OVERVIEW: The Wallace Foundation supports K-12 education and the arts, as well as research on best practices and organizational effectiveness. Recent areas of specific interest have included out-of-school learning and arts organizations for people of color.
IP TAKE: What sets the Wallace Foundation apart is its hands-on approach to research. Rather than simply funding programs, Wallace builds multiyear initiatives around specific questions, supports organizations testing new approaches and commissions researchers to assess what works, what does not and why.
That makes Wallace a major but highly structured funder—and a difficult cold prospect. It doesn’t accept “over-the-transom” requests. Staff identify nonprofits, school districts, universities, researchers and intermediaries that can play a defined role in a foundation-designed initiative, then invite them to apply. Wallace occasionally issues open calls, but none are currently posted.
The strongest prospects are organizations prepared to test a model, share data, participate in evaluation and peer learning, manage a network or translate findings for practitioners and policymakers. School districts with university partnerships and arts organizations willing to collaborate and contribute to field-wide learning may be especially competitive. Grants average about $400,000 over 2.8 years, though awards vary.
Smaller arts organizations rooted in communities of color currently have the clearest entry point through Wallace-funded intermediaries. Most other grantseekers should build relationships within Wallace’s grantee and issue networks and become visible around a research question the foundation cares about—not send an unsolicited LOI.
PROFILE: Established in the 1980s, the Wallace Foundation is a private foundation based in New York City with national interests. The Wallace Foundation traces its roots to DeWitt and Lila Acheson Wallace, founders of Reader’s Digest. Several Wallace family foundations eventually merged, creating a single national foundation in the early 2000s. Today, Wallace works nationally to strengthen policy and practice in the arts, education leadership and youth development, while making the research and tools generated through its initiatives available to the broader field. Today, the foundation is on a mission “to help all communities build a more vibrant and just future by fostering advances in the arts, education leadership, and youth development.”
Wallace’s website contains extensive material on afterschool programming, arts education, social and emotional learning and summer learning. Grantseekers should not assume that every topic page represents an active funding program. Many of the foundation’s best-known initiatives have ended, even though their research remains publicly available. Its current portfolio is best understood through three focus areas: Arts, School Leadership and Youth Development.
Grants for Arts and Culture
Wallace’s current arts work centers on the Advancing Well-Being in the Arts initiative, which supports and studies arts organizations rooted in communities of color.
- The initiative has three components:
- Direct support for 18 relatively large arts organizations
- Funding through intermediaries for smaller organizations
- Research proposed and led by arts service organizations rooted in communities of color
- The participating organizations span performing arts, visual and media arts and community-based organizations whose work incorporates artistic practice.
- Current grantees include BlackStar, the Arab American National Museum, Chicago Sinfonietta, the Laundromat Project, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Puerto Rico, PHILADANCO!, Pregones/PRTT, Rebuild Foundation, Self Help Graphics & Art and the Union for Contemporary Art.
- The intermediary component provides the most realistic opportunity for smaller arts groups.
- Wallace works with six regional arts organizations—Arts Midwest, Mid-America Arts Alliance, Mid Atlantic Arts, the New England Foundation for the Arts, South Arts and Creative West, formerly WESTAF—to channel funding to organizations across the country.
- It also supports a network of community-rooted arts service organizations, including Alternate ROOTS, ACCESS, Asian American Arts Alliance, Color Congress, First Peoples Fund, MENA Theater Makers Alliance, the National Association of Latino Arts and Cultures, Pa‘i Foundation, Sipp Culture and Women of Color in the Arts.
- These networks aim to reach arts organizations rooted in communities of color with annual budgets below $500,000. Some of the community-rooted intermediaries can also support groups that are not independently incorporated nonprofits. Application procedures and eligibility vary by intermediary, so organizations should follow each network member directly rather than approach Wallace with a cold request.
- Wallace lists the Youth Arts Initiative, Building Audiences for Sustainability, Wallace Excellence Awards and State Arts Partnerships for Cultural Participation as past initiatives. Their research may continue to inform the field, but they are not current Wallace grant programs. The foundation’s 2024 annual report said it was developing a new youth arts initiative, but no such initiative is currently listed as active on the arts page. Grantseekers should watch for announcements rather than assume that youth arts funding is presently available.
Grants for K-12 School Leadership
Wallace has worked in school leadership since 2000, focusing primarily on systems that prepare, hire, place and support effective principals. The current flagship program is the Equity-Centered Pipeline Initiative, or ECPI.
- Eight large school districts are embedding locally defined concepts of educational equity into principal standards, preparation, hiring, professional support and leadership data systems.
