Caplan Foundation for Early Childhood Grants Program (US)

Deadline: 31-May-25

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.

Focus Areas

• The Foundation provides funding in the following areas:
  • Parenting Education
    • To help parents create nurturing environments for their children, they 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.
  • 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
    • They 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.

Funding Limitations

• ​The Foundation will not fund:
  • programs outside of the United States
  • the operation or expansion of existing programs
  • the purchase or renovation of capital equipment
  • the staging of single events (e.g. concerts, seminars, etc.)
  • the creation or acquisition of works of art or literature
  • the activities of single individuals or for-profit entities
  • political or religious organizations
  • programs with religious content
  • programs to benefit children residing in foreign countries
  • medical research applicable to both adults and children

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.
• Applicants must submit Letters of Inquiry by clicking on the Email your Letter of Inquiry button below. Once a Letter of Inquiry is received by the Foundation, the Directors will determine if the proposed program fits the Foundation’s funding guidelines. Successful applicants will be invited via email to submit Full Proposals.
• Each Letter of Inquiry should include:
  • The organization’s official name, website address and contact information
  • A brief (250 word maximum) summary of the organization’s mission and recent program history
  • The organization’s 501(c)(3) Tax Exempt Status letter from the IRS and its’ Federal Tax ID
  • The total amount of the organization’s annual budget
  • The total amount of the grant request
  • An indication of the amount and type of support being requested from all sources
  • Title of the project and a narrative description (1,000 words or less) of the issue(s) or need(s) to be addressed by the proposal, the work to be performed and the anticipated outcome
  • A description of how the proposal fits the Foundation’s program guidelines
  • A description of how your project and/or research is innovative in nature

For more information, visit Caplan Foundation for Early Childhood.