Spencer Foundation: Vision Grants Program

The Spencer Foundation invests in research to improve education, broadly conceived. They have identified a critical need for innovative, methodologically and disciplinarily diverse, large-scale research projects to transform education systems for equity. Importantly, they believe that ambitious research must begin with the challenges, problems, and opportunities in education systems. To stimulate research that addresses this need, the Spencer Foundation seeks to provide scholars and collaborators with the time, space, resources, and support to plan a large-scale study or program of research: geared toward real-world impact on equity; drawing on research across disciplines and methods; reliant on meaningful and equitable collaboration with practitioners, policymakers, communities, and other partners; and focused on transforming educational systems.

The Vision Grants allow teams to join together and generate ideas for collaborative scholarship that develops a new vision of what equitable educational systems can look like, consider which disciplines have taken up these issues previously (and why they have fallen short or encountered limitations), and foreground important ideas that will allow new and ambitious research to emerge

Funding Information

• Vision Grants are $75,000 total and two cycles of this grant program will be held annually.
• The Vision Grant may not be longer than 12 months in duration.

Eligibility Criteria

• Proposals to the Vision Grant program must be for planning research projects that study education and/or learning, broadly conceived, though they will likely include scholars and partners in other sectors and fields. Principal Investigators (PIs) and CoPIs applying for a Vision Grant must have appropriate experience or an earned doctorate in an academic discipline or terminal degree in a 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. The Spencer Foundation does not award grants directly to individuals.
• Examples include non-profit private 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).
• PIs and Co-PIs may apply for a Vision Grant if they have another active research grant from the Spencer Foundation or if they have another Spencer grant proposal in review.
• Proposals are accepted from the U.S. and internationally. All proposals must be submitted in English and budgets must be proposed in U.S. Dollars.
• Note: All awarded Vision Grantees will have the option to apply for a Transformative Research Grant, with awards to carry out the planned research projects (budgets up to $3.5M). In addition to considering the development of a proposal for the Transformative Research Grant program, Vision Grant Awardees are also eligible to submit a proposal to other Spencer Foundation grant programs.

Ineligible

• PIs and Co-PIs may not be part of more than one Vision Grant proposal (funded and/or in review). Please note that this restriction marks a change in policy from the first two cycles of the Vision Grants program.

For more information, visit Spencer Foundation.