Science of Learning and Augmented Intelligence

Overview:

Science of Learning and Augmented Intelligence (SL) supports potentially transformative research that develops basic theoretical insights and fundamental knowledge about principles, processes and mechanisms of learning, and about augmented intelligence — how human cognitive function can be augmented through interactions with others or with technology, or through variations in context. 

The program supports research addressing learning in individuals and in groups, across a wide range of domains at one or more levels of analysis, including molecular and cellular mechanisms; brain systems; cognitive, affective and behavioral processes; and social and cultural influences. 

The program also supports research on augmented intelligence that clearly articulates principled ways in which human approaches to learning and related processes, such as in design, complex decision-making and problem-solving, can be improved through interactions with others or through the use of artificial intelligence in technology. These could include ways of using knowledge about human functioning to improve the design of collaborative technologies that have the capacity to learn to adapt to humans.

For both aspects of the program, there is special interest in collaborative and collective models of learning and intelligence that are supported by the unprecedented speed and scale of technological connectivity. This includes emphasis on how people and technology working together in new ways and at scale can achieve more than either can attain alone. The program also seeks explanations for how the emergent intelligence of groups, organizations and networks intersects with processes of learning, behavior and cognition in individuals.   

Projects that are convergent or interdisciplinary may be especially valuable in advancing basic understanding of these areas, but research within a single discipline or methodology is also appropriate. Connections between proposed research and specific technological, educational and workforce applications will be considered as valuable broader impacts but are not necessarily central to the intellectual merit of proposed research. The program supports a variety of approaches, including experiments, field studies, surveys, computational modeling, and artificial intelligence or machine learning methods.

Other information:

To get some feedback on alignment of project ideas to the Program priorities, please send a 1-page summary of the proposed project that addresses both NSF merit review criteria (Intellectual Merit and Broader Impacts) to the program director Soo-Siang Lim, PhD. These resources can be helpful as potential applicants develop projects: 

• NSF merit review criteria: https://new.nsf.gov/funding/merit-review#our-merit-review-criteria-f24
• NSF broader impacts framework: https://new.nsf.gov/funding/learn/broader-impacts

Deadlines:
Second Wednesday in February, Annually Thereafter 
First Wednesday in August, Annually Thereafter

Methodology, Measurement, and Statistics (MMS)

Overview:

The Methodology, Measurement, and Statistics (MMS) Program is a standing, interdisciplinary program in the Directorate for Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences (SBE). MMS supports the development of innovative analytical and statistical methods and models for those sciences. The Program interacts with the other programs in SBE as well as other programs in the Foundation. The Program also partners with a consortium of federal statistical agencies to support research proposals that further the production and use of official statistics.

The MMS Program seeks proposals that are methodologically innovative, grounded in theory, and have potential utility for multiple fields within the social, behavioral, and economic sciences. Successful proposals often integrate across the following areas:

• The development, application, and extension of formal models and methodology for social, behavioral, and economic research, including methods for improving measurement. The proposed research must show promise for having value for multiple fields in the social, behavioral, and economic sciences.
• The development of formal models that cross traditional disciplinary boundaries, including research on statistical methodology or statistical modeling. The proposed research must show promise for having value for multiple social and behavioral science fields.
• Research on methodological aspects of new or existing procedures for data collection, including
  • methodological advances for survey research;
  • research to evaluate or compare existing databases and data collection procedures; and
  • research on methodological issues related to the use and analysis of new sources of data for the social, behavioral, and economic sciences.
• Infrastructure projects that facilitate the research activities of the MMS community.
  
  The MMS Program provides support through a number of different types of proposals including:
• Regular Research Awards
• Awards for conferences and community-development activities
• Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement (DDRI) Grants
• Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) Supplements

MMS also supports Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) awards. Please see the CAREER Program Web Site for more information on this activity.

Solicitation limitations:

Who May Serve as PI:
Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Awards: DDRI proposals must be submitted with a principal investigator (PI) and a co-principal investigator (co-PI). The PI must be the advisor of the doctoral student or another faculty member at the U.S. institution where the doctoral student is enrolled. The co-PI must be the doctoral student whose dissertation research will be supported.

For all other types of awards, there are no restrictions or limits.

