Spencer Foundation Vision Grants
Aboriginal Peoples
Arctic and Northern Regions
Community, Regional & Enterprise Development
Creative Arts, Culture and Heritage
Environment, Energy and Natural Resources
Governance and Public Policy
Information and Communication Technology
Oceans, Fisheries and Aquaculture
Social Justice
Well-being, Health and Biomedical Discovery
Deadlines
Academic Unit: Inquire with unit
Memorial Deadline: Friday 11th, September 2026
External Deadline: Wednesday 16th, September 2026
Description
The Spencer Foundation invests in research to improve education, broadly conceived. We know that rigorous research can play a critical role in identifying systemic inequities, evaluating what actually works, and guiding evidence-based changes that make education systems fairer and more inclusive. The Vision Grant program provides 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 to make education systems more equitable; drawing on research across disciplines and methods; and developed through meaningful and equitable collaboration with practitioners, policymakers, communities, and other partners; and focused on transforming educational systems.
The Spencer Foundation invests in research to improve education, broadly conceived. We know that rigorous research can play a critical role in identifying systemic inequities, evaluating what actually works, and guiding evidence-based changes that make education systems fairer and more inclusive. The Vision Grant program provides 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 to make education systems more equitable; drawing on research across disciplines and methods; and developed through meaningful and equitable collaboration with practitioners, policymakers, communities, and other partners; and focused on transforming educational systems.
Vision Grants are research planning grants to bring together a team, for 12 to 18 months, to collaboratively develop ambitious, large-scale research projects focused on transforming educational systems toward greater equity. This program takes as core that the development of these kinds of research projects require time, space, and thoughtfulness to incubate and plan. Vision Grants are $75,000 total.
The Vision Grants allow teams to 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. For example, previously funded Vision Grants have proposed research projects that:
- – Develop a new policy, pedagogical approach, practice, or intervention, (e.g. implementing a competency-based assessment system across distinct district contexts)
- – Work with communities, practitioners, and policymakers to co-design approaches that improve educational equity (e.g., building a coalition of legal and policy scholars, families, and district leaders to change school enrollment policies to address racial segregation).
- – Build upon educational approaches or policies that have worked well in one setting, with the goal of studying them in a range of settings to better understand how, where, and with whom they work and why (e.g., developing a national network of community-based curriculum development projects in collaboration with community organizations, school districts, and educators to understand and build capacity for teaching about local history)
Intent to Apply Form Deadline: August 12, 2026, 12:00 PM Noon (Central/Chicago Time)
Full Proposal Deadline: September 16, 2026, 12:00 PM Noon (Central/Chicago Time)
See here for more information.