Alfred P. Sloan Foundation

OVERVIEW: The New York City-based Sloan Foundation supports a broad array of research initiatives in basic, applied, and social sciences. It also supports diversity in higher education, science- and technology-themed arts and culture projects and various nonprofits in New York City.

IP TAKE: The Sloan Foundation is an iconic funder of scientific research. More than half of its grantmaking goes to leading research universities and institutes of technology in the U.S. The Foundation has also partnered with over 20 universities to run programs that aim to increase the success of students from underrepresented groups in STEM graduate programs. The Sloan Foundation is accessible and accepts two-page letters of inquiry for some of its programs, but grantseekers should note that grantmaking is highly competitive. Guidelines and requirements vary by program. The Foundation is also responsive, though not always approachable.

PROFILE: Founded in 1934 by General Motors executive Alfred Sloan, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation has grown into one of the largest private foundations in the United States. This funder’s stated mission is to “to support original research and education related to science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and economics,” but its work includes grantmaking for climate change, arts and culture and journalism and a range of special projects in New York City. The Sloan Foundation’s current grantmaking programs are Research, Higher Education, Technology, Public Understanding, and New York City

Grants for STEM Education, Higher Education, and Science Research

The Sloan Foundation’s Higher Education grantmaking program aims to “create diverse, equitable, and inclusive pathways to and through STEM graduate education and the professoriate.” The foundation’s strategic priorities for the program include removing systemic barriers to STEM graduate programs, promoting practices that lead to equitable outcomes in graduate education, developing cultures of equity and opportunity in academic departments and collaborating with other organizations and public agencies toward equitable change in STEM education. Sloan currently runs three higher education sub-initiatives:

  • The University Centers of Exemplary Mentoring Program provided funding to eight leading universities for a collaborative program to “support university-based efforts that seek to advance systemic change in STEM graduate education.” Participating universities include Cornell, Duke, the Georgia Institute of Technology, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Penn State, the University of California at San Diego and the University of South Florida

  • Sloan’s Indigenous Graduate Partnership, similarly, partners with universities to “support the inclusion of Indigenous perspectives and community engagement in STEM graduate education.” Funding has supported the creation of “regional centers” that offer mentoring, professional development and fellowships, scholarships and other forms of financial support to indigenous students. Partner universities include the University of Alaska campuses at Anchorage and Fairbanks, the University of Arizona, the University of Montana, Montana State University, Montana Tech, the University of North Carolina Asheville and Purdue University.

  • Sloan’s Creating Equitable Pathways to STEM Graduate Education funding program provides grants of up to $500,000 to Minority Serving Institutions to create pathways from undergraduate to graduate programs in astronomy, biology, chemistry, computer science, data science, earth sciences, economics, engineering, marine science, mathematics, physics and statistics. Programs that aim to improve the quality of undergraduate programs, involve undergraduate students in research, provide mentoring opportunities and remove systemic barriers to graduate education have been funded. Grantees include Howard University, Eckerd College and the University of Southern California.

  • The Sloan Centers for Systemic Change works to “catalyze and deepen systemic change activities in STEM doctoral programs nationwide to close persistent equity gaps and see all students thrive.”

In addition to its work with university consortia, the Sloan Foundation supports individual scholars through the Sloan Research Fellowships, which are awarded annually in the amount of $75,000 to “early career scientists and scholars of outstanding promise” in the fields of “chemistry, computer science, Earth system science, economics, mathematics, neuroscience, physics, or a related field.” The foundation runs an open application program for these fellowships, but candidates must be nominated by their institutions.

Grants for Science Research

The Sloan Foundation’s Research program supports science research at both institutions of higher education and other research-based organizations via a number of sub-initiatives. The foundation has traditionally prioritized basic scientific research, but has, in recent years, extended its grantmaking to support applied scientific research, social science research and engineering projects in select areas of interest. Research sub-initiatives include:

  • Economics, which supports “basic research with applications that promote equity, protect consumers, strengthen institutions, incentivize innovation, test technologies, and improve the value of scientific research” and “academic risk-takers and entrepreneurs whose insights can empower communities, states, and countries to manage adversity and build better futures.” Its areas of interest and funding priorities include Global Competitiveness and Industrial Strategy; Mesoeconomics and Regional Economic Development; Public Works, Transportation, and Social Capital; Re-Engineering Social Research Surveys; Economics of Caregiving; Economic Analysis of Science and Technology; and Strengthening the Economics Profession, which includes Equity and Economics, Empirical Economics Research Enablers, and Professional Infrastructure. One grant supported a study of the economics of online misinformation at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Another grant supported a collaborative project at Oxford and Harvard Universities on comparative household finance. Other grantees include Columbia, Cornell and the University of Maryland at College Park.

