Foundations & Others

Slots: 8, including any renewal of existing grants from any one organization.

Deadlines

Internal Deadline: Friday, May 16th, 2025, 5pm PT Closed.

LOI: N/A

External Deadline: August 1, 2025, 5pm PT

Award Information

Award Type: Grant

Estimated Number of Awards: 8 – 10 (In a typical grant cycle, 2-3 grants are awarded to USC faculty).

Anticipated Award Amount: $75,000 over one year, including overhead. Note that the grant is twice renewable for up to $225,000 over three years.

Full RFP:

Process for Limited Submissions

PIs must submit their application as a Limited Submission through the Research Initiatives and Infrastructure (RII) Application Portal: https://rii.usc.edu/oor-portal/. Use the template provided here: RII Limited Submission Applicant Template

Materials to submit include:

• (1) Two-Page Proposal Summary (1” margins; single-spaced; font type: Arial, Helvetica, or Georgia typeface; font size: 11 pt). Page limit includes references and illustrations. Pages that exceed the 2-page limit will be excluded from review. You must use the template linked above.
• (2) CV – (5 pages maximum)

Note: The portal requires information about the PIs in addition to department and contact information, including the 10-digit USC ID#. Please have this material prepared before beginning this application.

Purpose

The Margaret E. Early Medical Research Trust is a qualified private foundation exempt from federal and state income taxes under the Internal Revenue Code Section 501(c)(3) and California Revenue and Taxation Code Section 23701(d). The Trust was created pursuant to the terms and provisions of the Last Will and Testament of Margaret E. Early, now deceased. The Trustee is authorized to select and fund in his sole and absolute discretion, research grant applications from qualified charitable organizations with substantial research facilities in the Los Angeles, California area conducting research into the causes, treatments, and potential cures of cancer and related diseases.

Visit our Institutionally Limited Submission webpage for more updates and other announcements.

Slots: An organization may submit only one application to the FY 2026 Grants for Arts Projects program (i.e., one application per calendar year).

Deadlines

Internal Deadline: Friday, May 9th, 2025, 5pm PT Contact RII.

Grants.gov Submission: July 10, 2025, 11:59pm ET

External Deadline: July 22, 2025, 11:59pm ET

Award Information

Award Type: Grant

Award Amount: Applicants may request an amount between $10,000-$100,000.

Local Arts Agencies only: Designated local arts agencies that are eligible to subgrant may request $30,000 to $150,000 for subgranting programs. See the Local Arts Agencies Application Instructions at the link to award below for more information on subgranting eligibility.

1:1 Cost-share/match required. Sources may include both cash and in-kind.

Link to Award: https://www.arts.gov/grants/grants-for-arts-projects

Who May Serve as PI: Organizations eligible to apply include:

• Nonprofit, tax-exempt 501(c)(3), U.S. organizations;
• Units of state or local government; or
• Federally recognized tribal communities or tribes.

Applicant organizations must have completed at least 5 years of arts programming prior to the application deadline. Generally, an applicant may submit one application per calendar year.

Funding is not available in this category for individuals, applications submitted by a fiscal sponsor, or commercial/for-profit enterprises. 

Process for Limited Submissions

PIs must submit their application as a Limited Submission through the Research Initiatives and Infrastructure (RII) Application Portal: https://rii.usc.edu/oor-portal/. Use the template provided here: RII Limited Submission Applicant Template

Materials to submit include:

• (1) Two-Page Proposal Summary (1” margins; single-spaced; standard font type, e.g. Arial, Helvetica, Times New Roman, or Georgia typeface; font size: 11 pt). Page limit includes references and illustrations. Pages that exceed the 2-page limit will be excluded from review. You must use the template linked above.
• (2) CV – (5 pages maximum)

Note: The portal requires information about the PIs in addition to department and contact information, including the 10-digit USC ID#. Please have this material prepared before beginning this application.

