Applications Open: December 1, 2022
Intent to Apply: January 12, 2023, 12:00PM (Noon) CENTRAL
The Large Research Grants on Education Program supports education research projects that will contribute to the improvement of education, broadly conceived, with budgets ranging from $125,000 up through $500,000 for projects ranging from one to five years. The foundation accepts applications twice a year.
This program is “field-initiated,” meaning that proposal submissions are not in response to a specific request for a particular research topic, discipline, design, or method. Their goal for this program is to support rigorous, intellectually ambitious and technically sound research that is relevant to the most pressing questions and compelling opportunities in education. They seek to support scholarship that develops new foundational knowledge that may have a lasting impact on educational discourse.
The foundation recognizes that learning occurs across the life course as well as across settings—from the classroom to the workplace, to family and community contexts and even onto the playing field—any of which may, in the right circumstance, provide the basis for rewarding study that makes significant contributions to the field. They value work that fosters creative and open-minded scholarship, engages in deep inquiry, and examines robust questions related to education.
To this end, this program supports proposals from multiple disciplinary and methodological perspectives, both domestically and internationally, from scholars at various stages in their career. They anticipate that proposals will span a wide range of topics and disciplines that innovatively investigate questions central to education, including for example education, anthropology, philosophy, psychology, sociology, law, economics, history, or neuroscience, amongst others.
They are open to projects that might incorporate data from multiple and varied sources, span a sufficient length of time as to achieve a depth of understanding, or work closely with practitioners or community members over the life of the project. In addition, They welcome proposals submitted by multidisciplinary and multigenerational teams who are positioned to both contribute to the project as well as contribute to the teaching and learning of fellow team members.
Finally, they encourage teams to thoughtfully consider and describe plans regarding the trajectories of their project’s findings, implications, and potential effects, especially how the knowledge may be shared and utilized across the field in practice, policy making, or with broader publics.
Eligibility and Restrictions Eligibility
- Proposals to the Research Grants on Education program must be for academic research projects that aim to study Proposals for activities other than research are not eligible (e.g., program evaluations, professional development, curriculum development, scholarships, capital projects). Additionally, proposals for research studies focused on areas other than education, are not eligible.
- Principal Investigators (PIs) and Co-PIs applying for a Large Research Grant on Education must have an earned doctorate in an academic discipline or professional field, or appropriate experience in an education research-related profession. While graduate students may be part of the research team, they may not be named the PI or Co-PI on the
- The PI must be affiliated with a non-profit organization or public/governmental institution that is willing to serve as the administering organization if the grant is awarded. The Spencer Foundation does not award grants directly to individuals. Examples include non-profit or public colleges, universities, school districts, and research facilities, as well as other non-profit organizations with a 501(c)(3) determination from the IRS (or equivalent non-profit status if the organization is outside of the United States).
- Proposals are accepted from the U.S. and internationally, however all proposals must be submitted in English and budgets must be proposed in S. Dollars.
Restrictions
Large Research Grant budget totals should be between $125,000 and $500,000, including up to 15% indirect cost charges. They anticipate funding proposals in the following funding tiers: $125,000 to 250,000; $250,001 to $375,000; and $375,001 to
$500,000. They will distribute their grant awards across these three tiers. They strongly encourage applicants to carefully consider this when constructing their project budgets and not only reach for the highest budget category.
- Projects proposed may not be longer than 5 years in
- PIs and Co-PIs may only hold one active research grant from the Spencer Foundation at a time. (This restriction does not apply to the administering organization; organizations may submit as many proposals as they like as long as they are for different projects and have different research teams.)
- PIs and Co-PIs may not submit more than one research proposal to the Spencer Foundation at a time. This restriction applies to the Small Grants Program, Large Grants Program, Racial Equity Research Grants Program, and Research-Practice Partnership If the PI or any of the Co-PIs currently have a research proposal under consideration in any of these programs, they are required to wait until a final decision has been made on the pending proposal before they can submit a new proposal.
*Note on Funding Tiers: The foundation recognizes that applicants are often encouraged to apply to the highest tiers and amounts of funding. However, in the case of Spencer’s large grant program, they prefer that budgets are well-suited to the project design. In previous cycles, tier one has been the most competitive group of submissions, proposals submitted to lower tiers have had better odds of being funded. They encourage researchers to consider what level of funding makes the most sense for their project and design.
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