Sponsored Research

Private Foundations:

For further information on private foundations, please go to: http:fdcenter.org/.

Gerber Foundation

Pediatric Nutrition Grants:

Pediatric nutrition programs respond to a long-time interest of the foundation in assuring adequate nutrition for infants and young children. Projects include research or interventions that evaluate the provision of specific nutrients and their related outcomes in infants and young children. For more information please visit: http://www.gerberfoundation.org/html/research
_pediatricnutrition.html. The deadline for this grant is December 1, 2009.

Pediatric Health Grants:

Promoting health and preventing disease is the primary focus of pediatric health grants. Of particular interest are applied research projects focused on reducing the incidence of serious neonatal and early childhood illnesses, or improving cognitive, social, and emotional aspects of development. For more information please visit: http://www.gerberfoundation
.org/html/research_pediatrichealth.html. The deadline for this grant is December 1, 2009.

Nutrition Competitors Grants:

The foundation is interested in projects that evaluate the effects of environmental hazards on infants and young children. Applied research projects that document the impact of, or ameliorate effects of, environmental hazards on the growth and development of infants and young children are the focus of this area of interest. For more information please visit: http://www.gerberfoundation.org/html/research_environmentalhazards.html. The deadline for this grant is December 1, 2009.

Allen Foundation

Grants:

Grants are limited under the terms of the Allen Foundation's charter to projects that primarily benefit programs for human nutrition in the areas of health, education, training, and research. The policies and priorities of the Allen Foundation are:

• to make grants to fund relevant nutritional research;
• to support programs for the education and training of mothers during pregnancy and after the birth of their children, so that good nutritional habits can be formed at an early age;
• to assist in the training of persons to work as educators and demonstrators of good nutritional practices;
• to encourage the dissemination of information regarding healthful nutritional practices and habits; and
• in limited situations, to make grants to help solve immediate emergency hunger and malnutrition problems.
  
  The connections between diet and health remain a basic and primary priority, and consideration has always been given to projects that benefit nutritional programs in the areas of education, training, and research. Low priority has traditionally been given to proposals that help solve immediate or emergency hunger and malnutrition problems. The foundation does not under any circumstances sponsor professional conferences, seminar tables, discussion panels, or similar events. One specific hope of the board of trustees in the future is to encourage the inclusion of mandatory courses in nutrition in medical schools. Another desire is to bring the promise of nutrigenomics or nutritional genomics to realization, thus creating the possibility for empowering individuals to make informed choices based on genetic information for their diet in order to influence the balance between health and disease. For more information please visit: https://www.allenfoundation.org/commoninfo/aboutus.asp. The deadline for this grant is December 31, 2009.

Commonwealth Foundation

Commonwealth Writers' Prize:

The Commonwealth Writers' Prize is an annual award for fiction administered and funded by the Commonwealth Foundation as part of its Culture Programme, with the support of the Macquarie Group Foundation across all four regions. The prize covers the Commonwealth regions of Africa, the Caribbean and Canada, Europe, and South Asia and South East Asia and the South Pacific.

The prize is judged in two phases. Entries are first assessed by four regional panels of judges. In each of the four regions, two prizes are awarded: one for the Best Book and one for the Best First Book. The eight winning books are sent to the Pan-Commonwealth panel of judges that will meet at the prize final programme in May 2009 to choose the overall Best Book and Best First Book winner. These winners will be announced in May 2009.

To be eligible for the 2009 Commonwealth Writers' Prize (CWP), the work must meet the following criteria:

1. For both Best Book and Best First Book awards, any work of prose fiction is eligible, i.e., a novel or collection of short stories, with the exception of any work written for children alone - drama, poetry, and graphic novels are not eligible; there is no restriction on setting, theme, or mode.
2. To be eligible for the Best First Book Prize, the entry must be the first work of fiction (i.e., a novel or collection of short stories) that the author has published with an adult readership in mind - the work must be of a reasonable length, it must be original, and it must have been first published between January 1, 2008, and December 31, 2008 (books published in earlier years, including in other countries, are not eligible).
3. The entry must be originally written in English (works translated from other languages are not eligible).
4. For a collection of short stories to be eligible, at least half of the short stories in the collection must have been published after January 1, 2004.
5. The same book may not be entered in both the Best Book and Best First Book categories.
   
