Search Through Grants for Science Research in the U.S.

Crankstart Foundation Grant

Crankstart is a San Francisco-based family foundation devoted to bolstering the foundations of a just society - wider access to better education, jobs with prospects for advancement, housing security, social welfare and the protection of civil rights. Crankstart also supports the arts, basic science and efforts to mitigate climate change. About 60% of grants go to groups in the San Francisco Bay Area.

While the Bay Area is our home, on occasion we have made commitments elsewhere – particularly in Chicago and the United Kingdom. The bulk of our grants fall between $100k - $1m. Once we have developed confidence in an organization, we lean toward making multi-year commitments for general support.

Crankstart envisions a vibrant, thriving Bay Area, where our region’s prosperity is strengthened and shared more equitably by all who live here.

Programs

• Economic Mobility - Everyone should have choices and opportunities that lead to economic stability and security. Crankstart focuses on root causes of economic disenfranchisement, particularly in low-income communities hurt by generational poverty.
  • We support work that:
    • Provides the tools and training needed for careers and economic security.
    • Strengthens safety net programs that provide food and health services.
    • Increases access to public benefits programs serving low-income people.
    • Mitigates the insidious effects of fines and fees that erode wealth.
• Education: Our public education system should provide every child and adult, regardless of circumstances, an opportunity to shape their lives.
  • We support work that:
    • Expands post-secondary access to academic and vocational studies, to help students develop the tools and resilience needed to pursue upward mobility.
    • Develops more opportunities for early childhood education and out-of-school learning, particularly in historically marginalized communities.
    • Strengthens the teacher pipeline, to recruit and retain excellent educators in public schools.
• Democracy: We envision a robust democracy in which elections are held securely and with integrity, every person has the information they need to fully participate in civic life, and the underlying structure of our electoral system is fair.
  • We support work that:
    • Protects voting rights through mobilization and engagement.
    • Supports immigrants, ensuring they have the opportunities they need to thrive.
    • Works to change harmful and unfair criminal justice policies.
    • Develops robust interventions to mitigate recidivism and provide economic opportunity.
• Housing Security: Housing security means all people have a place to call home. They have choices that promote economic well-being, health and safety.
  • Crankstart supports work in San Francisco and Oakland that:
    • Reduces homelessness through preventive measures and targeted services.
    • Provides affordable housing choices that allow people to live near work and become involved in their communities. We emphasize housing opportunities for those who are most affected by displacement and high housing costs.
    • Uses policy, law, public resources and good governance to promote economically integrated communities.
• Environment: Communities disproportionately affected by climate change should be partners and the primary beneficiaries of mitigation efforts.
  • We support work that:
    • Accelerates the transition to clean energy.
    • Restores and protects ecosystems in ways that benefit local communities.
• Medical Science & Innovation: Basic science is a foundation for knowledge and discovery based on facts, hypotheses and replicable results. This painstaking endeavor enhances our understanding of the world around us, which may translate into breakthroughs that benefit humans and life on earth.
  • We support work that:
    • Gives researchers funding and time to test novel hypotheses.

Environment

Through the Environment Program, the foundation seeks to ensure a thriving, resilient environment for wildlife and people, and foster an inclusive, effective conservation movement.

Doris Duke was a lifelong environmentalist with a keen interest in conservation. In her will, which guides our focus areas, she expressed her interest in "the preservation of wildlife, both flora and fauna" and in supporting "ecological endeavors."

Why It's Important

In the wildest places and the most urban, our health and quality of life depends on the natural world—from the water we drink, the air we breathe and the food we eat, to the places where we may find inspiration, joy, healing or kinship. Increasingly, nature depends on us as well, to be responsible stewards of the ecosystems where we and millions of other species dwell. In the face of accelerating extinctions and global climate change, now is the critical decade for taking action.

What We Support

The Doris Duke Foundation seeks to demonstrate how effective conservation can protect and restore nature, help address climate change and promote a more equitable society. We support initiatives that increase the pace and scale of land conservation and stewardship across the United States to protect biodiversity, bolster the resilience of natural areas and advance climate change mitigation. We also focus on conservation efforts that advance equity, in particular for communities that identify as Black, Indigenous and people of color. To achieve these goals, the foundation concentrates on three complementary and intersecting areas of focus.

Nature: Land Conservation in an Era of Climate Change

Conserving, restoring and managing ecosystems is fundamental to protecting wildlife and sustaining biodiversity in all its forms. As climate change increasingly alters the natural world, the approaches by which we conserve and steward land must adapt to ensure enduring benefits to wildlife, the climate and communities.

Our support focuses on three critical approaches to increasing the pace, scale and effectiveness of land conservation and stewardship across the United States, with the goal of conserving at least 30% of U.S. lands and waters by 2030 for biodiversity, landscape connectivity, climate resilience and thriving wild and human communities:

• Conservation of resilient lands and waters through efforts that identify and accelerate conservation of areas expected to be most intrinsically resilient to climate change.
• Climate-adapted conservation and restoration practices that draw on the best available science and traditional ecological knowledge to intentionally help prepare ecosystems for changing conditions rather than resist them.
• Landscape-scale conservation through collaborative approaches that focus on maintaining functioning, resilient, connected ecosystems.

Climate: Natural Climate Solutions

Natural climate solutions, strategies that leverage the capacity of ecosystems to absorb and store carbon, have the potential to provide 20% of the nation’s climate mitigation progress while also providing benefits to wildlife and communities. Through the Environment Program, the foundation works to accelerate the use of natural climate solutions as an essential means to mitigate climate change and support rural economic development. To that end, we focus on scaling climate mitigation through protection of intact ecosystems and priority habitats, ecosystem restoration and approaches to improved land management.

To dramatically scale natural climate solutions, we particularly focus on supporting the following activities:

• Land restoration approaches like reforestation, through efforts that drive innovation, investment and implementation.
• Policy and program frameworks that enable federal and state governments to pursue natural climate solutions.
• Market-based approaches with high ecological and methodological integrity and accessibility to a diverse array of conservation stakeholders.
• Science, research and synthesis that underpin the design of effective natural climate solutions policy, programs, and implementation.
• Innovative finance and new models to scale public and private investment in natural climate solutions.
• Strategic communications approaches that deepen key audiences’ understanding of natural climate solutions.

Equity: Inclusive Conservation

Land conservation, restoration and stewardship of nature can have a valuable and tangible role in advancing equity in our society. This is especially true when land conservation is inclusive and respectful of local communities and traditional knowledge, and when it advances equitable access to and benefits from nature. For this reason, the foundation works to support environmental organizations who are advancing conservation efforts from a variety of cultural perspectives, including those led by and serving communities who identify as Black, Indigenous and people of color (BIPOC). We also aim to ensure that the conservation, restoration and stewardship of nature yield meaningful and equitable benefits to all people, particularly for BIPOC communities and those from households whose annual incomes fall below a government-designated threshold through the following approaches:

• Equitable distribution of urban trees and nature access for nature, climate and social well-being benefits.
• Expanding land access to enable conservation action by resolving barriers to land protection and stewardship posed by land tenure and usage rights issues.
• Diversifying the conservation workforce by investing with purpose in the next generation of young people, and supporting inclusive and equitable institutions. The longest running of the foundation’s efforts in this vein is The Doris Duke Conservation Scholars Program, which launched in 2013 to support the next generation of environmental conservation professionals from a diverse set of backgrounds and perspectives.

The Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation promotes the advancement and perpetuation of humanistic inquiry and artistic creativity by encouraging excellence in scholarship and in the performing arts, and by supporting research libraries and other institutions which transmit our cultural heritage.

The programs of the Foundation reflect the interests and patronage of its founders, Gladys Krieble Delmas and Jean Paul Delmas.

Humanities Program

The Foundation intends to further the humanities along a broad front, supporting projects which address the concerns of the historical studia humanitatis: a humanistic education rooted in the great traditions of the past; the formation of human beings according to cultural, moral, and aesthetic ideals derived from that past; and the ongoing debate over how these ideals may best be conceived and realized.

Programs in the following areas are eligible: history; archaeology; literature; languages, both classical and modern; philosophy; ethics; comparative religion; the history, criticism, and theory of the arts; and those aspects of the social sciences which share the content and methods of humanistic disciplines. The Foundation welcomes projects that cross the boundaries between humanistic disciplines and explore the connection between the humanities and other areas of scholarship. Programs of institutions in Venice relating to the humanities are eligible in this category. The geographical concentration is primarily but not exclusively directed toward European and American history and letters, broadly defined.

The Humanities Program is primarily directed to institutions of higher education and humanistic enterprises such as learned societies, museums, and major editorial projects. The program may also consider, on a selective basis, projects that increase the exposure of those outside these institutions to the humanistic experience or that strengthen preparation for the humanistic disciplines. The prime criterion remains that of Gladys and Jean Delmas: a commitment to excellence, whether proven or promised.

Performing Arts Program

Each year, the Foundation supports a limited number of not-for-profit performing arts institutions based in New York City that provide performances in music, dance and theatre. Only established performing or producing entities with a history of appearing at preeminent venues and such venues themselves are eligible. Applicants must be publicly supported organizations described in section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code; the Foundation does not make grants to fiscal agents. Special initiatives of other institutions, start-up projects, emerging organizations, development campaigns, and building projects are ineligible. Proposals for pre-professional programs and opera are only accepted from past grantees. The Foundation receives many more requests for support than it could ever fund, and for that reason most first-time grant applications are not successful.

Subject to the above requirements, the program supports:

• Dance presenters who make ballet and modern dance available to the public and otherwise provide support to the dance field, as well as a limited number of ballet and modern dance companies.
• Theatre companies and presenters that have demonstrated a commitment to include the classics in their regular offerings.
• Music groups and concert presenters committed to making early music or contemporary repertory available to New York City audiences.

Research Libraries Program

The Research Libraries Program concentrates primarily in those areas of its founders’ interests and aims to be fully complementary to the Foundation’s other program areas (i.e., humanities scholarship, performing arts, and Venetian history and culture).

The overall objective of the Research Libraries Program is to improve the ability of research libraries to serve the needs of scholarship in the humanities and the performing arts, and to help make their resources more widely accessible to scholars and the general public. Wherever possible, grants to libraries seek to promote cooperative cataloging projects, with an emphasis on access to archival, manuscript, and other unique sources; some elements of interpretation and exhibition; scholarly library publications; bibliographical and publishing projects of interest to research libraries; and collection-level preservation/conservation work and research.

Small-scale digitizing is eligible for support when the process is part of a clearly defined and timely scholarly project that incorporates recognized standards for metadata production, for preservation, and for distribution. The Foundation does not support massive digitizing projects of a general nature.

Open Philanthropy Project Focus Areas

So far, the focus areas we have selected fall into one of two broad categories: Global Health and Wellbeing (GHW) and Global Catastrophic Risks (GCR). We summarize the key differences between these portfolios as follows: 

• While GCR grants tend to be evaluated based on something like “How much this grant reduces the chance of a catastrophic event that endangers billions of people”, GHW grants tend to be evaluated based on something like “How much this grant increases health (denominated in e.g. life-years) and/or wellbeing, worldwide.”
• The GHW team places greater weight on evidence, precedent, and track record in its giving; the GCR team tends to focus on problems and interventions where evidence and track records are often comparatively thin. (That said, the GHW team does support a significant amount of low-probability but high-upside work like policy advocacy and scientific research.)
• The GCR team’s work could be hugely important, but it’s very hard to answer questions like “How will we know whether this work is on track to have an impact?” We can track intermediate impacts and learn to some degree, but some key premises likely won’t become very clear for decades or more. (Our primary goal is for catastrophic events not to happen, and to the extent we succeed, it can be hard to learn from the absence of events.) By contrast, we generally expect the work of the GHW team to be more likely to result in recognizable impact on a given ~10-year time frame, and to be more amenable to learning and changing course as we go.

Global Health and Wellbeing focus areas

Effective Altruism (Global Health and Wellbeing) - Many people want to help others, and seek out ways to do so effectively.

We empower people to use their careers and donations to help others as much as possible.

We believe that individuals can have a huge positive impact on the world by being thoughtful about how they can best use their resources to help others.

We support organizations and projects that enable people to use their careers and donations to improve the lives of humans and animals around the world.

Our work is guided primarily by two observations:

• First, there is large variation in the impact that different charitable organizations can achieve. By focusing on important, neglected problems and relying on evidence-based solutions, top charities, such as those recommended by GiveWell, can achieve much more than others with the same donation. GiveWell estimates that the funding it has directed since inception will save at least 200,000 lives.
• Second, the career a person chooses is one of the most important decisions they can make — and a career focused on important and neglected problems is likely to achieve much more impact. Today, however, there is a lack of quality resources and guidance that can help people find and pursue these kinds of careers.

Farm Animal Welfare - Tens of billions of animals are kept in factory farms globally, usually in harsh and inhumane conditions. 

We support efforts to improve the lives of animals confined on factory farms, and to end factory farming.

We support reforms to phase out the worst factory farm practices on land and sea. Through our cage-free work, we seek to end the use of cruel battery cages, used to confine about seven billion hens globally. Our broiler welfare initiative supports better welfare for the roughly 15 billion broiler chickens alive globally. And our fish welfare work supports the establishment of minimum standards for the world’s over 70 billion farmed fish.

We also fund scientific research to find new ways to help farm animals. This includes the development of innovative technologies (like in ovo sexing to end the killing of male chicks in the egg industry) and research into chronic welfare problems (like keel bone fractures in layer hens) in the hope of finding ways to reduce pain and suffering. We want to expand the global farm animal welfare movement, especially in emerging economies where the majority of the world’s farmed animals live. We’re especially focused on expanding advocacy in East and Southeast Asia.

Global Aid Policy - International aid improves millions of people’s health and wellbeing. We think it can do even more.

We’re working to create a future where wealthy countries give more aid to other countries in ways that help more people survive and thrive. 

International aid has helped save millions of lives, reduce poverty, and increase prosperity for millions of people throughout the past century. But there is still more to do. At the end of 2022, more than 8% of the world’s population — as many as 670 million people — were thought to be living on less than $2.15 per person per day. If trends continue, we will not achieve the global goals of ending global poverty and significantly improving health and well-being by 2030.