Limit on Number of Proposals per Organization: There are no restrictions or limits.

Limit on Number of Proposals per PI or co-PI: There are no restrictions or limits.

Other information:

Full Proposal Deadline(s) (due by 5 p.m. submitter's local time):
August 29, 2019; Last Thursday in August, Annually Thereafter 
January 30, 2020; Last Thursday in January, Annually Thereafter

Estimated Number of Awards: 15 to 35 
Anticipated Funding Amount: $3,760,000 (Approximately $3.76 million will be awarded annually, contingent upon the availability of funds. Additional funds may be available from participating federal statistical agencies for competitive research proposals of interest to those agencies.)

EDU Core Research: Building Capacity in STEM Education Research (ECR: BCSER)

Overview:

ECR’s Building Capacity in STEM Education Research (ECR:BCSER) supports projects that build investigators’ capacity to carry out high-quality STEM education research that will enhance the nation’s STEM education enterprise. In addition, ECR:BCSER seeks to broaden the pool of researchers who can advance knowledge regarding STEM learning and learning environments, broadening participation in STEM fields, and STEM workforce development. Researchers from across institution types, are encouraged to submit proposals.

Specifically, ECR: BCSER supports activities that enable researchers to expand their areas of expertise and acquire the requisite knowledge and skills to conduct rigorous research in STEM education. Career development may be accomplished through investigator-initiated professional development and research projects or through institutes that enable researchers to integrate methodological strategies with theoretical and practical issues in STEM education.

Broadening Participation in STEM
NSF has a mandate to broaden participation in science and engineering, as articulated and reaffirmed in law since 1950. Congress has charged NSF to “develop intellectual capital, both people and ideas, with particular emphasis on groups and regions that traditionally have not participated fully in science, mathematics, and engineering."

Program Description
ECR: BCSER supports three types of projects designed to build investigators’ capacity to carry out high-quality STEM education research. The Individual Investigator Development in STEM Education Research track (ECR: BCSER: IID) invites proposals to support individual investigators – both experienced and new to STEM education research – who have identified specific capabilities they need to develop more fully to conduct high-quality STEM education research in a critical area, along with a detailed professional development plan that will enable the investigator to complete a research project. The Institutes for Methods and Practices in STEM Education Research track (ECR: BCSER: IMP) invites proposals for institutes that would provide training and support in the use of cutting-edge methodological techniques and/or research practices to advance participants’ knowledge, skills and competencies in STEM education research. Proposals that seek support to conduct well-focused conferences (ECR: BCSER: CONF) relevant to the competition goals also are invited.

See Relevant Capacity-Building Foci

Proposal Types

1. Individual Investigator Development in STEM Education Research (ECR: BCSER: IID)

   A. Investigators New to STEM Education Research

   B. Investigators Experienced in STEM Education Research

2. Institutes for Methods and Practices in STEM Education Research
3. Conference Proposals

Solicitation limitations:

Who May Serve as PI: Co-PIs are not allowed on Individual Investigator Development proposals.
Limit on Number of Proposals per Organization: There are no restrictions or limits.
Limit on Number of Proposals per PI or co-PI: There are no restrictions or limits.

Other information:

See Important Information And Revision Notes

Award Information
NSF expects to make 29 standard or continuing grant awards. The ECR: BCSER competition anticipates having approximately $12,000,000 for new awards in FY 2022, subject to availability of funds, as follows:

• Individual Investigator Development in STEM Education Research: Up to 19 awards. The maximum award amount is $350,000 for three years.
• Institutes for Methods and Practices in STEM Education Research: Up to 5 awards. The maximum award amount for is $1,000,000 for three years.
• Conference: Up to 5 awards. The typical award amount for a conference is $25,000 to $100,000.

Caplan Foundation for Early Childhood (LOIs)

Overview:

The Caplan Foundation for Early Childhood is an incubator of promising research and development projects that appear likely to improve the welfare of young children, from infancy through 7 years, in the United States.

Welfare is broadly defined to support, acculturation, societal integration and childcare. Grants are only made if a successful project outcome will likely be of significant interest to other professionals, within the grantee’s field of endeavor, and would have a direct benefit and potential national application.

