Deadline: 6-Jul-22
The William T. Grant Foundation is pleased to launch a funding call for the William T. Grant Scholars Program to support career development for promising early-career researchers.
The program funds five-year research and mentoring plans that significantly expand researchers’ expertise in new disciplines, methods, and content areas.
Applicants should have a track record of conducting high-quality research and an interest in pursuing a significant shift in their trajectories as researchers. They recognize that early-career researchers are rarely given incentives or support to take measured risks in their work, so this award includes a mentoring component, as well as a supportive academic community.
Focus Areas
The Foundation’s mission is to support research to improve the lives of young people ages 5-25 in the United States. They pursue this mission by supporting research within two focus areas. Researchers interested in applying for a William T. Grant Scholars Award must select one focus area:
- Reducing Inequality: In this focus area, they support studies that aim to build, test, or increase understanding of programs, policies, or practices to reduce inequality in the academic, social, behavioral, or economic outcomes of young people, especially on the basis of race, ethnicity, economic standing, language minority status, or immigrant origins.
- Improving the Use of Research Evidence: In this focus area, they support research to identify, build, and test strategies to ensure that research evidence is used in ways that benefit youth. They are particularly interested in research on improving the use of research evidence by state and local decision makers, mid-level managers, and intermediaries.
Funding Information
- Award recipients are designated as William T. Grant Scholars. Each year, four to six Scholars are selected and each receives up to $350,000, distributed over five years. Awards begin July 1 and are made to the applicant’s institution. The award must not replace the institution’s current support of the applicant’s research.
Eligibility Criteria
- Grants are made to organizations, not individuals. Grants are limited, without exception, to tax-exempt organizations. A copy of the Internal Revenue Service tax-exempt status determination letter is required from each applying organization.
- Applicants must be nominated by their institutions. Major divisions (e.g., College of Arts and Sciences, Medical School) of an institution may nominate only one applicant each year. Applicants of any discipline are eligible.
- Applicants must have received their terminal degree within seven years of submitting their application. They calculate this by adding seven years to the date the doctoral degree was conferred. In medicine, the seven-year maximum is dated from the completion of the first residency.
- Applicants must be employed in career-ladder positions. For many applicants, this means holding a tenure-track position in a university. Applicants in other types of organizations should be in positions in which there is a pathway to advancement in a research career at the organization and the organization is fiscally responsible for the applicant’s position. The award may not be used as a post-doctoral fellowship.
- Applicants outside the United States are eligible. As with U.S. applicants, they must pursue research that has compelling policy or practice implications for youth in the United States.
For more information, visit http://wtgrantfoundation.org/grants/william-t-grant-scholars-program









































