Deadline: 13-Aug-25
The Spencer Foundation has announced the opening of its Vision Grants Program for 2025, inviting researchers and practitioners to come together and design innovative educational research initiatives with the power to transform systems.
This unique funding opportunity is intended not to fund completed studies but to support the collaborative, exploratory process that precedes them. Through planning grants of up to $75,000 for a 6 to 12-month period, teams will have the resources and time needed to investigate complex educational issues, build interdisciplinary partnerships, and co-develop research agendas with the potential to create lasting and equitable impact.
Vision Grants are designed to challenge traditional research frameworks by emphasizing systems thinking and a strong equity orientation. Applicants are encouraged to begin not with a narrow research question, but with a deep understanding of the educational systems they hope to influence.
This includes schools, school districts, community networks, universities, policy bodies, and other institutions that structure educational experience.
The foundation calls on applicants to think boldly—proposing new models, approaches, or theories of change that may address long-standing disparities in learning access, student outcomes, and institutional engagement.
The program particularly encourages collaboration across boundaries—disciplinary, institutional, and cultural. Proposals should include diverse teams made up of scholars, practitioners, and community stakeholders who bring different perspectives and areas of expertise to the table.
These could include classroom educators, school administrators, education policy leaders, technologists, researchers from the humanities or social sciences, and representatives from nonprofit organizations or advocacy networks. The integration of lived experience and academic knowledge is viewed as a strength, reflecting the foundation’s commitment to inclusive and grounded research.
A key feature of the Vision Grants Program is its emphasis on forward planning. The grant is not intended to produce immediate findings or publishable results but to develop the conceptual, methodological, and relational foundations for future work.
Many recipients may go on to apply for Spencer’s Transformative Research Grant—an award of up to $3.5 million—designed to support large-scale, high-impact research. However, Vision Grant applicants do not need to commit to pursuing that next stage; they are simply asked to explore big ideas with the potential to shift paradigms in education.
The Spencer Foundation recognizes that systemic change in education often begins with careful listening, relationship building, and iterative design. Therefore, teams are encouraged to include activities such as convenings, focus groups, design sprints, collaborative writing retreats, or pilot testing of research instruments during the planning phase.
Projects may also explore new governance models for co-led research or address structural barriers to collaboration between universities and local communities.
Applications for the 2025 round open on June 4. Interested applicants must submit an “Intent to Apply” form by August 13, with full proposals due on September 17. Proposals must be submitted in English and budgets must be in U.S. dollars.
The Principal Investigator must hold a doctorate and be affiliated with a nonprofit or public institution, such as a university or research center. While team members may include graduate students or junior researchers, the leadership must demonstrate the capacity to coordinate complex, collaborative inquiry.
As educational systems across the globe confront challenges such as post-pandemic learning loss, digital equity, climate resilience in schools, inclusive curriculum reform, and teacher burnout, the need for innovative, evidence-informed interventions has never been greater.
The Vision Grants Program offers a rare space to dream, prototype, and plan for work that does not merely describe the world but aims to reshape it. By fostering intentional, interdisciplinary collaboration rooted in equity, the program seeks to spark ideas that can lead to transformative change—one system at a time.
For more information, visit Spencer Foundation.