The Foundation’s goal is to provide seed money to implement those imaginative proposals that exhibit the greatest chance of improving the lives of young children, on a national scale. Because of the Foundation’s limited funding capability, it seeks to maximize a grant's potential impact. 

The Foundation provides funding in the following areas:

• Early Childhood Welfare: Providing a safe and nurturing environment is essential as is imparting the skills of social living in a culturally diverse world. Therefore, the Foundation supports projects that seek to perfect child rearing practices and to identify models that can provide creative, caring environments in which all young children thrive.
• Early Childhood Education and Play: We seek to improve the quality of both early childhood teaching and learning, through the development of innovative curricula and research based pedagogical standards, as well as the design of imaginative play materials and learning environments.
• Parenting Education: To help parents create nurturing environments for their children, we support programs that teach parents about developmental psychology, cultural child rearing differences, pedagogy, issues of health, prenatal care and diet, as well as programs which provide both cognitive and emotional support to parents.

There are many proposals that we do not consider because they do not meet the criteria stated in our website. We strive to fund ideas that are adventurous, thoughtful and challenge the status quo. They should have a fresh concept (not rehash an older idea) and a defined method of implementation that promotes new approaches and understanding of early childhood and pushes the boundaries of academic, social and cultural studies and practices.

Other information:

Application Process: The Foundation employs a two-step grant application process that includes the submission of both a Letter of Inquiry (LOI) and a Full Proposal–the latter only by those applicants requested to do so. This ensures that consideration of Full Proposals is limited to those applications that strictly comply with the Foundation’s programmatic guidelines.

Award: Recent prior awards have ranged between $40,000 and $100,000.

Your Letter of Inquiry must follow the number format listed [on sponsor website]. Failure to follow the specified format will disqualify your LOI from review by the Board of Directors. Please note LOI and the name of your organization in the subject line of your email. 

Pop Culture Collaborative Grants

Overview:

The Pop Culture Collaborative supports the growth of a pop culture narrative change field capable of inspiring most Americans—including our leaders and icons—to navigate their lives as pluralists, actively engaged in the hard, delicate, and ultimately, joyful work of belonging—and even thriving—together in justice. Our grantmaking approach reflects our belief that pop culture stories and experiences have a critical role to play in helping people discover, experiment with, and embody pluralist identities, behaviors and norms.

Grants are awarded to United States–based nonprofit organizations, for-profit companies, and individuals (with fiscal sponsorship) working to drive transformative experiences for mass audiences (i.e., more than 1 million people) through pop culture stories, media, and social networks. These include initiatives focused on the development and distribution of content, design of audience engagement strategies, and the creation of immersive narrative environments through cultural, narrative, and behavioral change approaches.

WHO WE FUND

Pop Culture Collaborative grantee partners are strategizing, creating, and collaborating to increase the American public’s yearning for a pluralist society rooted in justice.

These grantees are most often working in one or a combination of these sectors: social justice movement building, entertainment and/or the arts, advertising and brands, journalism, academia, digital content (online and/or video), science and/or technology, immersive and/or experiential media, and/or pop culture communities (e.g., fandoms). That said, we welcome relevant ideas and approaches from any sector.

In partnership with the Pop Culture Collaborative, our grantees:

• Commission and/or develop creative work that excavates and illuminates who we are as a nation and who we yearn to become.
• Build critical pieces of new and evolving narrative infrastructure, and establish and/or strengthen field-based networks.
• Produce groundbreaking culture change research, including audience research and industry research.
• Design and/or implement long-term mass audience narrative and culture change strategies that sit at the intersection of pop culture and social change, particularly those that emerge from collaboratively designed narrative systems.
• Develop and/or advance innovative mass audience activation initiatives and campaigns that seek to transform toxic narrative environments into ones powered by pluralist mental models, behavioral norms, and cultural values.

FUNDING PRIORITIES

• PROGRAM AREA 1: Artists Advancing Culture Change -- The Pop Culture Collaborative provides grants to artists and organizations or companies that support artist cohorts, from various disciplines, locations, and industries to bring their artistic vision to mass audiences, while also contributing to field-wide efforts to build public yearning for a pluralist America. 