   Books will be judged only in the category in which they are entered. Publishers are strongly advised to enter first books in the Best First Book category. For more information please visit: http://www.commonwealthwriters.com/. The deadline for this grant is December 31, 2009.

Foundation for Encouragement of Social Contribution

Awards:

Foundation for Encouragement of Social Contribution (FESCO, formerly known as the Nippon Kenshokai Foundation) is a private incorporated body established in 1971. Its activities are funded by investment profits from a base fund of 2,050,000,000 yen, as well as donations from other foundations.

Its main activity is to publicize and make known the good works of those who have contributed to society. This is done to award them for their pains and efforts and largely unrecognized contributions to society, as well as to promote community service movements and the development of society as a whole. Awards are given every year.

Fields awarded now include emergency life saving; transportation and traffic safety; promotion of social welfare; education of young people; development of local societies; international cooperation; and protection of the environment and conservation of the safety of the sea.

The award ceremony is held in the presence of His and Her Royal Highness, the Prince and Princess Hitachinomiya under the auspices of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, with co-support from the Cabinet Office, the Ministry of Education, Science, Sports and Culture, the Ministry of Health, Labour, and Welfare, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, and Transport, and the Ministry of Public Management, Home Affairs, Posts, and Telecommunications.
For more information please visit http://www.fesco.or.jp/eng_index.html/. The deadline is considered continuous.

Mellon Foundation, Andrew W.

Conservation and the Environment:

The foundation's program in Conservation and the Environment (C&E) has evolved from interests originally stated by the Avalon and Old Dominion Foundations as including the preservation of natural areas and the support of "organizations concerned with increasing man's understanding of his natural environment, his relation to it, and the effects of his activities upon it."

The activities described below are the only areas within which the Foundation is currently accepting inquiries:

1. Junior Faculty Research grants are awarded to new faculty as they begin their first tenure-track positions. The awards do not replace start-up research funds provided by colleges or universities and are only made after those arrangements are in place. The idea is to provide intellectual venture capital to promising researchers at the critical and formative stage when they begin their independent research careers. This program is devoted to basic research on how natural ecosystems work. It emphasizes support of leading institutions, innovative research, and the training of promising doctoral and postdoctoral researchers. The Foundation limits its activities to the United States and joint projects with institutions in South Africa that are linked to its other activities there.
   
   
2. The C&E portion of the AWMF South Africa program is centered on creating research bridges between the U.S. universities and South African universities, the South African National Parks System and the South African National Biodiversity Institution. The Foundation has worked to strengthen the capacity of these two institutions to work effectively with university scientists and students - and provided support to engage university research groups from both South Africa and the USA in collaborative research with them. The general aims and guidelines for this portion of the program are the same as those described for Junior Faculty research grants above. New grants are restricted to proposals that link directly to the extant program.
   
   
3. The African and Latin American Plants Initiatives are partnerships of 85 herbaria from 31 countries working to create a database of high quality images of plant type specimens of African and Latin American plants. The grants are limited to institutions holding African and Latin American plant type specimens. The resulting database is available to scholars at www.aluka.org  and through www.JSTOR.org.  The Foundation will be glad to hear from any institutions holding African and/or Latin American plant type specimens that it has not yet reached.

Kresge Foundation

Environmental conservation – sustainable building practices, environmental stewardship and sound land-use planning – is a core value of The Kresge Foundation. Our Green Building Initiative advances environmental conservation by awarding planning grants for sustainable design .  The foundation awards planning grants ranging from $50,000 to $100,000. Planning grants cover the following costs:

• Professional services to facilitate the design planning meetings or charrettes during the pre-design period: These meetings,   which involve stakeholders and all members of the design team, are highly collaborative and structured to focus on specific   outcomes.
• Energy analysis and modeling
• Water use analysis and modeling
• cological site planning
• Commissioning expenses associated with the planning process
  1. Initial documentation and LEED registration with the U.S. Green Building Council

Arthur Vining Davis Foundations, Health Care Grants

Since 1981, Arthur Vining Davis Foundations have focused grants in health care on caring attitudes. Trustees have been concerned that advances in technology and continuing changes in the health care system have diminished the humane aspects of patient care. Patients and their families often feel that their emotional, psychological, and spiritual needs are not adequately met when confronting illness. The program in caring attitudes will concentrate on leveraging improvement in specific areas of need. These include the following:

1. Medical Education: Of interest are initiatives that advance caring attitudes in physicians during all aspects of education, including medical school, residency training, and in practice. Programs leading to organizational and transformational change in medical education, addressing the hidden curriculum, and designed to integrate caring attitudes throughout the curriculum will be considered. Faculty development initiatives are encouraged, including role modeling and mentoring.
   
