The APF Visionary Grants

Overview

The APF Visionary Grants seek to seed innovation through supporting research, education and intervention projects and programs that use psychology to solve social problems in the following priority areas:

• applying psychology to at-risk, vulnerable populations (e.g., serious mental illness, returning military, those who are incarcerated or economically disadvantaged);
• preventing violence;
• understanding the connection between behavior and health (e.g. wellness, diabetes, obesity);
• understanding and eliminating stigma and prejudice (e.g., race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, age, disability, and socioeconomic status);
• furthering racial equity: APA has requested funds from their fund at the Tides Foundation to fund a 2025 Visionary Grant that is focused on furthering racial equity.

Preference will be given to pilot projects that, if successful, would be strong candidates for support from major federal and foundation funding agencies, and “demonstration projects” that promise to generalize broadly to similar settings in other geographical areas and/or to other settings.

Award Amount: 10 grants of up to $20,000
Applications will be evaluated on:

• innovative and potential impact qualities (introduction of proven interventions in a similar setting, minor extensions of established theory or work that has little chance of replication or use beyond the proposed setting do not qualify as innovative or impactful)
• quality, viability, and promise of proposed work
• criticality of proposed funding for proposed work (mere contributions to larger funded efforts, or “add-ons” that could/should be carried out under that funding are discouraged)
• clear and comprehensive methodology