  We seek to create a large, networked community of artists who believe that their creative work and leadership have the power to inspire millions of Americans to actively co-create a pluralist society. Areas of interest include:

  • Supporting artists and cultural organizations to conceptualize, develop, and produce creative works that can help build public yearning for pluralist culture in America.
  • Supporting artists to gather for shared learning, networking, community-knitting, and power-building, especially spaces that bring artists into direct and meaningful connection with frontline activists and culture change strategists.
  • Helping artists and organizations develop the methodology, networks, infrastructure, pipelines, and leadership skills needed to redistribute access and power in their respective industries to historically excluded communities.
• PROGRAM AREA 2: Building the Pop Culture for Social Change Field -- The Pop Culture Collaborative supports artists, activists, strategists, researchers, and other practitioners in the entertainment, social justice, and philanthropic fields to build a robust pop culture change field capable of achieving widespread narrative and cultural change at scale. Together, they can form narrative networks that have the knowledge, connections, skills, and infrastructure that can align and create transformative narrative environments in our society. Areas of interest include:
  • Creating resources and/or infrastructure that support the design, testing, and/or activation of long-term pop culture strategies.
  • Developing, testing, and strengthening partnerships among artists, the entertainment industry, and social justice movements via convenings, cohorts, campaigns, and/or programs.
  • Designing, testing, and/or advancing narrative infrastructure (convenings, emergent technologies, community knitting spaces, and programs) that create access and long-term career sustainability for the next generation of pop culture–focused strategists, campaigners, and artists.
• PROGRAM AREA 3: Culture Change Research -- The Pop Culture Collaborative supports grantees to unearth new data, develop analysis, and share insights with and among entertainment, social justice, and philanthropic sectors in order to inform content development, advance cultural strategies, and activate collaborations in the pop culture for social change field. Areas of interest include:
  • Audience Research. Research that helps the field understand who the people in key audiences are, what motivates their beliefs, (e.g., media, culture, family, economics), and how their beliefs compel and shape their behaviors.
  • Industry Research. Research that delves into the ecosystem of a specific field of cultural production (e.g., television industry, music industry, or sports broadcasting industry) to inform and/or activate short- and long-term culture change strategies.
  • Impact and Evaluation Research. Research that examines and analyzes past and current pop culture change experiments, campaigns, and/or partnerships; utilizes formal evaluation and longitudinal impact methodologies to understand impact; and/or leverages trend tracking and analysis to make sense of current narrative environments and cultural norms, or anticipate future patterns in pop culture content creation, consumption, and engagement.
• PROGRAM AREA 4: Movement-Led Pop Culture Narrative Strategies -- The Pop Culture Collaborative supports social justice organizations and initiatives to design, coordinate, and activate long-term narrative change strategies at the pop culture (mass audience) level. Areas of interest include:
  • Design and implementation of multilayered culture change strategies, including content/story strategy design and audience experience design.
  • Reimagining and testing new roles and relationships between the social justice and entertainment fields to advance the development of narratives, story creation, and audience activation opportunities.

The Pop Culture Collaborative has three grantmaking areas:

• Infrastructure Grants can support new and/or established initiatives, organizations, or companies that are working to advance long-term narrative change goals and/or to build the pop culture for social change field or support emerging and timely initiatives and experiments at the intersection of pop culture and social justice. Please read our Infrastructure Grants Guidelines.

• The Becoming America Fund brings together a network of entertainment, philanthropic, cultural strategy, and social justice leaders who spend two years together creating and distributing content that immerses millions of people in a vision of the pluralist society we are becoming.

• Rapid Response Grants support projects that respond to and/or quickly anticipate peak and timely cultural moments. Rapid response grants can be requested and are approved year-round. Rapid Response grants are available up to $100,000. Please read our Rapid Response Grants Guidelines.

Other information:

Submit an Idea for Consideration: The Pop Culture Collaborative accepts proposals by invitation only. We have created a simple process for potential grantees to self-evaluate whether they are a match with the Collaborative’s goals and guidelines, and if so, to submit an idea for our consideration. It is important to note that an idea submission is not a proposal. The Collaborative will respond only to idea submissions that the staff team has reviewed and deem a potential match.