  • Energy and Environment, which supports “research, training, networking, and dissemination efforts […] that shape the direction of scholarship by investigating under-explored questions that warrant further attention, advance collaborative and interdisciplinary research across the social and natural sciences, involve early career faculty and train the next generation of students, link research with practice, and partner with other funders to amplify programmatic impact.” The current topics it focuses on include Energy Markets and Policy Analysis, Net Zero Innovation and Negative Emissions Technologies, Transportation and Mobility, Energy and Distributional Equity, Industrial Decarbonization, and Energy Systems and Climate Adaptation. The program also seeks to generate novel research and train the next generation of scholars and researchers. Princeton University received $1.5 million for field research with the goal of quantifying emissions from wastewater and agricultural waste systems. The foundation also supported research on carbon dioxide and methane air capture technologies at the Universities of Arkansas, Rochester, Wisconsin, Virginia, Colorado and California.

  • History of Science & Technology, which seeks to “advance our understanding of the historical context of scientific research and inform current and future research, policy, and institutional practices.” Themes this program supports include the nature of research, research organizations, and collaboration; the role of information and research mechanisms; functions of professional societies and conferences; and “the formation and development of research funding agencies.”

  • Matter-to-Life, which works to “sharpen our scientific understanding of the physical principles and mechanisms that distinguish living systems from inanimate matter, and to explore the conditions under which physical principles and mechanisms guide the complexification of matter towards life.” The program divides its giving into three interrelated focus areas: Building Life, which aims to study the construction of life, Principles of Life, which focuses on the principles and systems of life, and Signs of Life, which studies “the distinctive signatures associated with living systems.”

  • Sloan Digital Sky Survey, a spectroscopic observation program that aims to map and study the universe. The initiative is conducted in partnership with the Astrophysical Research Consortium and the Carnegie Observatories and conducts research using the Sloan Foundation Telescope at the Apache Point Observatory in New Mexico and the Irénée du Pont telescope at Las Campanas Observatories in Chile. The program’s current projects include the Milky Way Mapper, the Black Hole Mapper and the Local Volume Mapper, which studies “the dust and gas that lies within and between galaxies to help improve understanding about how galaxies evolve.”

  • Small-Scale Fundamental Physics, which supports high risk, high reward projects and groups working to measure electron roundness to find undiscovered particles. Funding has gone to University of Colorado – Boulder, Imperial College London, California Institute of Technology, York University, Harvard University, and ACME III, a Yale-Harvard-Northwestern collaboration.  

The Sloan Foundation’s Technology program focuses on the impact of the internet and modern computing on the ways in which scientific and economic knowledge is created and disseminated. Its numerous sub-initiatives include:

  • Better Software for Science, which seeks to “develop practices, norms and institutions that can better promote the development and adoption of discovery-enhancing software.” Its focus areas include open source in research, software publication and archiving, and career paths and incentives. Grants of over $600,000 each have gone to The University of Texas – Austin, Syracuse University, Stanford University, and George Washington University, to help an open source program office at the university.

  • Exploratory Grantmaking in Technology, which aims to “identify areas at the intersection of research and technology where a strategic investment of Foundation resources might be leveraged to empower scholarship.” It currently focuses its grantmaking on open hardware, trust in algorithmic knowledge surrounding the “complexity and opacity of AI-driven research methods,” and exploring innovations in virtual collaboration. Support has gone to Aalborg University, to help support discussions on human-centered software engineering and artificial intelligence, and University of California – Santa Cruz, to develop multi-user Virtual Reality tool designs to facilitate collaboration between science teams.