We launched our Global Aid Policy program in early 2022 to support efforts to increase government aid and guide it toward more cost-effective approaches that can improve people’s health and well-being.We focus our new, relatively small resources in ways we believe complement other donors and can go especially far:

• Increasing aid budgets, especially for multilateral health organizations operating in low-income countries.
• Improving existing aid programs by helping leaders draw on evaluations and technical analysis.
• Using our flexible resources creatively to accelerate progress.

Global Health & Development - We believe that every life has value — and that philanthropic dollars can go particularly far by helping those who are living in poverty by global standards.

We support work to save and improve lives in low- and middle-income countries.

Most of our giving in this category is to organizations recommended by GiveWell, with whom we have a close relationship. We are excited to support cost-effective interventions to save and improve lives in low- and middle-income countries. An additional subset of our giving supports scientific research we believe can help address diseases that disproportionately afflict the global poor.

Global Health R&D - Improving diagnosis, prevention and treatment of the most neglected diseases could save and improve the lives of millions of people..

We seek to support the development of new vaccines, drugs, and other tools to improve global health.

Historically, health technologies like vaccines and drugs have saved millions of lives around the world. However, diseases primarily affecting the world’s poorest people, such as tuberculosis, malaria, diarrheal diseases, rheumatic heart disease, and sickle cell disease receive much less research and development spending relative to their health burdens than diseases affecting the wealthy. Further investments could prevent millions of deaths and illnesses caused by neglected diseases.

Open Philanthropy has supported scientific research for human health since 2016. Over time we have learned that there are many excellent opportunities in global health R&D that we could support with increased resources and specialized staff. As a result, we launched this new program in 2023, substantially increasing our total funding in the area.

The Global Health R&D team works in parallel and in collaboration with our Scientific Research team, but with a greater focus on supporting tools and treatments through the development life cycle, including those requiring early proof of concept studies, human efficacy trials or implementation research. We are interested in funding research and development for new vaccines, diagnostics, drugs, monoclonal antibodies, and vector control tools for diseases with a large global health burden, as well as efforts to make these products more affordable and accessible.

Global Public Health Policy - Some of the world’s worst health issues can be addressed through public policy.

We support work on policies that cost-effectively address major public health issues.

Policies like air quality regulations, tobacco and alcohol taxes, and the elimination of leaded gasoline have saved and improved millions of lives.

These policies typically improve public health by addressing risk factors to alleviate the burden of non-communicable disease, which comprises a growing share of the health burden but receives relatively few resources. Policy interventions affect entire populations and are often cost-effective for governments to implement. We think philanthropy can have an outsized impact by helping governments design, implement, and enforce more effective public health policies. Because the benefits are diffuse, and responsibility for addressing them can cut across government departments and disease categories, many problems that are addressable through public health policy are currently neglected.

Innovation Policy - Scientific discovery and technological innovation are key contributors to economic growth and material progress.

We hope to safely accelerate scientific and technological progress to make life better for billions of people.

Historically, economic growth and scientific innovation have created enormous social benefits, lifting billions of people out of poverty and improving health outcomes around the world. At the same time, innovation carries risk; some technologies have the potential to do far more harm than good.

Our goal is to accelerate growth and innovation, without unduly increasing risks from emerging technology. Even small changes to the annual growth rate can compound to great effect over time, which gives us the opportunity to make high-leverage grants.

We’re interested in pursuing a wide range of strategies. Our current interests include:

• Helping build a scientific ecosystem that experiments with new ways of doing things, learns from those experiments, and adopts evidence-based practices.
• Supporting early-stage development of general technologies with the potential to accelerate scientific progress across many disciplines.
• Investigating programs and policy reform to help more migrants, especially highly-skilled migrants, move to countries operating on the scientific and technological frontier.
• Providing financial support for individuals to write “living literature reviews” that rigorously synthesize research and communicate it to a non-specialist audience. (See our call for pre-proposals at right!)
• Funding programs and research to help identify and minimize potential catastrophic risks from new scientific and technological capabilities.

Land Use Reform - Excessively restrictive local land use regulations push people away from centers of economic activity, inhibit innovation, and raise costs for renters.

We seek to reduce the harms caused by excessively restrictive local land use regulations.

These price increases ( see diagram)  are pronounced in large, high-wage metro areas (e.g., New York, Boston, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, and Washington D.C.). More permissive policy which enabled a greater supply of housing in those areas could unlock value by:

• Encouraging economic growth through greater innovation and agglomeration.
• Increasing the earnings of individuals moving to high-wage jobs in those areas.
• Enabling more people to live in denser areas, which have lower carbon emissions.
• Redistributing wealth and income to lower-income households and supporting access to housing for lower earners.

Scientific Research - We believe scientific progress has been, and will continue to be, one of the biggest contributors to improvements in human wellbeing, and we hope to play a part in this

We aim to support research that could affect a large number of people.

We primarily support biomedical research but our interests are not limited to any particular field, disease, condition, or population. Instead, we seek to identify scientific research that has the potential for high impact and is under-supported by other funders. We are excited to support high-risk and unconventional science when the potential impact is sufficiently large.

We are broadly interested in research that may lead to improved understanding of topics related to human health. We are most interested in research that could affect a large number of people. We typically start by looking for metrics related to the number of lives affected (often starting with the World Health Organization’s Global Health Estimates and IHME’s Global Burden of Disease Study). We begin with landscaping exercises to identify important research topics that could have the greatest impact in a given area.

Once we understand the research gaps in these fields, we assess which gaps are underfunded and seem most amenable to progress if funded. Often as part of this process, we will attend scientific conferences and interview scientists as advisors, peer reviewers, or potential grantees.

Some aspects of the following topics are currently of particular interest:

• broad-spectrum antiviral drugs,
• vaccine development,
• basic immunology,
• some aspects of cardiovascular disease,
• Alzheimer’s disease, predicting mouse-to-human translation, control of inflammation,
• epigenetics,
• novel scientific tools and methods,
• malaria, and
• research on how biomedical research may be improved. 

About the Henry T. Nicholas, III Foundation

The Foundation has been at the forefront nationally in supporting victims' rights, reflecting Dr. Nicholas' longstanding commitment to victims of violent crime. He has been a leader of the victims' rights movement since 1983, when his sister, Marsy, was murdered. He helped his parents found Justice for Homicide Victims, a leading non-profit organization that supports families of murder victims. Dr. Nicholas led the effort in 2008 to pass Marsy's Law, a state constitutional amendment that created a comprehensive Victims' Bill of Rights for California. Following this campaign, he formed Marsy's Law for All, an organization dedicated to enforcing the constitutional amendment, empowering victims' rights organizations, and creating a national movement to pass a victims' Bill of Rights as the 28th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Through Marsy's Law for All, the Foundation provides legal, technical, media and other resources to support victims' rights organizations and initiatives.

Read more about us.

Grant Information

The Henry T. Nicholas, III Foundation was created in 2006 with the vision of enabling and assisting communities and individuals to reach their highest potential. The Foundation is dedicated to improving lives through investment in Education, Youth Sports, Technology, Science, Medical Research, Victim's Rights, and National Defense.