Purpose

The NEA is committed to supporting excellent arts projects for the benefit of all Americans. Grants for Arts Projects (GAP) provides funding for public engagement with the arts and arts education, for the integration of the arts with strategies promoting the health and well-being of people and communities, and for the improvement of overall capacity and capabilities within the arts sector. We welcome applications from first-time and returning applicants; from organizations serving rural, urban, suburban, and tribal communities of all sizes; and from organizations with small, medium, or large operating budgets.

We fund arts projects in the following disciplines: Artist Communities, Arts Education, Dance, Design, Film & Media Arts, Folk & Traditional Arts, Literary Arts, Local Arts Agencies, Museums, Music, Musical Theater, Opera, Presenting & Multidisciplinary Works, Theater, and Visual Arts.

A full grant program description can be found under Grant Program Details at the link posted above. For detailed instructions on how to apply, see Application Instructions also at the link posted above.

Slots: 1. The Foundation will consider only one proposal from an organization in any calendar year.

Deadlines

Internal Deadline: Friday, May 9th, 2025, 5pm PT Contact RII.

LOI: June 15, 2025

External Deadline: August 15, 2025

Award Information

Award Type: Grant

Anticipated Award Amount: It is anticipated that most grants will fall in the $25,000-$50,000 per year range.

Eligible Applicants:

The Foundation supports local, state, and regional organizations in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, Latin America, and the Middle East in the countries where the projects are based.  It also supports organizations located in upper-income countries working with local partners in these areas.  It does not support projects in post-Soviet states or Balkan states.

Most types of organizations that can provide evidence of their non-governmental status or charitable purpose are eligible to apply, including non-governmental organizations, nonprofit organizations; civil society organizations; community-based organizations; and colleges, universities, and other academic institutions.

Government agencies and religious organizations may be included as project partners but are not eligible for direct funding.

The Foundation does not typically fund:

• Overhead or indirect project costs
• General operating support
• Direct food, health or other humanitarian aid
• Eco-tourism
• Buildings and capital improvements
• Projects ultimately intended for private gain.  All intellectual property developed with the grant should be public.
• Salaries for Executive Directors of U.S. and European-based organizations.
• Project expenses incurred before the grant is awarded.

Link to Award: https://cfhfoundation.grantsmanagement08.com/

Process for Limited Submissions

PIs must submit their application as a Limited Submission through the Research Initiatives and Infrastructure (RII) Application Portal: https://rii.usc.edu/oor-portal/. Use the template provided here: RII Limited Submission Applicant Template

Materials to submit include:

• (1) Two-Page Proposal Summary (0.5” margins; single-spaced; font type: Arial, Helvetica, or Georgia typeface; font size: 11 pt). Page limit includes references and illustrations. Pages that exceed the 2-page limit will be excluded from review. You must use the template linked above.
• (2) CV – (5 pages maximum)

Note: The portal requires information about the PIs in addition to department and contact information, including the 10-digit USC ID#, Gender, and Ethnicity. Please have this material prepared before beginning this application.

Purpose

The Conservation, Food and Health Foundation seeks to protect the environment, improve food production, and promote public health in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, Latin America, and the Middle East. 

Types of Support

The Foundation supports projects and applied research that:

• Generate local or regional solutions to problems affecting the quality of the environment and human life;
• Advance local leadership and promote professional development in the conservation, agricultural, and health sciences;
• Develop the capacity of local organizations and coalitions; and
• Address challenges in the field. 

The Foundation prefers to support projects that address under-funded issues and geographic areas.

The Foundation funds applied research, pilot projects, new initiatives, training, and technical assistance, rather than ongoing support for programs that are already well underway.  An important goal for the Foundation is to provide seed money to help promising projects, organizations, and individuals develop the track record they need to attract major foundation funding in the future.

Fields of Interest

The following are examples of the Foundation’s areas of interest within the fields of conservation, food, and health, and are not meant to be exclusive.

