The Foundation for Child Development is currently accepting proposals for its 2025 Young Scholars Program (YSP).
Donor Name: Foundation for Child Development (FCD)
State: All States
County: All Counties
Type of Grant: Program
Deadline: 06/03/2024
Size of the Grant: $100,000 to $500,000
Grant Duration: Grant Duration Not Mentioned
Details:
YSP supports scholarship for early-career researchers. The program funds research projects that aim to clarify how, why, and for whom policies, programs, and practices support the early care and education (ECE) workforce and shape children’s early learning experiences and well-being in early childhood, defined as birth through age eight.
Research Focus
YSP funds studies that align with the Foundation’s research focus areas. In 2015, the Foundation launched a 10-year initiative focused on strengthening the capacity and status of the ECE workforce across diverse settings. For the 2025 application cycle, YSP seeks to support early-career scholars with interests in conducting policy- and practice-relevant research under this initiative.
Within this frame, the Foundation’s programmatic priorities are dedicated to supporting the workforce and identifying research with the potential to:
- Advance the status and well-being of the ECE workforce;
- Enhance the quality of practice of the ECE workforce; or,
- Strengthen ECE leadership to create more supportive environments for the workforce.
With 2025 marking the final year of the Foundation’s 10-year initiative focused on strengthening the capacity and status of the ECE workforce, the 2025 YSP application cycle will be the last cohort of Young Scholars awarded under these programmatic priorities. For this reason, Promising Scholars will not be awarded in 2025.
Funding Information
Research awards are up to $225,000 for primary data collection and analysis and up to $180,000 for secondary data analysis.
Priority Populations
The Foundation is specifically interested in research that can strengthen the ECE workforce who serve the YSP priority populations of young children who experience the harmful effects of poverty, racism, xenophobia, prejudice, and discrimination across the birth to age eight continuum. The priority populations include:
- Children who experience poverty
- Children of color, including those with Asian American, Latinx, Black/African American, and/or Indigenous backgrounds
- Children in immigrant or refugee families, including child migrants, undocumented minors,
- Children whose family members have been detained or deported
- Children who are multilingual learners
- Children with special education classifications
- Children experiencing homelessness
- Children who experience trauma or child maltreatment.
Who Should Apply?
YSP is an open competition. The Foundation is committed to diversity and equity in the work and through the grantees. To increase the diversity of research perspectives, the Foundation encourages applications from:
- Scholars who are from underrepresented groups that have historically experienced poverty, racism, xenophobia, prejudice, and discrimination. Such groups include, but are not limited to, researchers of color, first-generation college graduates, and researchers from low-income communities and/or immigrant families
- Scholars who represent a variety of disciplines and methodological approaches
- Principal Investigators must have received their terminal doctoral degree (e.g., Ph.D., Ed.D., Psy.D., J.D., M.D.) within ten years of submitting their applications to the program. In medicine, the date of the completion of the first residency is used for this calculation.
- For the duration of the award, Principal Investigators must be full-time, paid employees of the affiliated 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization (located within the United States and its territories). The organization will receive and process the Foundation’s grant, as well as contribute material and in-kind support for the funded research project.
- The affiliated 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization (such as research firms, colleges, or universities) must have a minimum annual operating budget of $2.5 million, a minimum three-year track record in leading and conducting at least three multi-year research projects (i.e., at least three over the last three years), describe research as a core activity in recent annual reports, and have produced and publicly disseminated a minimum of five publications (over the last five years) reporting the results of their research.
- The applicant is the sole Principal Investigator and will lead the proposed research (no Co- Investigators). An applicant may only submit one Letter of Intent (LOI) or full proposal application per YSP application cycle.
- More than one applicant may apply from a single institution per YSP application cycle.
- Returning applicants are welcome and strongly encouraged to re-apply.
For more information, visit FCD.
