Deadline: 15-Dec-2025
The Spencer Foundation has launched its Small Research Grants on Education Program to support education research projects that will contribute to the improvement of education, broadly conceived for projects ranging from one to five years.
The Small Research Grants on Education program is a field-initiated initiative designed to support rigorous, intellectually ambitious, and technically sound research on critical issues in education. It recognizes that learning happens across the life span and in diverse contexts—from classrooms to workplaces, families, communities, and even playing fields—any of which may provide rich opportunities for meaningful study.
The program values creative, open-minded scholarship and deep inquiry, welcoming proposals from scholars at all career stages and from both domestic and international contexts. It supports work across disciplines such as education, anthropology, philosophy, psychology, sociology, law, economics, history, and neuroscience. Methodological diversity is strongly encouraged, with openness to quantitative, qualitative, mixed-methods, ethnographies, computational modeling, design-based research, participatory approaches, and historical studies. Projects may draw on varied data sources, extend over time for deeper insights, and collaborate with practitioners or community members throughout their duration.
Budgets are limited to $50,000 with no indirect costs, though additional supplemental funds of up to $10,000 may be requested for course release under specific conditions. Projects may not exceed five years in duration.
Eligible proposals must focus on research in education, and activities other than research, such as program evaluations, professional development programs, curriculum or assessment tool creation, scholarships, capital projects, or software development without significant research components, are not eligible.
Principal Investigators and Co-Principal Investigators must hold an earned doctorate in an academic discipline or professional field. Graduate students may be part of the team but cannot be named as PI or Co-PI. The PI must be affiliated with a non-profit or public/governmental institution that can administer the grant. Proposals are accepted both from the U.S. and internationally, but all submissions must be in English with budgets in U.S. dollars. PIs and Co-PIs may hold only one active research grant from the Spencer Foundation at a time and may submit only one proposal across the Foundation’s programs concurrently, with the exception of Vision Grants, which allow simultaneous submissions if the projects are distinct.
The proposal requires detailed information on project personnel, summary, budget, subcontracting (if any), and a narrative of no more than 1,800 words, including a description of the research question, significance, theoretical framework, literature review, methods, participant information, data collection instruments, and analysis procedures. References are included separately and do not count toward the word limit. Optional supplemental course release funding requires a brief budget narrative, a 250-word rationale statement, and a supporting letter from the scholar’s dean or chair confirming course load and release arrangements. The full proposal deadline for the Small Research Grants on Education program is December 15, 2025, by 12:00 pm (noon), Central Time.
For more information, visit The Spencer Foundation.