Since its inception, the Foundation has provided more than $2.7 million to numerous public charities and non-profit organizations engaged in helping people build better lives for themselves and their neighbors.

The theme that unites the Foundation's various efforts into a single mission is investing in people and their futures:

• Grants are provided to help young people build strong educational and athletic foundations that will lead to healthy, productive and successful lives as adults.
• Advancement in science, technology and medicine is supported because these fields are the key to future health and prosperity for people and communities.
• Aid and support is provided to help violent crime victims and their families, and to assist the heroes who defend our nation and their families, because without safety and security there is no future.

Education, Science and Health Grant

Education

Education grants focus on scholarships, targeted programs within educational communities, and general operating support for institutions demonstrating measurable impact.

• Scholarships: Providing opportunity for those who could not otherwise access the educational environment to not only benefit the student, but also enhance institutions by ensuring a robust and diverse community.
  • Castilleja School
  • Dartmouth College
  • Menlo School
  • Phillips Brooks School
  • Stanford University
  • Stanford Law School
• Program: Partnership with organizations with programs that enhance research and learning.
  • Stanford Center for Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law
  • Stanford Law School Constitutional Law Center
• General Operating Support: Targeting specific small institutions to enhance their delivery of services through long-term support for operations.
  • Ragazzi Boys Chorus
  • College Track
  • Playworks Northern California
  • Eastside Prep
  • Child and Family Institute
  • Wood River Valley YMCA
  • Learning Matters

Science and Health

The purpose of our science and health grant-making is to enhance life experience through improved health outcomes.

• Research: Grants to research lead to medical breakthroughs for a healthier and more productive society.
  • UCSF General Clinical Research Institute: Salt Sensitivity; Chloride-sensitive Hypertension and Stroke, Comparative effects of potassium chloride and bicarbonate on thiazide-induced reduction in urinary calcium excretion
  • UCSF Gladstone Institute-Cardiovascular Disease
• Program: Supporting targeted programs that enhance an institution’s delivery of services.
  • Autism Center, Lucile Packard Foundation for Children’s Health
  • Mosbacher Fellow, Lucile Packard Foundation for Children’s Health
  • The impact of research in genetics
  • Hospital for Special Surgery, Patricia Mosbacher Flower Fund
  • Hospital for Special Surgery, Patricia Mosbacher Honorary Lecture in Orthopedic Trauma
• General Operating Support: Targeting specific institutions to enhance their delivery of services through long-term support for operations. 
  • Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
  • Danny Thompson Memorial Leukemia Foundation
  • California Pacific Medical Center

Social Impact Fund

What We Fund

The Social Impact Funds support community-led transformation by strategically deploying capital to social entrepreneurs who are using their lived experience to tackle three vital social drivers of health.

• Health Care Access & Quality - Overcoming barriers to high-quality, affordable, accessible health care that is age, gender and culturally appropriate.
• Food Security - Increasing access to healthy, affordable food via sustainable farming, mobile markets, food hubs, food as medicine and more.
• Economic Empowerment - Promoting economic health through job creation, skill upleveling, banking access, financial literacy, violence prevention, housing support and more.

We’re looking for organizations that are translating evidence-based science research and clinical know-how into solutions that address health care access and quality, food security, economic empowerment or a combination of these three social drivers of health.

The Social Impact Funds support both for-profit and nonprofit organizations that have less than $10M in revenue and can provide evidence their program is making an impact.

Nationwide Grant

We are looking to fund sustainable and scalable solutions to the underlying social and environmental determinants of health challenges – access to healthcare, food security, and economic empowerment.

Funding

Up to $250,000

STEM Higher Education Program

The Foundation believes that increases in human welfare are largely driven by increases in our understanding and mastery of the forces of nature and society. The health of the scientific enterprise is thus an issue of fundamental concern to us. This includes the quality of scientific training and inquiry, the structure of scientific careers, the diversity of the scientific workforce, the strength of scientific educational institutions, and the openness and accessibility of scientific education and training to all.

Priorities

Diversity, equity, and inclusion are the central tenets of our program. As articulated in Sloan’s Commitment to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion statement, upholding these tenets is a matter of fundamental justice and our path to ensuring that the best science is done.

When educational settings are diverse, they comprise individuals with a variety of life experiences, whether they be racial, ethnic, economic, cultural, religious, geographic, or otherwise.

Equity and equity-mindedness is found in institutions and individuals who understand that while talent is evenly distributed, opportunity is not, and thus seek to transform organizational practices, policies, and cultures in order to provide all individuals with the tools, resources, and supports needed to succeed at the highest levels.

Inclusion ensures that everyone, regardless of their backgrounds or held identities, feel belonging in a given environment, whether that be a classroom, laboratory, academic department, or entire discipline.

Six equally important strategic priorities guide our grantmaking. In particular, we seek to:

• Invest in widening pathways to STEM graduate education. The pathway to STEM graduate education is broken for far too many students given systemic barriers faced by individuals and institutions. Among other investments, we seek to support educational pathways from Minority Serving Institutions to master’s and doctoral STEM programs.
• Empower universities to transform graduate education. Increasing diversity is crucial but not enough. Institutions and their STEM departments must also pursue new and creative ways of ensuring inclusive environments and equitable outcomes for their students. Through the Foundation’s University Centers for Exemplary Mentoring and Sloan Indigenous Graduate Partnership, we seek to empower STEM departmental leadership, faculty, and staff in doing just that.
• Support innovative efforts to increase diversity in the STEM professoriate. Widening the pathway to and through graduate education requires a diverse faculty body, as does the ability of the STEM enterprise to truly innovate. We are interested in investing in efforts by institutions and organizations that seek to transform the culture and climate of STEM departments and disciplines such that more individuals are attracted to the professoriate and supported once there.
• Pursue systemic change. For too long, systemic change efforts have gone underinvested in and understudied, resulting in stagnant progress on diversity, equity, and inclusion in the STEM disciplines. It’s not enough to promote individual advancement without also seeking to improve the capacity of STEM environments to attend to diversity, equity, and inclusion in their policies and practices, and in the standards and norms carried out by their community members. We seek to empower and equip institutions seeking this kind of change and to support research on how such change happens.
• Examine our own practices. Any grantmaking process also necessitates looking inward at one’s own practices. We commit to regularly revisiting and evaluating how we do things in order to ensure diversity, equity, and inclusion at every stage of the grantmaking process – from the proposals we solicit to the reviewers we appoint.
• Coordinate and collaborate with others. We recognize that any one organization has a finite amount of dollars and finite amount of influence. We seek to engage private foundations, federal agencies, and corporate funders in enabling systemic change in STEM higher education and the field at large. This includes internal collaboration at Sloan, working alongside and in support of our colleagues in advancing their own DEI agendas.

About Amgen

Amgen is one of the world’s leading biotechnology companies. Amgen is a values-based company, deeply rooted in science and innovation to transform new ideas and discoveries into medicines for patients with serious illnesses.

Amgen is committed to unlocking the potential of biology for patients suffering from serious illnesses by discovering, developing, manufacturing and delivering innovative human therapeutics. This approach begins by using tools like advanced human genetics to unravel the complexities of disease and understand the fundamentals of human biology.

