link an explicit research design to a concrete social action strategy. Projects should also have clear social change goals. Areas of interest include: civic participation, community organizing, crime and law, education, health, housing, immigration, labor organizing, and language/literacy. Some examples of desired applicants are:
    • community-led academic partnerships
    • advocacy or community groups that conduct research that can withstand challenge in academic and policy arenas
    • academics that organize or link to a constituency through their research

Russell Sage Foundation — Research Grants

  • Deadline: August 19, 2019 for letters of inquiry
  • For social-science research in these program areas:
    • Behavioral Economics
    • Future of Work
    • Decision Making and Human Behavior in Context
    • Computational Social Science
    • Immigration & Immigrant Integration

Searle Freedom Trust — United States public policy research grants

  • Annual deadlines:
    • August 22
    • December 15
    • April 16
  • For research and education on domestic public-policy issues that affect individual freedom and economic liberty. In addition to research grants and fellowships, the foundation also supports public outreach, including sponsorship of research conferences and seminars, film and journalism projects, and new media initiatives.
  • Funding priorities include:
    • tax and budget policy
    • cost-benefit analysis of regulatory practices and proposals
    • the workings of the legal system
    • environmental policy
    • social welfare reform
    • K-12 and higher education policy

Templeton World Charity Foundation — Global Innovations for Character Development

  • $234,000 (12 awards will be made)
  • Deadline: August 26, 2019
  • Seeking scientific innovations to develop and evaluate novel approaches to fostering character strengths, and contextually appropriate scales for measuring the same. Proposals must demonstrate a clear path to demonstrable changes in knowledge, awareness and the practice of character strengths; and must include a rigorous evaluation methodology. An award of up to $1 million is also offered to scale up a character-development innovation that has a peer-reviewed evidence base and is ready to for widespread implementation. Areas of interest:
    • Formative research that explores the process of character formation and local conceptualizations of character strengths
    • The development and evaluation of scalable innovations aimed at promoting and fostering character strengths
    • The development, adaptation or validation of tools for measuring character development 

Rising Tide Foundation — Social/Education Programs

  • Deadline: August 27, 2019
  • To support and cultivate the next generation of public intellectuals to inform and achieve social progress. For projects that will empower disadvantaged individuals to improve their situation to achieve sustained social and economic independence and live a life of dignity.

William T. Grant Foundation — Institutional Challenge

  • $650,000 over three years
  • Deadline: September 6, 2019
  • To build sustained research-practice partnerships with public agencies or nonprofit organizations in order to reduce inequality in youth outcomes. Areas of interest include education, justice, child welfare, mental health, immigration, and workforce development. Proposals with minority leadership encouraged. 

Tinker Foundation — Institutional Grants

  • Deadlines:
    • September 15, 2019
    • March 1, 2019
  • For the creation of effective policy changes to improve the lives of Latin Americans (not U.S. policy towards Latin America). Projects should have a strong public policy component, offer innovative solutions to problems facing these regions, and incorporate new mechanisms for addressing these programmatic areas. Activities may include, but are not restricted to, research projects, workshops and conferences related to the Foundation’s areas of interest:
    • Democratic Governance
    • Education
    • Sustainable Resource Management

Alfred P. Sloan Foundation — Sloan Research Fellowships         

  • $70,000
  • Deadline: September 16, 2019
  • For early-career scientists and scholars in these or related fields:
    • chemistry
    • computational and evolutionary molecular biology
    • computer science
    • economics
    • mathematics
    • neuroscience
    • ocean sciences
    • physics
  • Eligibility: must be tenure-track, though untenured, as of September 16, 2019.

IBM Center for The Business of Government — Research Report Stipends

  • $20,000
  • Deadline: October 1, 2018
  • For rigorous public-management research and analytic techniques to help public sector executives and managers improve the effectiveness of government

Wenner-Gren Foundation — Post-Ph.D. Research Grants 

  • Up to $20,000
  • Annual deadlines:
    • November 1
    • May 1
  • For basic research in anthropology

Fahs-Beck Fund for Research and Experimentation — Faculty/Post-Doctoral Research Grant Program

  • Up to $20,000
  • Annual deadlines:
    • November 1
    • April 1
  • Major social, psychological, behavioral or public health problems affecting children, adults, couples, families, or communities in the United States and/or Canada

Wenner-Gren Foundation — Conference and Workshop Grants

  • Up to $20,000
  • Annual deadlines:
    • December 1
    • June 1
  • To foster the creation of an international community of research scholars in anthropology and advance significant and innovative anthropological research

Environmental Research & Education Foundation — Grants

  • Up to $500,000; $160,000 average
  • Annual deadlines for pre-proposals:
    • January 6
    • June 1
  • Topics must relate to sustainable solid-waste management practices and pertain to the following topic areas:
    • Waste minimization
    • Recycling
    • Waste conversion to energy, biofuels, chemicals or other useful products, including waste-to-energy, anaerobic digestion, composting, other thermal or biological conversion technologies
    • Strategies to promote diversion to higher and better uses (e.g. organics diversion, market analysis, optimized material management, logistics, etc.)
    • Landfilling
  • Desirable aspects of the above topics, in addition to or as part of hypothesis-driven applied research, also include:
    • Economic or cost/benefit analyses
    • Feasibility studies for untested technologies or management strategies
    • Life-cycle analysis or inventory
    • Analyses of policies that relate to the above

Russell Sage Foundation — Small Grants in Behavioral Economics

  • $7,500 lifetime limit
  • Applications accepted on a rolling basis
  • Supports high-quality research in behavioral economics and encourages young investigators (Ph.D. students and recent graduates) to enter this developing field. All disciplines eligible. Projects must address improving social and living conditions in the United States.