Grants for Climate Change and Clean Energy

Climate change and clean energy have become areas of increasing importance among the Sloan Foundation’s areas of grantmaking interest. The foundation’s Energy and Environment subprogram accounts for more than half of all grantmaking stemming from the foundation’s research initiative. Specific areas of recent interest include research on energy markets and policy, negative emissions technology innovation, transportation, equitable energy distribution, industrial decarbonization and the adaptation of energy systems to the changing climate. Grantmaking supports research, training and education, collaborations and knowledge dissemination. The State University of New York at Buffalo recently received funding for research on “how communities and stakeholders perceive negative emissions technologies and solar radiation management technologies.” Another recipient, Pecan Street, Inc., used funding to test residential energy use monitoring systems through its Center for Race, Energy and Climate Justice. Sloan’s grants have also supported research on climate change and clean energy at Auburn University, Yale University, the National Bureau of Economic Research, the Colorado School of Mines and the National Council for Science and the Environment.

Grants for Journalism

The Sloan Foundation supports journalism via the Radio, Television, and New Media sub-initiatives of its Public Understanding grantmaking program, which aims to bring information about advances in science and technology to the general public through a variety of media. Journalism-related grants generally support public media outlets and production companies that create innovative broadcast and podcast production with broad appeal. Past radio grantees include the public radio shows Science Friday and RadioLab. Television grantees include New York’s WNET, the WGBH Educational Foundation and the Greater Washington Educational Telecommunications Association. The foundation’s new media initiative supported a large-scale project by Consumer Reports to “build and apply tools and research methodologies to map the collection, manipulation, and sharing of consumer data across three industries.” 

Grants for Arts and Culture

Sloan’s Public Understanding funding program names Books, Film, and Theater as areas of interest. Grantmaking in these areas also focuses on themes of science and technology in works of fiction and nonfiction. In a recent year, Women Make Movies received a grant for the production of a documentary film about the ethical implications of artificial intelligence. Another recent grant supported the Leon Levy Center for Biography at the City University of New York for research for “three new major biographies of scientists and/or technologists.” Other recent grants have supported the American Film Institute, the American Museum of the Moving Image, L.A. Theatre Works and Circle X Theatre’s reading and recording of Louis Slotin Sonata, a play that tells the story of Slotin’s accidental death by radiation poisoning while he was working on the Manhattan Project.

Grants for Racial Justice and Indigenous Rights

Sloan supports racial justice and indigenous rights through all of its grantmaking programs and promotes DEI initiatives through its science research and STEM education grantmaking, specifically. Additionally, it prioritizes support for projects, organizations, and institutions that cultivate diversity and serve minority and underrepresented groups in STEM at large.

Grants for New York City

The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation’ New York City program supports a broad array of nonprofit organizations in New York City and provides annual funding for the Sloan Public Service Awards, which “recognizes six outstanding public servants in New York City” with $10,000 prizes. Recent New York City grantees include the CUNY’s Lehman College, the Fund for Public Health in New York, Girls Who Invest, the Urban Justice Center and the Mr. October Foundation, which runs an out-of-school STEM program at public schools in the Bronx. 

Other Grantmaking Opportunities

Sloan also lists a Special Initiatives program that seeks to fund high reward projects that promote science and technology research as a “social good.” The program was created in 2022 and is still finding its legs and working to establish strategic priorities. However, it lists as “potential grantmaking themes […]  privacy and security issues in the digital age; science as a transnational community linked by shared values; strengthening public access to information and protecting it from misinformation; and moral, legal, and privacy issues raised by recent developments in neurotechnology, biotechnology, and nanotechnology.”

Important Grant Details: 

In recent years, Sloan’s grantmaking has ranged from about $80 to $100 million a year. Its grants range from $10,000 to $3 million, with an average grant size of about $100,000. This funder has traditionally supported scientific research but has recently branched out to support a broader range of issues, including research on clean energy, behavioral economics, film and STEM education. It prioritizes support for groups that center diversity, equity, and inclusion in their work and staff. For additional information about Sloan’s recent grantmaking, see the foundation’s searchable Grants Database, its Press Room, and Documents page.

The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation currently accepts two-page letters of inquiry for its some of its higher education, New York City and fellowship programs. Grantseekers should consult individual program pages for guidelines, deadlines, and application materials. Selected applicants will be invited to submit full proposals. General inquiries may be addressed to the foundation’s staff via email.

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