Faculty Funding Opportunities

The Kersten Institute for Urban Education Innovation Fund is accepting applications for interdisciplinary, applied research projects that address pressing challenges in education, with a particular focus on chronic absenteeism, student and educator well-being, and equitable educational opportunity and attainment.

This year, awards will range from $10,000 to $100,000 to support pilot projects or the scaling of promising efforts. Funded projects are expected to position teams for subsequent external funding and longer-term impact. Letters of interest are due by March 2, 2026.

Annie E. Casey Foundation

Focus Areas: Teaching & Curricular Innovation

Description: Advances research and solutions to overcome the barriers to success, help communities demonstrate what works and influence decision makers to invest in strategies based on solid evidence, including in the education space.

Arnold Ventures**

Focus Areas: Post-Secondary Readiness, Post-Secondary Paths

Description: Giving is focused on evidence-based solutions to some of the biggest challenges in Higher Education, among other topics. Interested in leveraging research and data to identify, implement, and scale up policies related to these fields.

Carnegie Foundation**

Focus Areas: Teaching & Curricular Innovation, Post-Secondary Readiness

Description: Invests in educational change in high school and postsecondary education, with high school funding meant to ensure that learning is engaging and career aligned, while postsecondary innovation aims to make the postsecondary sector a more vital engine for social and economic mobility.

Circle of Service Foundation**

Focus Areas: Post-Secondary Readiness, Post-Secondary Paths

Description: Awards grants in four focus areas, including education. Supports organizations that optimize opportunities for low-income youth to live engaged and productive lives.

CME Group Foundation

Focus Areas: Teaching & Curricular Innovation, Post-Secondary Readiness, Mental Health

Description: Aims to provide tools students need to achieve their full potential, including: supporting students from low-income backgrounds access to resources, career readiness, and early childhood education system, as well as providing mental health support with a focus on trauma-responsive needs.

Dell Foundation

Focus Areas: International Education Research

Description: Focused on investing in classroom support, university success, financial services, health innovation, and quality employment access. Funds international research primarily in Africa, India, and Israel.

Fry Foundation**

Focus Areas: Post-Secondary Readiness, Mental Health

Description: Offers grants in three areas: Arts Learning, Education, and Employment, to organizations with commitment to address persistent problems of urban Chicago.

Gates Foundation**

Focus Areas: Teaching & Curricular Innovation, International Education Research

Description: A nonprofit fighting poverty, disease, and inequity around the word. Four major areas of impact: health, gender equality, global development, and education.

Hewlett Foundation**

Focus Areas: Teaching & Curricular Innovation, Post-Secondary Readiness

Description: Investing in creative thinkers who imagine a better future and in problem solvers who turn ideas into action. Education Program makes grants that provide students with innovative educational opportunities to foster mobility and help students contribute to the future of their communities.

Jacobs Foundation

Focus Areas: International Education Research

Description: Invests in the world’s premier research to discover how children learn, promote the use of evidence in teaching and learning, and support countries to shape and implement education policies based on evidence. Offers research grants and a competitive early-career fellowship program.

Joyce Foundation**

Focus Areas: Teaching & Curricular Innovation, Post-Secondary Readiness, Post-Secondary Paths, Mental Health

Description: Invests in public policies and strategies to advance racial equity and economic mobility for the next generation in the Great Lakes region. Support policy research, development, and advocacy in six program areas, including Education & Economic Mobility.

J-PAL Poverty Action Lab

Focus Areas: International Education Research

Description: Working with implementing partners, J-PAL’s affiliated professors conduct randomized impact evaluations to test and improve the effectiveness of social programs, including those related to education.

Kresge Foundation

Focus Areas: Post-Secondary Readiness, Post-Secondary Paths

Description: Works to expand equity and opportunities in America’s cities through grantmaking and social investing in many areas, including education. Creates pathways for people with low incomes to improve their life circumstances and join the economic mainstream. Most grants are invitation only.