Our belief—and the core of our strategy—is that innovative, highly differentiated medicines that provide large clinical benefits in addressing serious diseases are medicines that will not only help patients, but also will help reduce the social and economic burden of disease in society today.

Amgen focuses on areas of high unmet medical need and leverages its expertise to strive for solutions that improve health outcomes and dramatically improve people's lives. A biotechnology innovator since 1980, Amgen has grown to be one of the world's leading independent biotechnology companies, has reached millions of patients around the world and is developing a pipeline of medicines with breakaway potential.

U.S. Healthcare Donations

Donations are a contribution, grant, or payment in cash or in kind, made by Amgen to a not-for-profit and/or tax exempt organization without expectation of something in return other than customary donor recognition of incidental value.

As part of Amgen's mission to serve patients, Amgen makes donations to qualified members of the U.S. healthcare community for the following purposes:

• The support of science, technology, medicine, healthcare or education; or
• Education of the public on disease states, medical conditions, science or technology; or
• In furtherance of other genuine philanthropic and charitable purposes that are consistent with Amgen's scientific and disease-state interests.

Types of donations that are supported by Amgen include, but are not limited to: 

• Endowed Professorships
• Fellowships
• Patient Education
• Awards/Scholarships
• Non-Accredited Medical or Scientific Meetings/Conferences

Areas of Interest to Amgen

• Biomedical Data Sciences
• Biosimilars Education
• Biostatistical Sciences
• Bone
• Cardiovascular
• Discovery Research
• Epidemiological/ Observational Research
• Hematology/ Oncology
• Inflammation
• Metabolic Diseases
• New modalities, cutting edge technologies
• Neuroscience
• Nephrology
• Pharmacy
• Process Development
• Translational Research Areas (for example: Toxicology, Biomarkers, Process Science)

Giving and Grants

Our funding priorities are aligned around Digital Inclusion, Climate Protection and Human Prosperity. New applications are by invitation only. Verizon and the Verizon Foundation do not respond to unsolicited inquiries for funding.

Verizon and the Verizon Foundation are inclusive

Neither Verizon or the Verizon Foundation discriminate on the basis of race, color, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, age, religion, national or ethnic origin or physical disability. As a company with a highly diverse workforce serving an equally diverse set of customers, Verizon through its Foundation, supports a wide range of programs through direct and matching grants that benefit diverse communities, including without limitation minorities, veterans, gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgender and others. Verizon and the Verizon Foundation each expect its grant recipients to comply with all applicable laws, including those governing tax-exempt status and non-discrimination laws.

All organizations must:

• Not duplicate or significantly overlap the work of public agencies on the federal, state or local level.
• Keep books available for regular independent outside audit and make the results available to all potential contributors.
• Comply with applicable laws regarding registration and reporting.
• Observe the highest standards of business conduct in its relationships with the public.
• Use the funding for initiatives that will benefit the broader community.

Guidelines

If you are eligible to apply, your grant application to either Verizon or the Verizon Foundation for consideration should abide by the following guidelines:

• At least 85% of the total grant funds should be composed of direct costs (costs that are directly attributable to the project.)
  • Accordingly, indirect (or “overhead”) costs should be no more than 15% of the total grant funds.
  • Grants with indirect costs greater than 15% will require a business justification to be considered for funding.  
• Grants with IT-infrastructure related costs (such as computer hardware, software, data or networks) that total more than 20 percent of the grant’s total direct costs should provide an explanation detailing the use of the IT assets and whether cellular connectivity is involved.

 For education grants, Verizon and Verizon Foundation funding is intended to support projects that promote digital skills development for students and teachers in grades K-12. This includes, for example, summer or afterschool programs in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM), teacher professional development, and research on technology-infused pedagogy. Schools and districts that apply for grants from Verizon and are eligible for the Education Rate (E-Rate) program may not use grant funding to purchase technology hardware (computers, netbooks, laptops, routers), devices (tablets, phones), data or Internet service and access, unless approved by Verizon compliance.

Mission

To give back by improving the larger world around us and the lives of others where our gifts can yield meaningful tangible impact for a better world.

Zegar Family Foundation Grant

Established in 2007, the Zegar Family Foundation donates to worthy charitable organizations within the scope of our Mission, our Key Focus and/or Other Principal Areas of Giving in the priority order as follows.

Key Focus Areas

• Environment and Sustainability – Addressing the climate change crisis to preserve and conserve our natural biodiverse resources and sustain our world environment.
• Justice and Human Rights – Assisting in seeking justice and protection of rights for people to whom rights are denied, including pursuing racial equality, criminal and legal systems reforms, immigration, LGBTQ+ and reproductive rights through litigation, activism and advocacy for change.

Other Principal Areas of Giving

• Science and Medicine – Advancing scientific and medical knowledge through innovative research, especially basic research, often neglected by governmental and other funding.
• Human Services and Economic Opportunity – Helping disadvantage people help themselves through opportunities for economic growth and/or personal development.
• Arts, Culture, and Heritage – Contributing to societal enrichment through the arts, historical education, preservation of our national and global heritage and other cultural programs.
• Education – Supporting educational institutions, primarily in the higher educational area and providing college access and success for the less advantaged students who desire to attend them.
• Nutrition and Health – Empowering people in underserved communities to improve nutrition and health through education programs encouraging healthier food choices, increased access to fresh foods and increasing options for achieving better health through enhanced medical assistance along with other programs bolstering health in these communities.
• International – Supporting economic relief and development, medical assistance, and human rights for people in need and other compelling causes throughout the world.
• Community Improvement and Development – Supporting projects benefiting and improving life for the communities around us, such as for parks, recreation, libraries and other spaces for community enhancements as well as for public safety.

Seeding The Future Global Food System Challenge

Hosted by Welthungerhilfe (WHH) and funded by the Seeding The Future Foundation (STF), the Challenge is intended to recognize and support breakthrough innovations that can spark transformations of our food systems, with a particular focus on addressing critical challenges in the Global South.

The Challenge aims to inspire impactful and transforming innovations that reside at the INNOVATION FOCUS AREA in which three domains intersect:  

• Innovations leading to safe and nutritious food for a healthy diet 
• Innovations leading to sustainable or regenerative practices that enable food systems to stay within planetary boundaries, including food waste and food loss reduction 
• Innovations leading to equitable access to food that is affordable, appealing and trusted

About the Global Food System Challenge

Providing a growing global population with access to affordable, safe, and nutritious food for a healthy diet while maintaining the health of our planet will require a transformation of our food systems. Advances and discoveries in science and technology, creative new approaches, and collaborations across cultures and multiple disciplines, will lead to forward-thinking innovations with the potential for significant food system changes.

The goal of the Seeding The Future Global Food System Challenge is to inspire and support innovative, diverse, and multidisciplinary teams to create game-changing innovations that will help transform our food systems.

Award Levels

The Seeding The Future Global Food System Challenge will provide monetary awards in the form of grants and prizes totaling up to one million US dollars annually. The Challenge will provide three levels of awards to incentivize transformative food system innovations at different stages of their development. Applications can only be submitted at one award level.

