Call for Applications for William T. Grant Scholars Program 2026

The William T. grant Scholars program is designed to support career development for promising early-career researchers.

Donor Name: William T. Grant Foundation

State: All States

County: All Counties

Type of Grant: Grant

Deadline: 06/30/2026

Size of the Grant: $100,000 to $500,000

Grant Duration: Grant Duration Not Mentioned

Details:

The program funds five-year research and mentoring plans that significantly expand researchers’ expertise in new disciplines, methods, and content areas.

Focus Areas

• Reducing Inequality
  • In this focus area, they fund research studies that examine programs, policies, or practices to reduce inequality in the academic, social, behavioral, or economic outcomes of young people ages 5–25 in the United States, along dimensions of race, ethnicity, economic standing, sexual or gender minority status (e.g., LGBTQ+ youth), language minority status, or immigrant origins.
• The Foundation Funds
  • Descriptive studies that describe, explore, or explain how programs, practices, or policies reduce inequality.
  • Intervention studies that provide causal evidence on the effectiveness of programs
    or policies for reducing inequality.
• Improving the Use of Research Evidence
  • In this focus area, they support research studies that examine strategies to improve the use of research evidence in ways that benefit young people ages 5-25 in the United States. They seek proposals for studies that advance theory and build empirical knowledge on ways to improve the use of research evidence by policymakers, public agency leaders, organizational managers, intermediaries, community organizers, and other decision-makers that generally shape youth-serving systems in the United States.
• The Foundation Funds
  • Studies that build or test strategies to improve the use of existing research in policy or practice.
  • Studies that test whether and how strategies that improve the use of research evidence in turn improve decision-making and youth outcomes.

Funding Information

Each Scholar receives exactly $425,000 over five years, including up to 7.5% indirect costs.

Eligibility Criteria

• Eligible Organizations
  • The Foundation makes grants only to tax-exempt organizations. They do not make grants to individuals.
    • They  encourage proposals from organizations that are under-represented among grantee institutions, including Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Hispanic-serving Institutions, Tribal Colleges and Universities, Alaska Native-Serving Institutions, Native Hawaiian-Serving Institutions, and Asian American Native American Pacific Islander Serving Institutions.
  • Eligible Applicants
    • Applicants must be nominated by their institutions. Major divisions of an institution (e.g., College of Arts and Sciences, Medical School) may nominate
      only one applicant each year. In addition to the eligibility criteria below, deans and directors of those divisions should refer to the Review Criteria to aid them in choosing their nominees. Applicants of any discipline are eligible.
    • Applicants must have received their doctorate within seven years of submitting their application. They calculate this by adding seven to the year the doctorate was conferred. In medicine, the seven-year maximum is dated from the completion of the first residency. The month in which the degree was conferred or residency completed does not matter for this calculation.
    • Applicants must be employed in career-ladder positions. For many applicants, this means holding a tenure-track position in a university. Applicants in other types of organizations should be in positions in which there is a pathway to advancement in a research career at the organization and the organization is fiscally responsible for the applicant’s position. The award may not be used as a post-doctoral fellowship.
    • Applicants outside the United States are eligible. As with U.S. applicants, they must pursue research that has compelling policy or practice implications for youth in the United States.
    • They strive to support a diverse group of researchers in terms of race, ethnicity, gender, and seniority, and they encourage research projects led by Black or African American, Indigenous, Latinx, and/or Asian or Pacific Islander American researchers.

For more information, visit William T. Grant Foundation.