• STEP 1: Please read our grants overview page as well as the Pop Culture Collaborative’s Infrastructure and/or Rapid Response grant guidelines.
• STEP 2: Read our Grantmaking Frequently Asked Questions.
• STEP 3: Take our brief self-assessment quiz to see if your project idea and/or organization is a good match for the Collaborative’s goals and guidelines.
• STEP 4: Submit your idea through our submission portal if you believe the idea is a match for the Collaborative’s goals and guidelines. Please note that this is not a proposal but a brief opportunity for the Collaborative to learn more about your work.  

Good Neighbor Citizenship Company Grants

Overview:

For over 100 years, State Farm® has helped people manage the risks of everyday life, recover from the unexpected and realize their dreams. One of the ways we do this is through our philanthropic efforts.

State Farm is committed to helping build safer, stronger and better-educated communities in three areas that strongly align with our brand and our business: Safety, Community Development and Education.

Safety grants
We strive to keep our customers and communities safe. That's why our funding is directed toward:

• Auto safety — improving driver, passenger, vehicle or roadway safety
• Home safety — shielding homes from fires, crime or natural disasters
• Disaster preparedness and mitigation
• Disaster recovery

Community development
We support nonprofits that invest in and develop stronger neighborhoods. That's why our funding is directed toward:

• Affordable housing — home construction, repair, and sustainable housing
• Commercial/small business development
• Financial literacy
• Food insecurity 

Education
Education builds for the jobs of today and tomorrow. Our education funding is directed toward initiatives that support higher education, K-12 academic performance, and K-12 STEM, primarily near the company’s major employment hubs.

Other information:

State Farm grant application process
State Farm charitable funding is offered through an invitation only process each year. If you did not receive an invitation, support requests for programs that meet grant focus areas can be submitted here. This questionnaire is designed to ensure that programming fits the State Farm community grant funding guidelines. You will only be contacted if additional information related to your request is needed or State Farm is interested in pursuing a grant relationship. State Farm receives a large number of requests each year and regrettably we are unable to support or respond to every request. 

Research Grants on Improving the Use of Research Evidence (IURE)

Overview:

This program supports research on strategies focused on improving the use, usefulness, and impact of evidence in ways that benefit young people ages 5-25 in the United States.

We welcome impact studies that test strategies for improving research use as well as whether improving research use leads to improved youth outcomes. We also welcome descriptive studies that reveal the strategies, mechanisms, or conditions for improving research use. Finally, we welcome measurement studies that explore how to construct and implement valid and reliable measures of research use.

We are particularly interested in research on ways to improve the use of research evidence by state and local policymakers, mid-level managers, and intermediaries. These decision-makers play important roles in deciding which programs, practices, and tools to adopt; deliberating ways to improve existing services; shaping the conditions for implementation; and making resource allocation decisions.

We invite studies from a range of disciplines, fields, and methods, and we encourage investigations into various youth-serving systems, including justice, housing, child welfare, mental health, and education. Previous studies have drawn on conceptual and empirical work from political science, communication science, knowledge mobilization, implementation science, and organizational psychology, among other areas.

Finally, we welcome critical perspectives that inform studies’ research questions, methods, and interpretation of findings.

We welcome studies that pursue one of two aims:

1. Building or testing ways to improve the use of existing research evidence in policy or practice.
   • Studies of strategies, mechanisms, or conditions that foster more routine and constructive uses of existing research evidence by decision-makers.
   • Studies to examine the relationships and organizational structures that lead to the prioritization of decision-makers’ needs in developing research agendas.
   • Studies that examine ways to optimize organized collaborations among researchers, decision-makers, intermediaries, and other stakeholders to benefit youth.
     • For example, prior work suggests that decision-makers often lack the institutional resources and some of the requisite skills to seek out and use research, and certain organizational norms and routines can help overcome those barriers. Studies might examine efforts to alter the decision-making environment by comparing the effectiveness of different ways (e.g., technical assistance, research-practice partnerships, cross-agency teams, etc.) to connect existing research with decision-makers.
       
