With the precarious situation of most federal funders, we’ve begun a list of private funding that may apply to projects for writing programs. This list is in progress–please feel free to suggest additions!
Nonprofit and professional organization funding sources
Spencer Research-Practice Partnerships: Collaborative research for educational change – [unknown date] – $400,000
The Research-Practice Partnership (RPP) Grants Program is intended to support education research projects that engage in collaborative and participatory partnerships with project budgets up to $400,000 and durations of up to three years. We accept Intent to Apply forms once a year in this program.
We view partnerships as an important approach to knowledge generation and the improvement of education, broadly construed. Over the long term, we anticipate that research conducted by RPPs will result in new insights into the processes, practices, and policies that improve education for learners, educators, families, communities, and institutions where learning and teaching happen (e.g., schools, universities, community centers, parks, museums, other workplaces).
https://www.spencer.org/grant_types/research-practice-partnerships
NCTE Research Foundation Grant – March 15 (ODD YEARS ONLY) – $4,000
The Trustees of the Research Foundation seek proposals that reflect the diverse interests among our NCTE membership, including, but not limited to, proposals focusing on underrepresented populations, equity pedagogies, curriculum changes, and the effect these changes have on students, school policies, changes in teaching methods, student interaction and learning, community literacies, home-school literacy relationships, after-school programs, student literacy practices in and out of school, and other relevant topics of study.
https://ncte.org/research/research-foundation-grants/
Spencer Research Grants (Small) – April (2025 – pre-proposal) – $50,000
This program is “field-initiated” in that proposal submissions are not in response to a specific request for a particular research topic, discipline, design, method, or location. Our goal for this program is to support rigorous, intellectually ambitious and technically sound research that is relevant to the most pressing questions and compelling opportunities in education.
https://www.spencer.org/grant_types/small-research-grant
Spencer Research Grants (Large) – June 17 (pre-proposal due) – $125,000-500,000
This program is “field-initiated,” meaning that proposal submissions are not in response to a specific request for a particular research topic, discipline, design, or method. Our goal for this program is to support rigorous, intellectually ambitious and technically sound research that is relevant to the most pressing questions and compelling opportunities in education. We seek to support scholarship that develops new foundational knowledge that may have a lasting impact on educational discourse.
https://www.spencer.org/grant_types/large-research-grant
Spencer Vision Grant – Aug 13 (Intent to apply) – $75,000
The Spencer Foundation invests in research to improve education, broadly conceived. There is a critical need for innovative, methodologically and disciplinarily diverse, large-scale research projects to transform education systems for equity. Importantly, we 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 program funds the collaborative planning of innovative, methodologically diverse, interdisciplinary research on education that contributes to transforming education systems for equity. Vision Grants are research planning grants to bring together a team, for 6 to 12 months, to collaboratively develop ambitious, large-scale research projects focused on transforming educational systems toward greater equity. This program takes as core that visionary, interdisciplinary, and collaborative research projects require time, space, and thoughtfulness to incubate and plan. Vision Grants are $75,000 total. Different from many of Spencer’s other programs, the proposal should not be a fully fleshed out research plan. Instead, this is an invitation to think forward about what research we need to transform education systems toward equity and then to envision how that systems-change will happen, utilizing research evidence. Teams are encouraged to reflect on the people who need to be involved from the beginning of the research design process, and how evidence from the eventual research study/studies could be used to actually transform systems. Vision Grant proposals should identify the system(s) targeted for transformation and the specific levers the team thinks need to be engaged in order to work toward systems transformation.
https://www.spencer.org/grant_types/vision-grants
CCCC Emergent Researcher Award – Sept 1 (every year) – $5,000
The CCCC Emergent Researcher Awards reflect this commitment and are intended to invest in our organization’s members by rewarding and supporting early-career researchers, especially
- faculty/instructors who have not had the opportunity to engage in funded research, and
- faculty/instructors who do not have support for research within their institutions.
Only researchers who have not received previous funding from CCCC for research are eligible to apply for these awards. In addition to research funding, the Emergent Researcher Awards provide mentoring support. All selected recipients (or recipient teams) will be matched with research mentors on their projects. These established scholars will have a successful record of mentoring and publication experience. Mentoring pairs will determine procedures through which they collaborate. However, the expectation is that the mentor will be available to consult with the researcher(s) at each stage of selected projects on issues ranging from design to methodology, writing to circulation.
CCCC Research Initiative – Sept 1 (every year) – $8,000
We call for proposals to investigate key challenges faced by literacy, communication, rhetoric, and writing instructors and administrators in their classrooms and programs. The initiative also asks recipients to clearly address the impact their research might have on these conversations, conveying the implications of their work in at least two final products: one that is addressed to a scholarly audience of researchers and teachers in the field, and one that is addressed to a specifically identified more public audience.
Resources for writing grants
More coming soon!
Marisa Yerace 