Deadline: 16-Apr-25
The Spencer Foundation is inviting proposals for its Small Research Grants on Education Program to support rigorous, intellectually ambitious and technically sound research that is relevant to the most pressing questions and compelling opportunities in education.
The foundation seeks to support scholarship that develops new foundational knowledge that may have a lasting impact on educational discourse.
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.
Funding Information
- Grant amount: up to $50,000 for projects ranging from one to five years.
Eligibility Criteria
- Proposals to the Small Research Grants on Education program must be for research projects that aim to study education.
- Principal Investigators (PIs) and Co-PIs applying for a Small Research Grant on Education must have an earned doctorate in an academic discipline or professional field. While graduate students may be part of the research team, they may not be named the PI or Co-PI on the proposal.
- 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. 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). The Spencer Foundation does not award grants directly to individuals.
- Proposals are accepted from the U.S. and internationally, however, all proposals must be submitted in English and budgets must be proposed in U.S. Dollars.
Ineligibility Criteria
- Proposals for activities other than research are not eligible (e.g., program evaluations, professional development, curriculum development, scholarships, capital projects, software development). Additionally, proposals for research studies focused on areas other than education are not eligible.
Review Criteria
- The review panel for this program is made up of scholars in the field of education research with expertise across many disciplines and methodological areas. Panelist are asked to rate and comment on the following aspects of your proposal:
- Significance of the Project: Reviewers will evaluate the centrality of education in the research, the importance of the topic to its field, and the quality of the research question(s) and/or direction of inquiry.
- Connection to Research and Theory: Reviewers will evaluate the adequacy of the description of how other researchers have treated the same topic and how well the proposal responds to prior work and theory.
- Research Design: Reviewers will evaluate the overall quality, sophistication, and appropriateness of the research design as well as its alignment with the research question(s) and/or conceptual framing.
- Budget and Timeline: Reviewers will evaluate the adequacy of the budget and timeline.
- Project Team: Reviewers will comment on the potential of the investigator(s) to complete the study as described and share the results or other findings.
For more information, visit Spencer Foundation.