        

This may include:

1. Testing whether and how strategies that improve the use of research evidence in turn improve decision-making and youth outcomes.
   • Studies that examine the impact of research use on youth outcomes and the conditions under which using research evidence improves outcomes.
     • The notion that using research will improve youth outcomes is a long-standing assumption, but there is little evidence to validate it. We suspect that the impact of research on outcomes may depend on a number of conditions, including the quality of the research and the quality of research use. One hypothesis is that the quality of the research and the quality of research use will work synergistically to yield strong outcomes for youth.
   • Studies to test other conditions under which using research evidence improves youth outcomes.
     • For example, recent federal policies have instituted mandates and incentives to increase the adoption of programs with evidence of effectiveness from randomized controlled trials, with the expectation that the use of these programs will lead to better outcomes. Do these policies actually increase the use of those programs and improve youth outcomes? In this example, a proposal would need to use theory and related empirical evidence to motivate the potential of the evidence mandate to improve research use and the connection between improved use of research and improved youth outcomes. More generally, whether or not the study includes measures of youth outcomes, the connection between improved use of research among decision-makers and improved youth outcomes needs to be well-described.

This may include:

These research interests call for a range of methods, including experimental or observational research designs, comparative case studies, or systematic reviews.

Where appropriate, we value projects that:

• Harness the learning potential of mixed methods and interdisciplinary work.
• Involve practitioners or policymakers in meaningful ways to shape the research questions, interpret preliminary and final results, and communicate their implications for policy and practice.
• Combine senior and junior staff in ways that facilitate mentoring of junior staff.
• Are led by members of racial or ethnic groups underrepresented in academic fields.
• Generate data useful to other researchers and make such data available for public use.
• Demonstrate significant creativity and potential to advance the field, for example by introducing new research paradigms or extending existing methods, measures and analytic tools to allow for comparison across studies.

Solicitation limitations:

New for 2026: Please note that you may only submit one application per cycle as the Principal Investigator. For example, you may submit only one major grant or one Officers’ research award letter of inquiry.

Other information:

For major research grants applications, based on review of the letter of inquiry, the Foundation either invites a full proposal for further consideration, or declines the application. We do not accept unsolicited full proposals. Officers’ research grants are awarded on the merit of the letter of inquiry alone.

Eligible Studies: Only studies that 1) align with the stated research interests of this program and 2) relate to the outcomes of young people between the ages of 5 and 25 in the United States are eligible for consideration.

We do not support non-research activities such as program implementation and operational costs, or make contributions to building funds, fundraising drives, endowment funds, general operating budgets, or scholarships. Applications for ineligible projects are screened out without further review.

Award Information 
Major Research Grants

• $100,000 to $1,000,000 over 2-4 years, including up to 15% indirect costs.
  • Studies involving secondary data analysis are at the lower end of the range (about $100,000–$300,000).
  • Studies that involve new data collection can have larger budgets (typically $300,000-$600,000).
  • Generally, only proposals to launch experiments in which settings (e.g., schools, child welfare agencies, justice settings) are randomly assigned to conditions are eligible for funding above $600,000.

Officers’ Research Grants

• $25,000–$50,000 over 1-2 years, including up to 15% indirect costs.
• Studies may be stand-alone projects or may build off larger projects. The budget should be appropriate for the activities proposed.

2026 Research Grants on Reducing Inequality

Overview:

Research grants on reducing inequality fund research studies that examine programs, policies, or practices to reduce inequality in the academic, social, behavioral, or economic outcomes of young people ages 5–25 in the United States, along dimensions of race, ethnicity, economic standing, sexual or gender minority status (e.g., LGBTQ+ youth), language minority status, or immigrant origins.

We fund:

• Descriptive studies that describe, explore, or explain how programs, practices, or policies reduce inequality.
• Intervention studies that provide causal evidence on the effectiveness of programs or policies for reducing inequality.

Our focus on reducing inequality grew out of our view that research can do more than help us understand the problem of inequality—it can generate effective responses. We believe that it is time to build stronger bodies of knowledge on how to reduce inequality in the United States and to move beyond the mounting research evidence about the scope, causes, and consequences of inequality. Thus, we fund research that focuses on responses to inequality.
 
Research Interests 
Our research interests center on studies that examine ways to reduce inequality in youth outcomes. We welcome descriptive studies that clarify mechanisms for reducing inequality or elucidate how or why a specific program, policy, or practice operates to reduce inequality. We also welcome intervention studies that examine attempts to reduce inequality.