Lumina Foundation

Focus Areas: Post-Secondary Readiness, Post-Secondary Paths

Description: Invests in work that removes barriers to education and access to quality employment, with a focus on communities of color and minority serving institutions. Focused on access to economic opportunity and social mobility.

McDougal Family Foundation

Focus Areas: Teaching & Curricular Innovation, Mental Health

Description: Funds education strategies in the Chicago area that use research on how young people learn to build school-wide teaching practices that strengthen students’ academic mindsets, efforts to increase the number of high-quality teachers, and creation and testing of school policies.

Oak Foundation

Focus Areas: International Education Research

Description: Supports organizations worldwide that aim to make the world a safer, fairer, and more sustainable place to live. Funds education projects abroad across a range of areas, including learning differences.

Overdeck Family Foundation

Focus Areas: Teaching & Curricular Innovation, Post-Secondary Readiness

Description: Funding is meant to unlock innovation, evidence building, and growth opportunities for grantees working to improve academic and socioemotional outcomes for children. Strategies include investment in early education, STEM education, and K-9 programs that focus on supporting educators.

Polk Bros. Foundation**

Focus Areas: Mental Health

Description: Supports initiatives across Chicagoland oriented around three key goals, including building community wealth across generations and fostering participatory, multiracial democracy. Supports projects on education focused on low-income youth.

Raikes Foundation

Focus Areas: Teaching & Curricular Innovation

Description: Investing in systems-level change and resourcing work related to equitable K-12 education, reducing and ending youth homelessness, philanthropic giving to organizations, and democracy resourcing.

Robert Wood Johnson Foundation**

Focus Areas: Mental Health

Description: Supports health-related research on improving health systems, supporting healthy communities and families, and helping leaders address health challenges. Offers open calls for research proposals related to various topics in health equity.

Russell Sage Foundation

Focus Areas: Post-Secondary Readiness, Post-Secondary Paths

Description: Supports social science research that extends the methods, data, and theories of the social sciences as a means of better understanding the nation’s most pressing social, political, and economic problems.

Spencer Foundation

Focus Areas: Teaching & Curricular Innovation, Post-Secondary Readiness, Post-Secondary Paths, Mental Health, International Research

Description: Supports education research that cultivates learning and transforms lives, with additional interests in racial equity, the impact of artificial intelligence on education, and increasing educational opportunities. Awards funding through research grants, field building grants, and its annual initiatives.

Vivo Foundation

Focus Areas: Teaching and Curricular Innovation, Post-Secondary Readiness, Mental Health

Description: Funds initiatives in Chicago and Lake Country across the education continuum, from early childhood education and care through college and career success. Supports projects on experiential learning, violence reduction, and mental health and wellbeing.

Wallace Foundation

Focus Areas: Mental Health

Description: Funds initiatives to promote equity and improve practice and policy in the arts, education, and youth development. Supports education projects in afterschool care, arts education, school learning, social and emotional learning, and summer learning.

Walton Family Foundation

Focus Areas: Teaching & Curricular Innovation, Post-Secondary Readiness, Post-Secondary Paths

Description: Supports education research and evaluation projects centered on expanding access to quality education. Focuses on initiatives that support families in need and have a measurable impact on student success.

Washington Center for Equitable Growth

Focus Areas: Post-Secondary Paths

Description: Supports research dedicated to advancing evidence-backed ideas and policies that promote strong economic growth. WCEG funds research across a range of research areas, including AI and the workforce, competition, inequality, labor, and macroeconomics.

W.K. Kellogg Foundation**

Focus Areas: Mental Health

Description: Invests in work that supports children, families and communities as they strengthen and create conditions that propel vulnerable children to achieve success as individuals and as contributors to the larger community and society.

W.T. Grant Foundation

Focus Areas: Teaching & Curricular Innovation, Post-Secondary Readiness, Mental Health

Description: Currently, the Foundation funds studies in two specific focus areas: (1) programs, policies, and practices that reduce inequality in youth outcomes, and (2) strategies to improve the use of research evidence in ways that benefit youth.