Smith Richardson Foundation — Domestic Public Policy Program

  • Applications accepted on a rolling basis
  • For projects that will help the public and policy makers understand and address critical challenges facing the United States

Public Welfare Foundation — Grants

  • Up to $200,000
  • Applications accepted on a rolling basis
  • Three program areas:
    • Criminal Justice
    • Youth Justice
    • Workers' Rights

Cisco Research Center — Social Science: Career/Life Paths of Women in Engineering, Computer Science, and Data Science/Applied Mathematics

  • For research specifically in the area of career and life flow of women in engineering, computer science, and data science/applied mathematics roles.

The Laura and John Arnold Foundation — Randomized Controlled Trials of Social Programs

  • Letters of interest may be submitted at any time
  • For randomized controlled trials of social programs in any area of domestic policy in which the Foundation will fund the trial, and government or another entity will fund the program's delivery.

Rising Tide Foundation — Social/ Education Programs

  • Letters of intent accepted on a rolling basis
  • To support and cultivate the next generation of public intellectuals to inform and achieve social progress. For projects that will empower disadvantaged individuals to improve their situation to achieve sustained social and economic independence and live a life of dignity.

Rising Tide Foundation — Libertarian Programs

  • Letters of intent accepted on a rolling basis
  • For leadership development, capacity building and training across a range of issue areas to promote sustained livelihoods and marketable skills for a responsible, progressive society. Supports organizations to educate and promote libertarianism, so that individuals can benefit from its core principles to take charge of their lives and transform for the better. Also funds projects that directly apply libertarian principles, which may include advancement of entrepreneurship, innovation or projects aligned with the foundation's libertarian core values.

Economic Security Project — Universal Basic Income (UBI)

  • $5,000–$50,000 in most cases
  • Applications accepted on a rolling basis
  • For research on unconditional cash transfers or basic income, advocacy campaigns to expand them, and creative culture work to inspire people to think about how cash provides economic security to all

Institute for Aegean Prehistory — Publication assistance

  • Up to $7,500
  • Applications accepted at any time
  • Financial support for production and printing costs of major articles and volumes, and technical archaeological services for publication preparation.

Laura and John Arnold Foundation — Demonstrating the Power of Evidence-Based Programs to "Move the Needle" on Major U.S. Social Problems

  • $500,000–$1,500,000
  • Applications accepted on a rolling basis
  • To expand delivery of the following types of evidence-based interventions:
    • college financial-aid application assistance for low-income students
    • career academies within workplaces and low-income high schools
    • middle-school substance-abuse prevention
    • nurse-led hospital discharge and home follow-up program for chronically ill older adults
    • pregnancy prevention for economically disadvantaged teens
    • job training for low-income, low-skilled workers
    • smoking cessation for hospitalized smokers
    • case management to prevent recurrent homelessness in people with severe mental illness
    • education for first-year female college students to their likelihood of experiencing rape or other forms of victimization
    • college financial aid for low-income students who meet certain high-school benchmarks

FINRA Investor Education Foundation — General Grant Program

  • Up to $100,000
  • Project Concept Forms accepted on a rolling basis
  • For research and educational projects that empower underserved Americans with the knowledge, skills and tools to make sound financial decisions throughout life  

Social Science Research Council — Social Media and Democracy Research Grants

  • Up to $50,000
  • Applications accepted on a rolling basis
  • For proposals that examine the impact of social media and related digital technologies on democracy and elections, generate insights to inform policy at the intersection of media, technology, and democracy, and advance new avenues for future research.

Smith Richardson Foundation — Domestic Public Policy

  • Concept papers accepted on a rolling basis
  • Areas of interest:
    • Identifying mechanisms that can inform thinking on fiscal practices at the national, state, and municipal levels
    • Identifying how schools can become more productive by, for example, increasing the quality of the teacher workforce or adopting more effective curricula
    • Acquiring education and training beyond high school
    • Whether the costs of the criminal justice system can be lowered while still protecting public safety

Smith Richardson Foundation — International Security & Foreign Policy

  • Concept papers accepted on a rolling basis
  • For research that helps U.S. policy makers improve the country’s national security and foreign policy capabilities. Areas of interest:
    • The evolving politics of the Middle East
    • The internal evolution of major powers in Asia, including China, India, and South Korea, as well as on the prospects for conflict among these countries
    • Identifying ways that the United States can continue to play its essential world role at a time of constrained budgets
    • Policy steps to combat cyber attacks
    • Historical research with implications or lessons for current policy
  • The Foundation also provides research grants to junior faculty and junior-level analysts in the think tank community.