• Growth Grants ($100,000 each) will be awarded to organizations that have demonstrated that their innovation is doable and have projected both economic feasibility at scale and high-impact potential to transform the food system. The innovation must benefit at least two, ideally three domains with no negative impact on the others.
• Seeding The Future Grand Prizes
• Seed Grants

Overview and Criteria

SNAPP is a global collaboration between The Nature Conservancy (TNC) and the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) advancing analysis and synthesis of evidence to discover solutions to conservation’s most pressing challenges and to develop a pathway for their implementation. Each year, SNAPP provides up to US $1 million across 4-6 approved working groups.

The SNAPP approach is based in collaborative science and encourages proposal development that is co-designed by scientists, decision-makers, and implementers. Proposed working groups are led by 2-3 Principal Investigators (PIs) from separate organizations and composed of 12-15 members from non-profit, academic, indigenous, community, government, or mission-driven entities. Groups engage a full-time research fellow and convene 2-3 times in person over a 24-month period. Between convenings, members collaborate remotely; work with long-term implementation partners; develop and test tools and products; publish science outcomes; and identify emerging opportunities for tangible, lasting change.

The Health and Environmental Sciences Institute (HESI) seeks your suggestions for priority emerging scientific issues (human or environmental health) that should be addressed through a focused, multi-sector collaborative program. We are seeking topics that focus on the applied human and/or environmental health sciences and that require scientific perspectives and expertise from academe, government, industry, nonprofits, clinicians, and/or others research sectors.

This is not a grant program and no direct financial awards to external parties will be made. 

Learning Engineering Tools Competition

The Learning Engineering Tools Competition is a multi-million dollar funding opportunity for edtech innovation that leverages digital technology, big data, and learning science to meet the urgent needs of learners worldwide.

Objectives

• Catalyze learning outcomes - We support cutting edge solutions for the most pressing challenges facing learners worldwide.
• Advance learning science research - We build capacity for edtech to leverage big data to support a better understanding of learning at scale.
• Develop all innovators - We welcome individuals and teams at all phases of development - from early ideas to established platforms.
• Build the Learning Engineering community - We cultivate a strong network, driving collaboration between edtech, researchers, and educators.

Why Learning Engineering? The Tools Competition meets an urgent need to leverage cutting edge digital technology and data to support learning science research at scale.Underpinning the competition is the growing field of learning engineering, which brings together edtech, researchers, and educators to leverage big data to:

• expand what we know about learning - what works, for whom, and under what conditions.
• catalyze a cycle of continuous improvement to develop more effective interventions and drive evidence-based product innovation.

Edtech has an important role to play in contributing to research at scale. Tools generate rich data that can allow researchers to run studies and better understand the learning process.All competitors will need to detail how their tool contributes to learning engineering.Read the Tools Competition FAQs.

About the APA Foundation

Medical science, public education and dedication drive our vision of national awareness, personalized treatment and compassion. As the charitable foundation of the American Psychiatric Association, we:

• Raise awareness and overcome barriers.
• Invest in the future leaders of psychiatry.
• Support research and training to improve mental health care.
• Lead partnerships to address public challenges in mental health.

With the backing of the APA, the world's leading psychiatric organization, our efforts are strengthened by research and designed to achieve results ensuring that we're making real impact, every step of the way.

Awards for Advancing Minority Mental Health

The Awards for Advancing Minority Mental Health were established in 2003 by the American Psychiatric Association Foundation (APAF) to recognize community organizations that have undertaken innovative and supportive efforts to:

• Raise awareness in underserved minority communities about mental illness including the need for early recognition, access to and the availability of treatment, and the cultural barriers to treatment.
• Increase access to quality mental health services for underserved minorities.
• Improve the quality of care for underserved minorities, particularly those in the public health system or with severe mental illness.
• Have been operational for at least two (2) years.

Background

McGraw Foundation, headquartered in Northbrook, Illinois, makes annual grants to not-for-profit organizations.  The Foundation’s areas of interest involve the fields of conservation, educational programs at all levels, and human services. Occasionally, grants are made in other areas such as health, medical research and cultural.

Grant requests are suggested to be within a range of $2,000 to $10,000. Grant recipients and amounts will be determined by several criteria. Naturally, availability of funds is a key factor.

The Foundation will occasionally make large grants ($25,000 or more) to support unusually promising efforts in any of its areas of interest. Innovative research, special education, and/or other activities will be considered if the Foundation’s support would assist an effort or a project in making a significant impact.

Areas of Focus

Education: Higher

The Foundation has been a pioneer in support of environmental education at the highest level by establishing three chaired professorships. 

Education: Elementary & Special

McGraw Foundation supports a wide array of organizations that focus on assisting the education and advancement of children as well as adults. McGraw Foundation also makes grants to elementary schools and organizations involved in all areas of special needs education. Funding in this arena has encompassed many organizations that provide services such as after-school tutoring, special education, and adult literacy.

In addition to F.A.I.T.H., McGraw Foundation also makes grants to elementary schools and organizations involved in all areas of special needs education. Funding in this arena has encompassed many organizations that provide services such as after-school tutoring, special education, and adult literacy.

Human Services

Since 1949, McGraw Foundation has been concerned with helping people in need. While the emphasis is on organizations serving children, funding also extends to people of all ages.

Children's issues such as these have been supported throughout the years:

• child welfare
• foster care and adoption
• family counseling
• enriching summer camps
• crisis intervention

Funding for quality-of-life issues for people of all ages has included:

• developmental disabilities
• health clinics
• domestic violence
• housing and homelessness
• job training and continued support
• seniors needs

Health & Medical 

Since its inception, McGraw Foundation has made grants in the health and medical fields.  Health and medical funding has included:

• specific medical research
• rehabilitation
• support programs for patients and their families
• medical attention for people without health insurance
• palliative care and hospice organizations

Civic & Cultural

Complimenting it's main focus on education and the environment, McGraw Foundation has supported some of Chicago's distinctive cultural and arts organizations.

Areas of interest include zoological societies' animal conservation, public communication, musical organizations, and civic organizations' promotion of science and the general welfare of society.

Program Overview

The W. M. Keck Research Program seeks to benefit humanity by supporting Medical Research and Science & Engineering projects that are distinctive and novel in their approach, question the prevailing paradigm, or have the potential to break open new territory in their field.

Past grants have been awarded to major universities, independent research institutions, and medical schools to support pioneering biological and physical science research and engineering, including the development of promising new technologies, instrumentation or methodologies. Please see our grant abstracts for examples of funded projects. 

Our Mission

The Sorenson Legacy Foundation is a non-profit corporation established by the late biotechnology pioneer and entrepreneur James LeVoy Sorenson and his wife, education philanthropist Beverley Taylor Sorenson, to promote charitable, artistic, religious, educational, literary, and scientific endeavors. The foundation is based in Salt Lake City, Utah, and is qualified under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code.

The Sorenson Legacy Foundation was created to improve the lives of others and the world in which we live. The foundation supports a wide range of endeavors, from community development and health care to scientific and artistic pursuits.

What We Fund

Education

As a teacher, Beverley believed the arts are essential to broadening our children’s minds starting in elementary. She helped promote legislation so Utahn children would be exposed to more of the arts. She saw the arts as equal in importance in the development and success of children as sciences and math. Education continues to be a focus area for the foundation because she was a champion for the cause.