We invite studies from a range of disciplines, fields, and methods, and we encourage investigations into various youth-serving systems, including justice, housing, child welfare, mental health, and education.

Recognizing that findings about programs and practices that reduce inequality will have limited societal impact until the structures that create inequality in the first place have been transformed, the Foundation is particularly interested in research to uproot systemic racism and the structural foundations of inequality that limit the life chances of young people.

Applications for research grants on reducing inequality must:

1. Identify a specific inequality in youth outcomes.
2. Make a convincing case for the dimension(s) of inequality the study will address.
3. Articulate how findings from your research will help build, test, or increase understanding of a program, policy, or practice to reduce the specific inequality that you have identified.

Solicitation limitations:

New for 2026: Please note that you may only submit one application per cycle as the Principal Investigator. For example, you may submit only one major grant or one Officers’ research award letter of inquiry.

Other information:

Eligible Studies

• Only studies that 1) align with the stated research interests of this program and 2) relate to the outcomes of young people between the ages of 5 and 25 in the United States are eligible for consideration.
• We do not support non-research activities such as program implementation and operational costs, or make contributions to building funds, fundraising drives, endowment funds, general operating budgets, or scholarships. Letters of inquiry for ineligible projects are screened out without further review.

Fit with Research Interests

• The proposed study aims to examine a program, policy, or practice to reduce inequality in the academic, social, behavioral, or economic outcomes of young people ages 5–25 in the United States.
• The study focuses on reducing inequality along the dimension(s) of race, ethnicity, economic standing, sexual or gender minority status, language minority status, or immigrant origins.
• Studies that focus primarily on documenting the causes and consequences of inequality are not a fit with our interests.

LOI: For major research grants applications, based on internal review of the letter of inquiry, the Foundation either invites a full proposal for further consideration, or declines the application. We do not accept unsolicited full proposals. Officers’ research grants are awarded on the merit of the letter of inquiry alone.

Award Information
Major Research Grants

• $100,000 to $600,000 over 2-3 years, including up to 15% indirect costs.
• Projects involving secondary data analysis are typically 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 are usually on the higher end. We encourage applicants pursuing cluster randomized designs to apply for additional sources of funding to ensure support for a sufficient sample.

Officers’ Research Grants

• $25,000–$50,000 over 1-2 years, including up to 15% indirect costs. 
• Studies may be stand-alone projects or may build off larger projects. The budget should be appropriate for the activities proposed.

2026 Educating Character Initiative: Collaboration and Community Across U.S. Higher Education

Overview:

The Educating Character Initiative aims to equip a wide range of public and private institutions of higher education––including, but not limited to, major research universities, liberal arts colleges, community colleges, military academies, Historically Black Colleges and Universities, religiously affiliated colleges, and colleges that serve under-resourced students––with the resources, funding, and support to integrate character education into their distinctive institutional contexts, curricula, and cultures. Additionally, our initiative provides support for practitioners and researchers across a variety of roles and sectors within higher education to collaborate and build communities of character. The broader aspiration is to work with individuals and institutions to foster a robust community that recognizes the value of educating character within higher education.

In addition to organizing workshops, conferences, and convenings and developing resources for faculty and staff, the Educating Character Initiative awards grants to institutions. In 2026, funding for institutions will include Institutional Impact Grants of between $100,000 and $1,000,000 and Capacity-Building Grants of up to $50,000. Successful grantees will be teams of faculty, staff, and administrators at U.S. colleges and universities with outstanding proposals for developing the moral, civic, and/or intellectual character of faculty, staff, and students.

1. Institutional Impact Grants: We will award Institutional Impact Grants of between $100,000 and $1,000,000 to institutions who wish to undertake a substantial and sustained effort to educate character in undergraduate populations at their institution or through multi-institutional collaborations. Organizations should align the size of the request with the impact of the proposed project and with their expertise and capacity to steward the funds efficiently and effectively. Since funds are limited, please design projects that will have the maximum impact using the fewest resources.