Conservation

Conservation grants promote environmental conservation through field research, projects, and advocacy that:

• Protect biodiversity and preserve natural resources.
• Help mitigate the adverse effects of climate change.
• Build the scientific and technical capacity of local conservation organizations and promote local, regional, and international partnerships.
• Increase engagement between scientists, local communities and organizations, and decision-makers.
• Partner with indigenous communities and local people.

Food

Grants in the food and agriculture program area focus on research-based projects that build capacity for self-sufficiency and resilience to climate change, strengthen local food systems, and support healthy nutrition through projects that: 

• Enhance food security.
• Develop and promote sustainable agricultural practices
• Build the capacity of small-scale farmers.
• Advance farmer research and research partnerships.
• Develop environmentally sound and affordable approaches to control pests and diseases affecting important local food crops.
• Promote indigenous food sovereignty and knowledge systems.
• Address challenges of uptake and scalability through new methods of extension, education, and technology transfer.

Health

The Foundation supports efforts that test new ideas and approaches that promote public health, with a special emphasis on reproductive health and family planning and their integration with other health promotion activities.  It favors community-level disease prevention and health promotion projects and efforts that help strengthen regional and country public health systems over disease diagnosis, treatment, and care provided by clinics, hospitals, and humanitarian aid programs.

Activities that help increase capacity include applied research, program development, technical assistance, and training projects that:

• Promote reproductive health and family planning.
• Address issues related to mental and behavioral health.
• Address issues relating to pollution and environmental health.
• Increase the understanding of zoonotic and neglected tropical diseases.
• Address issues relating to nutrition and health.

Key Priorities

In all of its areas of interest, the Foundation gives priority to projects that have the potential to advance the field, build local capacity, promote replication, influence public opinion and policy, affect systems change, and benefit people beyond the immediate project and its local context.

Visit our Institutionally Limited Submission webpage for more updates and other announcements.

Slots: 1 senior faculty member (Associate and Full Professor) can be nominated.

Deadlines

Internal Deadline: Monday, April 28th, 2025, 5pm PT Closed.

LOI: June 3, 2025, 4:00pm CT.

External Deadline: Tuesday, September 23rd, 2025, 4pm CT

Award Information

Award Type: Grant

Anticipated Amount: $150,000 for a two year grant period. 100% of these SIA funds must be utilized for direct costs.

Link to Award: https://www.thebrf.org/what-we-do/scientific-innovations-award/

RFP: https://www.thebrf.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/2026_SIA_Guidelines.pdf

Who May Serve as PI:

The nominated candidate must be a full-time associate professor or full professor at a US academic institution that was invited directly by BRF via email, working in the area of studies of brain function in health and disease. Current major NIH or other peer-reviewed funding is preferred but evidence of such funding in the past three years is essential. Studies should be related to either normal human brain development or specifically identified disease states. This includes molecular and clinical neuroscience as well as studies of neural, sensory, motor, cognitive, behavioral and emotional functioning in health and disease. The grant proposal must detail a new research project that is not funded by other sources. This grant is not to be used as bridge funding.

Process for Limited Submissions

PIs must submit their application as a Limited Submission through the USC Research Initiatives and Infrastructure Application Portal: https://rii.usc.edu/oor-portal/. Use the template provided here: RII Limited Submission Applicant Template

Materials to submit include:

• (1) Two Page Proposal Summary (1” margins; single-spaced; font type: Arial, Helvetica, Times New Roman, or Georgia typeface; font size: 11 pt). Page limit includes references and illustrations. Pages that exceed the 1-page limit will be excluded from review.
• (2) CV – (5 pages maximum)

Note: The portal requires information about the PIs and Co-PIs in addition to department and contact information, including the 10-digit USC ID#. Please have this material prepared before beginning this application.

Purpose

Brain Research Foundation’s Scientific Innovations Award Program provides funding for innovative science in both basic and clinical neuroscience. This funding mechanism is designed to support creative, exploratory, cutting edge research in well-established research laboratories, under the direction of established investigators.