The foundation continues to support seven major universities in the development of elementary arts studies. The goal of education funding will always be to improve the breadth and depth of the art education and experiences of young students. Whether that be by supporting elementary programs or teachers who develop the talents of students.

Health Care

Having never fulfilled his dream of becoming a doctor, James devoted much of his fortune to provide better medical assistance for saving lives and alleviating pain and suffering.

Grants are awarded to facilities that work toward improving these aims as well as medical research, medical technologies, and other innovations that provide safe health care and quick recoveries.

Innovation

James was always interested in how to improve products or processes and never settled for the status quo. His 60+ patents are proof of his desire to innovate areas to improve quality of life and equality of experience.

Grants are awarded to organizations that share the same passion for technological advances and care for humanity. Unlike the other areas funded, innovation grants are open to any category or sector where innovative ideas and technologies can change the lives of people for the better.

Community

Both James and Beverley Sorenson were committed to improving the lives of those in their communities. From a young age, James served others including through a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

The foundation recognizes the ways to help our communities are vast. Grants are given to programs that focus on protecting and preserving the environment, assisting the disenfranchised of society, and promoting understanding and tolerance in our world.

Projects

Ideas include, but are not limited to, projects and programs which: 

Education

• promote the development of the arts, including art education in schools
• assist promising young artists
• support performing arts organizations
• promote education and job training

Innovation

• enhance the quality of life of all humankind
• promote the development of science, culture, and recreation
• protect and enhance the environment
• promote the development of parks and green spaces

Health Care

• promote medical research
• develop innovative medical technologies for saving lives
• alleviate pain and suffering

Community

• encourage and support the long-term preservation of families and children;
• assist the disenfranchised of society, such as abused spouses and children
• promote community development and security and adequate and affordable housing
• promote law and order generally
• provide youth with alternatives to gangs, crime, and socially nonproductive behavior
• promote world peace and unity through greater understanding and tolerance
• advance the mission of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Captain Eppley was a physical chemist, born in New Jersey in 1883. Studying at Princeton, he received his M.A. in 1912 and his Ph.D. in 1919. In 1947, Captain Eppley established The Eppley Foundation for Research. On his death in 1960, his will created the Eppley Charitable Trust, the income from which also goes to support the work of the Eppley Foundation. Today, through Captain Eppley’s generosity and foresight, the Foundation is able to continue to contribute support and encouragement to new generations of scientists in their search for insight into the workings of the world, as was the Captain’s wish.

Funding Priorities

• The Eppley Foundation for Research was incorporated in 1947 for the purpose of “increasing knowledge in pure or applied science…in chemistry, physics and biology through study, research and publication.”
• The Foundation does not support work in the social sciences, education or computer science, and only rarely funds research into diseases that have considerable financial support available, such as AIDS, diabetes, cancer and heart disease. Particular areas of interest include innovative medical investigations, climate change, whole ecosystem studies, as well as research on single species if they are of particular significance in their environments, in the U.S. and abroad.
• The Foundation does not fund work that can qualify for funding from conventional sources such as the National Science Foundation or the National Institutes of Health, or similar agencies at the state level.
• It is important to the Foundation that the work proposed be novel in its insights and unlikely to be underway elsewhere. The Foundation is prepared to take risks.

Purpose Statement

Knowing that we have been abundantly blessed by God's Grace, the Greehey family is honored to share our blessings and help do His work in the San Antonio community through the The Greehey Family Foundation. In doing so, we will provide funding to improve health and human welfare conditions, to brighten the lives of sick and disadvantaged children, to educate, and to help transform the lives of the homeless.

Funding Overview

The Greehey Family Foundation's emphasis is on supporting health and human welfare issues, children's causes, education, and the homeless. And because the needs of the community are wide, the Foundation is set up and positioned to meet an almost unlimited range of needs within these areas. In its brief history, the Foundation has already granted nearly one billion dollars to hundreds of causes, ranging from a new stove so that a struggling grandmother raising her 10 grandchildren could provide warm meals for them, to a $25 million grant to the University of Texas Health Science Center to fund children's cancer research and treatment.

Funding is provided to non-profit organizations throughout San Antonio and Bexar County at the discretion of the Foundation's Board of Directors, which is composed of Bill Greehey and family members. The Board meets biannually to review grant requests, but funds can be granted any time during the year as special needs arise.

The Foundation will operate in perpetuity and will continue to be funded by the Greehey family to improve the lives of individuals and families for generations to come.

About Seeding Solutions

Launched in 2017, Seeding Solutions is our annual competitive grant program that supports bold research in any of our six Challenge Areas or builds bridges between our Challenge Areas. FFAR awards up to 10 grants ranging between $300,000 to $1 million. Grantees must provide matching funds from non-federal partners.

We support innovative projects that address challenges in food supply and agroecosystem management through novel partnerships. Such collaborations provide opportunities to engage stakeholders as integral members of the research team and increase the likelihood of a project’s application beyond its scope.

Please refer to FAQ for additional guidelines.

What We Do

The Foundation for Food & Agriculture Research (FFAR), pronounced /fɑr/, builds public-private partnerships to support bold science. Our research, co-created with the agriculture community, fills critical research gaps. We also invest in the future scientific workforce.

We support pioneering science to provide everyone access to affordable, nutritious food grown on thriving farms.

The William and Charlotte Parks Foundation for Animal Welfare

The Foundation was established to improve the status of animals worldwide through studies of the science and philosophy of animal welfare/rights and to reduce, through practical efforts and initiatives, the suffering and harm inflicted on animals by human beings.

The Grants Committee makes grants to both animal protection organizations and to individual scholars pursuing work consistent with the goals of the Trust founders.

Types of Grants

The Parks Foundation makes awards, usually not more than $10,000 per annum, to support projects, research, and other activities calculated to advance the welfare of animals.

The Parks Foundation currently ONLY considers applications for Project Grants

The application should describe the need for the project (e.g., how will the status of animals be improved), outline its basic protocols, and discuss its feasibility, the likely chance of its success, and the methods by which it will be evaluated. The applicant organization should provide a projected annual budget and time for completion, and list other entities that have been approached for financial support, and the stage these applications have reached. The qualifications of the project director should also be provided. Proposals will be judged by a number of criteria, including originality, potential impact on animal welfare, the number of animals affected, the project’s time frame, and feasibility, the track record of the applicant, the need for the program or data, the public accountability of the organization, and the likelihood of achieving other sources of funding.

Successful applications include:

• Evidence that the organization or applicant is making a concerted effort to assess the effectiveness of programs;
• Evidence that the organization has been striving in substantial ways to reduce animal pain, stress, and suffering, and to improve animal welfare.

In recent years successful applicants have received project grants to support:

• adoption programs;
• enrichment initiatives;
• animal rescue training;
• research and data websites;
• equipment purchase or small-scale repairs or renovations tied to specific program initiatives;
• canine behavior training;
• public awareness campaigns;
• humane education;
• campaign plans;
• law enforcement training;
• small-scale facility additions;
• cage purchases;
• conference and festivals;
• curriculum development;
• staff training and education;
• anti-cruelty hotlines;
• animal welfare certification initiatives;
• psychology and social psychology research concerning cruelty and kindness;
• habitat enhancement; and
• disaster response and recovery activities. 

