Selected Open Funding Opportunities
RDO curates this list of open funding opportunities in the Humanities, Arts, and Interpretive Social Sciences to highlight large, collaborative, and/or strategic funding opportunities that may be of particular interest to the Stanford community. Opportunity descriptions have been compiled from funder announcements, program solicitations, and CFR. This page will be updated regularly to spotlight new opportunities. See RDO's archive (SUNet ID required) for opportunities previously featured on this list.
| Title/Sponsor | Deadline | Description | Amount/Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Russel Sage Foundation Core Research Grants | 3/11/25 | RSF will accept letters of inquiry (LOIs) under the core programs for Race, Ethnicity and Immigration and Behavioral Science and Decision Making in Context. The foundation will also accept LOIs under its special initiatives on Promoting Educational Attainment and Economic Mobility among Racially, Ethnically, and Economically Diverse Groups after the 2023 Supreme Court Decision to Ban Race-Conscious Admissions at Colleges and Universities and Immigration and Immigrant Integration | up to $200,000 |
| NEA Creative Writing Fellowships (Prose) | 3/12/25 | This fellowship program offers grants in prose (fiction and creative nonfiction) to published creative writers that enable recipients to set aside time for writing, research, travel, and general career advancement. | $50,000 |
| AHRC BRAID DOT: Responsible AI Collaborations with US Researchers | 3/20/25 | This program accept applications of US-UK teams that take on questions around the ethical, legal, and societal implications of AI. Applications should focus on one or more of the following: AI’s impact on public media and discourse, AI’s impact on resilience and sustainability, and law and regulation in relation to AI innovation. |
Individuals: up to £150,000 or $75,000 Teams: up to £150,000 or $150,000 |
| Sloan Fdn Interdisciplinary Social Science Research on Energy System Interactions in the US | 3/25/25 (LoI) | The Energy and Environment program at the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation is currently inviting Letters of Inquiry for interdisciplinary, collaborative social science research projects led by early- and mid-career scholars that analyze the systemic interactions and connections associated with the transition to a low-carbon economy in the United States. This Call for Letters of Inquiry is deliberately framed broadly to encourage the submission of research project ideas that examine the links and implications between different components of the energy system and how they relate to other aspects of the economy. | $500K-$1M |
| NEH Fellowships | 4/9/25 | NEH Fellowships are granted to individual scholars, providing recipients time to conduct research or to produce books, monographs, peer-reviewed articles, e-books, born-digital materials, translations with annotations or a critical apparatus, or critical editions resulting from previous research. Projects may be at any stage of development. | up to $60,000 ($5,000 per month) |
| NEA Research Grants in the Arts | Part 1: 3/25/25 Part 2: 4/3/25 |
Research Grants in the Arts support research studies that investigate the value and/or impact of the arts, either as individual components of the U.S. arts ecosystem or as they interact with each other and/or with other domains of American life. | $20,000 to $100,000 |
| NEH State and Impact of the Humanities | 4/16/25 | This new program, the first out of NEH's Office of Data and Evaluation, supports data-grounded research studies that investigate the state, impact, and value of the humanities in the United States. Research designs may be quantitative, qualitative, or mixed | Level I: up to $75,000 Level II: up to $150,000 |
| NEH Humanities Initiatives | 5/6/25 (optional draft due 3/25) | Humanities Initiatives grants can help strengthen the teaching and study of the humanities at colleges and universities by supporting the development of new or improvement of existing humanities programs, educational resources, or coursework. | up to $150,000 |
| Spencer Large Research Grants | 5/14/25 (LoI) 6/17/25 (Full Proposal) |
This program supports education research projects that will contribute to the improvement of education, broadly conceived. It is "field-initiated" in that proposal submissions are not in response to a specific request for a particular research topic, discipline, design, method, or location. | $125,000 to $500,000 |
| Robert Wood Johnson Fdn Exploring Equitable Futures | rolling through 10/15/25 |
This call for proposals supports projects that seed new and unconventional ideas that could radically advance health equity for generations to come. The foundation seeks to fund projects that We aim to fund projects that:
|
Varies |
Federal (and some non-federal) opportunities are subject to the university's Facilities & Administration (F&A) cost rates. For many foundation funders, the university has approved lower rates, which can be found in the Pre-Approved IDC Exception List.
For some foundations you must request clearance to apply. Be sure to check CFR's Clearance Restricted Foundations list before submitting a letter of inquiry or proposal.
Recurring Funding Opportunities by Topic
- Digital Humanities Research, last update June 2024
- Public Humanities Research, last update July 2024
- Funding Opportunities for Collaborative Research from the National Endowment for the Humanities, last update May 2023
- Recurring Limited Submissions Programs
Other Resources
- Pursuing Extramural Funding - A Primer for Faculty in the Humanities, Arts, and Interpretive Social Sciences: This resource, created by RDO for Stanford faculty in the Humanities, Arts, and Interpretive Social Sciences, provides a general overview of the process of applying for extramural funding as a Principal Investigator (PI) at Stanford.
- Stanford University's Corporate and Foundation Relations (CFR) maintains a more comprehensive list of foundation funding opportunities. The CFR team can also provide insight around funding priorities and application processes for private funders, as well as tailored prospect research.
- DoResearch's Find Funding links to university-supported resources, including Pivot and grants.gov, that allow the user to search funding opportunities in their area(s) of interest.
- The National Research Council (NRC) has identified a list of awards in a range of disciplines that include research/scholarship awards, fellowships, and memberships in honorary societies.
Funding Opportunities in Other Disciplines
- The RDO team also curates a list of funding opportunities for researchers in STEM*, including social scientists who employ quantitative methods.
- The Research Management Group at Stanford's School of Medicine keeps a list of funding opportunities for medical researchers.