The objective of the SIA is to support projects that may be too innovative and speculative for traditional
funding sources but still have a high likelihood of producing important findings. It is expected that
investigations supported by these grants will yield high impact findings and result in major grant
applications and significant publications in high impact journals.

Funding Preferences: Funding is to be directed at projects that may be too innovative and speculative for traditional funding sources but still have a high likelihood of producing important findings. This should be a unique project for senior investigators who are encouraged to stretch their imagination into areas that can substantially change an area of research.

Funding of research projects that will likely lead to successful grant applications with NIH
and other public and private funding entities.

Slots: An institution may nominate more than one candidate, but only one applicant may be nominated from a major division of an institution each year (e.g., College of Arts and Sciences, Medical School).

Deadlines

Internal Deadline: Contact your School’s Dean/Dean’s Office if interested in this opportunity.

Mentor and Reference Letter Deadline: June 11, 2025

External Deadline: July 1, 2025

Award Information

Award Type: Grant

Estimated Number of Awards: 4-6

Anticipated Award Amount: $425,000, distributed over 5 years.

Who May Serve as PI: 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. In addition to the eligibility criteria below, deans and directors of those divisions should refer to the Selection Criteria to aid them in choosing their nominees. Applicants of any discipline are eligible.

Applicants must have received their terminal degree within seven years of submitting their application. We 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.

Link to Award: https://wtgrantfoundation.org/funding/william-t-grant-scholars-program

Process for Limited Submissions

Please contact your School’s Dean’s Office if you are interested in this program. Since the Dean is the person who must be the nominator for the William T. Grant Scholars Program, they will need to coordinate this limited submission instead of RII.

Purpose

The William T. Grant Scholars Program supports 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. We 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.

Awards are based on applicants’ potential to become influential researchers, as well as their plans to expand their expertise in new and significant ways. The application should make a cohesive argument for how the applicant will expand his or her expertise. The research plan should evolve in conjunction with the development of new expertise, and the mentoring plan should describe how the proposed mentors will support applicants in acquiring that expertise. Proposed research plans must address questions that are relevant to policy and practice in the Foundation’s focus areas.

Reducing Inequality

In this focus area, we fund research 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 ages 5-25 in the United States, along dimensions of race, ethnicity, economic standing, language minority status, or immigrant origins.

Our research interests in this focus area center on studies that examine ways to reduce inequality in youth outcomes. We welcome descriptive studies that clarify mechanisms for reducing inequality or elucidate how or why a specific program, policy, or practice operates to reduce inequality. We also welcome intervention studies that examine attempts to reduce inequality. Finally, we welcome studies that improve the measurement of inequality in ways that can enhance the work of researchers, practitioners, or policymakers.

Improving the Use of Research Evidence

In this focus area, we fund research studies that advance theory and build empirical knowledge on ways to improve the use of research evidence by policymakers, agency leaders, organizational managers, intermediaries, and other decision-makers that shape youth-serving systems in the United States.

While an extensive body of knowledge provides a rich understanding of specific conditions that foster the use of research evidence, we lack robust, validated strategies for cultivating them. What is required to create structural and social conditions that support research use? What infrastructure is needed, and what will it look like? What supports and incentives foster research use? And, ultimately, how do youth outcomes fare when research evidence is used? This is where new research can make a difference.

Our research interests in this focus area center on studies that examine strategies to improve the use, usefulness, and impact of evidence in ways that benefit young people ages 5-25 in the United States. We welcome impact studies that test strategies for improving research use as well as whether improving research use leads to improved youth outcomes. We also welcome descriptive studies that reveal the strategies, mechanisms, or conditions for improving research use. Finally, we welcome measurement studies that explore how to construct and implement valid and reliable measures of research use.

Visit our Institutionally Limited Submission webpage for more updates and other announcements.