2. Capacity-Building Grants: Among the persistent challenges for faculty, staff, and administrators seeking to cultivate character at their institutions is a lack of resources, including difficulty integrating character across their curriculum or culture without more institutional and financial support. To address this challenge, ECI will award Capacity-Building Grants of up to $50,000 to institutions who wish to strengthen their ability to educate and embed character in their distinctive contexts. These grants may be especially useful for institutions that are just beginning to explore how to educate character or envisioning discrete projects that do not require substantial funding. Some teams may wish to use funding from this grant to develop a larger grant application to a funding initiative in a future year.

Solicitation limitations:

 ASU may apply for (1) an Institutional Impact Grant or (1) a Capacity-Building Grant, but not both.

• Colleges and universities should coordinate projects internally and plan to apply for no more than one Institutional Impact Grant.
• In most cases, institutions may apply for an Institutional Impact or Capacity-Building Grant, but not both.
• Institutions that currently hold an Institutional Impact Grant from the ECI should consult with ECI before applying for any additional funding opportunities.

Other information:

Awards: Institutional Impact Grants: $100,000- $1,000,000; Capacity-Building Grants: up to $50,000

The Educating Character Initiative team will host two hour-long online sessions in order to provide a general overview of all available grants on October 28 and November 13, 2025, 12:00-1:00 pm ET. We will host one one-hour online session in order to provide an overview of Capacity-Building Grants on January 8, 2026, 12:00-1:00 pm ET.  Register for an online session here. All inquiries should be directed toward [email protected].   

  Please note there are different deadlines for Institutional Impact Grants and Capacity Building Grants.

Call for LOIs (Racial, Economic, and Environmental Justice)

Overview:

Over the last three decades, NCF has awarded nearly half a billion dollars in funding to support movements, organizations, and individuals pursuing justice for people and the planet. We embrace a “totality of assets” approach to impact, meaning we leverage the full power of our financial and non-financial resources to support our partners’ solutions. We want to learn from, work with, and support organizations that share our commitment to advancing racial, economic, and environmental justice (REEJ).

We support organizations based in the United States, its Territories, and Israel-Palestine. We are particularly interested in work focused on the U.S. South (see below). See more about our Israel-Palestine strategy here.

Racial Justice -- Our vision for racial justice is the removal of structural barriers and hierarchies based on race. It seeks to reimagine political, economic, and social systems in ways that allow all people to thrive, regardless of their racial identity.

Economic Justice -- Economic justice means that everyone has opportunities to participate and thrive in the economy, including those who are marginalized by our current economic systems. The principles of economic justice create a stronger economy because prosperity and equity go hand in hand.

Environmental Justice -- Environmental justice is the right of all people and communities to a clean, healthy, and safe environment. It promotes equal environmental protection under the law and in fact. It empowers all communities to make informed decisions and fully participate civically and economically in the creation of environmental solutions.

Place Based Initiative | Israel-Palestine. -- In June 2024, Nathan Cummings Foundation’s Board of Trustees approved an updated strategy for our place-based work in Israel-Palestine. To align this work with our north star of advancing racial, economic, and environmental justice (REEJ), we decided to expand our geographic area to include the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and Gaza, and to use the following pillars [listed here] to guide our efforts.

Solicitation limitations:

 If you’re planning to apply, please notify Ashley O’Brion (ASUF) in advance.

Other information:

We believe that social change takes time and requires long-term investments. We also see immense value in supporting new, innovative, and exploratory work. To reflect this, we have a range of grant types:  

• Venture Grants (up to $100k for one year): These grants are short-term and designed to expedite support to social entrepreneurs with breakthrough, emerging, and innovative solutions. They also serve to mutually explore new relationships and partnerships.  
• Advancement Grants (Up to $250k annually for up to two years): These grants are designed to provide two-year support to project-based work and/or help scale organizations and promising solutions.  
• Enterprise Grants ($250k+ annually for more than two years): These grants are invitation-only and are designed to provide multi-year, unrestricted funding to partners that have deep alignment across our REEJ focus areas and offer the most opportunity to use all our financial and non-financial resources to support their solutions. 

Deadlines/Timeline: Nathan Cummings Foundation (NCF) is now welcoming proposals for partnerships via our Letters of Inquiry (LOI) portals year-round. Grant and Program Related Investment proposals can be submitted using the same portal. LOIs will be reviewed, and decisions will be made, on a rolling basis. NCF staff anticipates notifying applicants to learn more about their submissions within 12 weeks of submission.