   
2. Other Health Care Professionals: Also of interest are innovative programs that seek to train other health care providers in caring attitudes such as nurses and hospital chaplains. Systemic approaches to ensuring sensitive and compassionate care of patients and their families will be given priority. Recent grants under this program range from $100,000 to $200,000.  The Deadline is Continuous. Grant applications may be submitted at any time of the year.  For more information, please go to: http://www.avdfdn.org/programs-healthcare.htm.

Arthur Vining Davis Foundations, Public Television Grants

The Arthur Vining Davis Foundations are interested in public television as an educational medium. Grants primarily provide partial support for major series with lasting educational value that are assured of national airing by PBS. Consideration is given on occasion to single stand-alone programs of exceptional merit. Preference is given to programs of enduring value on subjects such as history and science. Programs whose primary purpose is advocacy, topical news coverage or entertainment are unlikely to be competitive. The contribution to teaching in grades K-12, higher education, and continuing education is a consideration in evaluating proposals. Children's series are of particular interest. Consideration also will be given to innovative uses of public television (including online efforts) that enhance educational outreach in schools and communities.  Recent capstone production grants have ranged from $100,000 to $400,000.  The Deadline is Continuous. Grant applications may be submitted at any time of the year. For more information, please go to: http://www.avdfdn.org/programs-publictelevision.htm.

Educational Foundation of America (EFA)

The Educational Foundation of America (EFA) makes grants to qualifying non-profit organizations that have tax-exempt status and those that are not private foundations as defined in the Internal Revenue Code.  EFA provides grants for specific projects.  It does not provide funds for endowment or endowed faculty chairs, building/capital programs, religious purposes, grants to individuals, annual fund-raising campaigns, indirect costs, overhead or general support.  The Foundation prefers not to fund projects located outside the United States.  Areas of interest include, but are not limited to, the environment, reproductive freedom, theatre, education, medicine, drug policy reform, democracy, peace & national security issues and human services.  Important characteristics considered by EFA are an organization's record of achievement, intended broad impact, sound financial practices, increasing independence, and correspondence with EFA objectives.  Unfortunately, many worthy requests are denied because needs exceed the Foundation's resources or a given project does not fall within a current area of focus. The deadline date is continuous and letters of inquiry are accepted year-round.  For more information, please go to: http://www.efaw.org/Inquiry%20Guidelines.htm.


Grants for Integrating and Improving Health-Related Services for Elders

The Foundations supports efforts in selected academic medical centers and other health settings to strengthen the geriatric training of America’s physicians, nurses and social workers.  In order to maximize the Foundations impact on the health and the well-being of the nation’s elders, grants are made in two priority areas; Academic Geriatrics and Training, and Integrating and Improving Services.  The foundation supports a limited number of sustainable efforts to improve and integrate the system of services needed by elders and their effectiveness.  The emphasis is on nationally replicable models.  For more information, please go to: http://www.jhartfound.org/.  The deadline is considered continuous. Letters of inquiry may be submitted at anytime. Initial inquiries should be made at least six months before funding is needed.


Health Care (Caring Attitudes) Grant

This program supports efforts to encourage caring attitudes in the delivery of patient care, in the hospital, and in the convalescing period. Projects should have potential for practical application and should be of interest to other groups. New ideas are encouraged, especially if they facilitate communications with patients by doctors, nurses, and other caregivers; ameliorate patient anxieties; and foster caring attitudes. Other programs that comfort patients and families dealing with serious illness are of interest, such as programs supporting accredited clinical pastoral education and professional hospital chaplaincies and those which strengthen the hospice movement nationally. All proposals must have potential for wide application and not merely local improvement of requesting institutions. The deadline for this grant is continuous. Grant applications may be submitted at any time of the year. For more information please visit: http://www.avdfdn.org/programs-healthcare.htm.