Other areas of potential interest to the Parks Foundation grants committee including

• the development of alternatives in education;
• the development of best practices in companion animal care and services;
• application of the “Three R’s” approach (refinement, replacement, and reduction of animal use to reduce animal pain or suffering) in laboratory, agricultural, and other sectors;
• methods and strategies of population control;
• predator protection;
• the prevention of animal cruelty through social or other interventions;
• promoting knowledge and awareness of the science, philosophy, and ethics of animal welfare and animal rights;
• research and survey work concerning public attitudes and behaviors; and animal welfare publishing.

Greening STEM Grants

In Spring 2025, the National Environmental Education Foundation (NEEF) will collaborate with PPG Foundation (PPG) to select a cohort of Greening STEM projects from the PPG communities of Cleveland, OH, Greensboro, NC, and Huntsville, AL. The awards will support holistic STEM programs that infuse environmental science and resources into school curricula focused on student-directed investigations of relevant topics of research, local environmental issues, or problems affecting local public lands. The funding will allow formal and nonformal educators to design and deliver STEM programming that engages youth in place-based learning and environmental monitoring.Through these PPG Foundation Greening STEM grants, PPG and NEEF seek to advance mutual STEM education goals by providing program participants with access to authentic STEM learning experiences that use the environment as a context for engagement.Programming funded by these grants will utilize STEM-focused content, instructional strategies, training approaches, and collaboration and dissemination technologies to assist school educators and staff in implementing and enhancing learning in and outside of the classroom. Following project completion, all resources and related content developed under these grants will be made available via NEEF’s Greening STEM Hub. 

Grant Program Priorities

NEEF and PPG aim to increase grantee teams’ understanding of how to use STEM learning activities to address environmental challenges, engender stewardship, and forge lasting collaborations by:

• bringing Greening STEM programming that includes citizen science or environmental monitoring activities to middle to high school students;
• building the capacity of BLM and formal and informal educators to offer high quality STEM programming that aligns with state education standards;
• helping schools build a culture that values using the environment as a context for improving student learning and achievement;
• facilitating a collaborative development and planning process for engaging youth in environmental monitoring activities—identifying a topic relevant to the community and collecting environmental data (e.g., air, soil, water quality) while practicing Science and Engineering Practices (SEPs), acquiring Disciplinary Core Ideas (DCIs), and applying Crosscutting Concepts (CCC)
• stimulating educational partnerships between schools, and community-based organizations that facilitate meaningful place-based learning experiences for students;
• engendering environmental stewardship through a learner-centered approach that encourages authentic problem-solving, collaboration, and leadership in planning and leading a learning expedition in public lands;
• increasing student interest in STEM content and careers.

Greening STEM Project Design Principles

The Greening STEM Model is an interdisciplinary and collaborative approach to teaching STEM subjects that uses the natural environment and real-world challenges to engage learners and deliver high-quality STEM education. The student’s experiences and interests are at the center of learning as they explore STEM content and develop a 21st century skills set. Throughout the experience, students can be tasked with different levels of responsibility from working as a team on a project to planning and leading a learning expedition. By having autonomy to design and explore a question of interest related to local landscapes, students are offered opportunities for authentic problem-solving while making gains in environmental knowledge and fostering a stewardship ethic.

All PPG Greening STEM projects shall include elements of two or more of the 2025 Greening STEM Project Design Principles. These are: place-based learning, three-dimensional learning, project-based learning, and community-based learning.

Place-based learning elements

Students are encouraged to explore a topic of study, issue, or problem through direct first-hand experience; collaboration between students interested in the same topic of study, issue, or problem is encouraged; facilitators (DE affiliated educator, community partners, nonformal educators) serve as connectors to existing ways to involve learners with the topics of interest.

Three-dimensional learning elements

Exploration of an anchoring phenomenon encourages students to question assumptions and current understanding; STEM practices are used to motivate problem-solving; exploration of the anchoring phenomenon leads to disciplinary core ideas; cross-cutting concepts are used to connect the anchoring phenomenon to real world events.

Project-based learning elements

The learners are intellectually challenged by their project work; the nature of their project engages learners over the course of days, weeks, or even months; real-world authenticity is simulated by the selection of tools, techniques, and technology used to explore the topic of study, issue, or problem; the students have an opportunity to share their work with audiences beyond their classroom.

Community-based learning elements

The topic of inquiry is explored within a local cultural context, encouraging learners to understand the unique makeup of their communities and the factors that shape them. They consider which knowledge systems and traditions are recognized in discussions of the issue and which are overlooked, as well as how this influences current understanding. Students also examine how different solutions impact their communities, ensuring they are practical, respectful of local perspectives, and responsive to the needs of those affected.

Foundation Purpose

The purpose of the Foundation is to operate exclusively for charitable purposes within the meaning of section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 (the “Code”), and to transact such other business as may be permitted corporations exempt from tax under section 501(c)(3) of the Code and incorporated under the Texas Non-profit Corporation Act. Within such purposes, but without other limitation, such charitable purposes shall include to aid, provide, further, assist and make contributions, gifts, grants, or other forms of financial assistance exclusively to charitable corporations, organizations or associations organized and operating within the United States in the categories of civic, cultural and religion; education, literature, and science; hospitals; medical, medical research and mental health; rehabilitation and welfare; youth activities; and community funds.

Grant Categories

The Foundation awards contributions, gifts and grants in the following categories:

• Civic, Cultural and Religion
•  Education, Literature and Science
•  Hospitals
•  Medical, Medical Research and Mental Health
•  Rehabilitation and Welfare
•  Youth Activities

The total amount of money awarded to all charitable organizations for any given year is governed by, but not necessarily limited to, that minimum required by the Internal Revenue Service Code.

Japan – U.S. Global Partnership Grant Program

• Grant Type: Prepaid grant
• Funding opportunity: Institutional funding for U.S.-based institutions/organizations with 501(c)(3) status

Through the “Grant Program: Japan-U.S. Global Partnership”, JF seeks to support Japan-U.S. collaborative projects that will help resolve current global issues of common concern, projects that build partnerships among diverse professions and backgrounds necessary to successfully address those issues, and to support the individuals who organize and participate in such projects.

More specifically, this program targets policy-oriented research conducted jointly by Japanese and American non-profit organizations (universities, think tanks, NPOs, etc.) aimed at resolving the issues of modern society and global issues facing the world, as well as dialogue and exchange projects at various levels, including academic researchers, experts, citizens, and grassroots practitioners. The inclusion of other countries that are important and pertinent to the issue at hand is welcome, provided the project is built on a framework of Japan-U.S. cooperation. The participation of relevant experts from the fields of science and technology is also welcome.

Thematic Areas: (1) Building a resilient society, (2) Developing an inclusive society, and (3) Creating a society enriched by science and technology.

Examples as below:

Climate change, disaster prevention, post-disaster recovery, pandemic, public health, food and energy security, environmental issues, sustainable city, overcoming social and economic disparities, demographic issues such as low birthrate and aging population, societal issues related to children/family and women, rural revitalization, artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, bioethics, cyber security, digital transformation, green technology.

Projects outside of the thematic areas can also be eligible if they meet the goals of the grant program.