- Participating districts include Baltimore City Public Schools, Columbus City Schools, District of Columbia Public Schools, Fresno Unified School District, Jefferson County Public Schools, Portland Public Schools, San Antonio Independent School District and Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools.
- Wallace is also supporting multiyear research on implementation, district central offices, equity-centered leadership measurement and the use of research in systems change.
- The participating districts and research teams were selected for the initiative; Wallace does not advertise a process for additional organizations to join.
- Earlier efforts—including the Principal Pipeline Initiative, University Principal Preparation Initiative, Principal Supervisor Initiative, Principal Pipeline Learning Community and ESSA Leadership Learning Community—are now categorized as past initiatives. They remain important to understanding Wallace’s strategy but should not be treated as active funding opportunities.
Grants for Youth Development
Wallace’s youth development work supports out-of-school-time systems, summer learning and community partnerships that expand opportunities for children and adolescents.
The Advancing Opportunities for Adolescents initiative is a six-year effort in which Wallace expects to invest up to $120 million. It supports seven cross-sector partnerships that are connecting afterschool, enrichment and summer programs with career awareness, career exploration and broader community economic-mobility goals.
- The partnerships are working to expand access, improve youth development programs, develop sustainable funding and help young people connect their interests and skills with future educational and career opportunities. American Institutes for Research is leading the national research component.
- Current community partners include Bright Futures Education Partnership, Chattanooga 2.0, Promise Partnership Utah, Poughkeepsie Children’s Cabinet, Rocky Mountain Partnership Cradle to Career, Wayne County Partnership and Youth Success Summit. These organizations were selected for the initiative, and no application process for additional partnerships is currently posted.
- This current initiative should not be confused with the completed exploratory phase of the same name, which involved 30 partnerships in 28 states and helped Wallace design the larger effort.
Through Summer Learning in Texas, Wallace is helping as many as 75 Texas school districts use research-based practices to improve summer programs.
- The districts draw on state funding, while Wallace supports planning tools, implementation assistance and a four-year research project.
- The named grantee partners are the Texas Education Agency and Communities Foundation of Texas.
- This is a structured Texas initiative, not a national open grant program for individual summer providers.
The District Summer Learning Network provides participating districts with coaching, peer learning and technical assistance related to operating and sustaining summer programs.
- Wallace’s current website refers to about 80 districts and a handful of states, while its 2024 annual report describes more than 100 districts, six state agencies and several community organizations. The report says Wallace extended the work through 2025, but the website still lists the network as current.
- Organizations should confirm its current phase before pursuing a connection.
The State Summer Learning Network is a partnership involving the National Summer Learning Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers. It provides coaching, research and funding guidance to as many as nine participating states. Neither network currently advertises an open process for new nonprofit applicants.
Wallace categorizes Partnerships for Social and Emotional Learning, the National Summer Learning Project, Afterschool System Building and the exploratory phase of Advancing Opportunities for Adolescents as past initiatives. These projects generated substantial research, but they are not standing grant programs.
Other Opportunities:
Wallace also makes cross-cutting grants for research, evaluation, communications, professional associations, conferences and the dissemination of ideas. Its grants database uses classifications such as “Service to the Sector” and “Foundation-wide,” but these are internal grant categories rather than published programs with separate application processes.
Typical recipients include universities, research institutes, national associations, communications organizations and intermediaries capable of spreading findings across a field. These grants help explain awards to organizations that do not appear to fit neatly within one named initiative.
Important Grant Details:
Wallace reports that its grants average approximately $400,000 and last about 2.8 years. Initiative awards may be substantially larger, while research, communications, planning and supplemental grants may be smaller.
The foundation’s 2024 Form 990-PF reports approximately $54.6 million in grants and contributions paid and another $6.1 million approved for future payment.
- Geographic Focus: Wallace works nationally, but its giving is concentrated in selected initiative sites and national field-building organizations.
- Current grantees include arts organizations and intermediaries across the United States and Puerto Rico; large urban school districts in several regions; smaller rural districts; cross-sector youth partnerships; Texas districts; state education agencies; and national research and membership organizations. Location alone is not sufficient.
- A prospective grantee generally must fit a specific initiative, learning question or intermediary network.
This funder mainly selects grantees “through the issuance of requests for proposals or other careful screening processes.” It posts detailed RFPs on its Funding Opportunities page. Eligibility, guidelines and due dates vary significantly by opportunity.
- For information about its past grantmaking, see Wallace’s individual program pages and its annual reports.
- General inquiries about the grantmaking process may be submitted through the contact page, and the foundation recommends signing up for its newsletter to keep up with new funding opportunities.
- The Wallace Foundation’s phone number is (212) 251-9700.
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