Opportunities for Funding
The foundation makes grants to US based qualified charitable organizations. To date we have funded organizations that address the following areas of interest:
Environment (US headquartered organizations operating programs in the US or elsewhere in the world),
Human Services
Disaster relief (US headquartered organizations responding to disasters in the US or elsewhere in the world on an occasional basis),
Other (US headquartered organizations operating programs in the US or elsewhere in the world).
Nonprofit organizations that qualify for public charity status under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code or public schools and libraries are eligible for contributions or grants.
Two yearly grant application cycles.
Funding Opportunity Announcement No. DE-FOA-0002829, titled BIL-Carbon Utilization Procurement Grants Under Bipartisan Infrastructure Law Section 40302
The overall objective of the planned Funding Opportunity Announcement is to support DOE’s current vision of the Carbon Utilization Procurement Grants Program which will illustrate that several incumbent products can be replaced or supplemented with alternatives that are derived from the conversion of anthropogenic carbon oxides, demonstrating that significant net reductions in greenhouse gas emissions are possible. These grants will illustrate that more sustainable alternatives are viable and will promote the deployment of these products even after the grant ends.
Applicants have until April 2025 to submit a Concept Paper. If the applicant is invited to submit a full application, they must do so within 45 days from the receipt of that invitation/notification.
This program is designed to assist Native American tribes in improving core library services for their communities. Reflecting IMLS’s agency-level goals of championing lifelong learning, strengthening community engagement, and advancing collections stewardship and access, the goals for this program are to:
• Improve digital services to support needs for education, workforce development, economic and business development, health information, critical thinking skills, and digital literacy skills.
• Improve educational programs related to specific topics and content areas of interest to library patrons and community-based users.
• Enhance the preservation and revitalization of Native American cultures and languages.
Seem to be a regular, yearly, opportunity.
This program is designed to assist Native Hawaiian libraries in improving core library services for their communities. Reflecting IMLS’s agency-level goals of championing lifelong learning, strengthening community engagement, and advancing collections stewardship and access, the goals for this program are to:
Improve digital services to support needs for education, workforce development, economic and business development, health information, critical thinking skills, and digital literacy skills.
Improve educational programs related to specific topics and content areas of interest to library patrons and community-based users.
Enhance the preservation and revitalization of Native Hawaiian culture and language.
Projects may involve, but are not limited to, activities such as educational programming for all ages; oral history collection and documentation; digital media and technology enhancements; institutional planning and policy development; professional training, internships, and mentorships; supporting and engaging with cultural practitioners and scholars; research and development of language and cultural material and tools; digitization and digital asset management, and refitting of library spaces for staff and public.
Seem to be a regular, yearly, opportunity
The purpose of this program is to guarantee up to 90 percent of the unpaid principal and interest on loans borrowed by Indian tribes to support energy development projects and activities. The funding agency is particularly focused on catalyzing the use of commercially available technologies in Indian country. Projects employing commercial technologies are preferred. The program will support a broad range of energy-related projects, including:
Electricity generation, transmission and/or distribution facilities, utilizing renewable or conventional energy sources
Energy storage facilities, whether or not integrated with any of the above
Energy resource extraction, refining or processing facilities
Energy transportation facilities, including pipelines
District heating and cooling facilities
Cogeneration facilities
Distributed energy project portfolios, including portfolios of smaller distributed generation and storage facilities employed pursuant to a unified business plan
The program has the following policy priorities, as they relate to disadvantaged and tribal comunities:
Decrease energy burden
Decrease environmental exposure and burdens
Increase access to low-cost capital
Increase the clean energy job pipeline and job training for individuals
Increase clean energy enterprise creation
Increase energy democracy, including community ownership and other economic benefits associated with the energy transition
Increase parity in clean energy technology access and adoption
Increase energy resilience
Funding to be continued until FY 2027
The NSF SBIR/STTR programs support moving scientific excellence and technological innovation from the lab to the market. By funding startups and small businesses, NSF helps build a strong national economy and stimulates the creation of novel products, services, and solutions in private, public, or government sectors with potential for broad impact; strengthens the role of small business in meeting federal research and development needs; increases the commercial application of federally supported research results; and develops and expands the US workforce, especially by fostering and encouraging participation by socially and economically disadvantaged and women-owned small businesses.
The NSF SBIR/STTR Phase II programs provide non-dilutive funding for the development of a broad range of technologies based on discoveries in science and engineering with potential for societal and economic impacts. Unlike fundamental or basic research activities that focus on scientific and engineering discovery itself, the NSF SBIR/STTR programs support the creation of opportunities to move use-inspired and translational discoveries out of the lab and into the market or other use at scale, through startups and small businesses. The NSF SBIR/STTR programs do not solicit specific technologies or procure goods and services. The funding provided is non-dilutive. Any invention conceived or reduced to practice with the assistance of SBIR/STTR funding is subject to the Bayh/Dole Act. For more information, refer to Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs), #75.
NSF encourages input and participation from the full spectrum of diverse talent that society has to offer which includes underrepresented and underserved communities.
NSF seeks unproven, leading-edge, technology innovations that demonstrate the following characteristics:
The innovations are underpinned and enabled by a new scientific discovery or meaningful engineering innovation.
The innovations still require intensive technical research and development to be fully embedded in a reliable product or service.
The innovations have not yet been reduced to practice by anyone and it is not guaranteed, at present, that doing so is technically possible.
The innovations provide a strong competitive advantage that are not easily replicable by competitors (even technically proficient ones).
Once reduced to practice, the innovations are expected to result in a product or service that would either be disruptive to existing markets or create new markets/new market segments.
The NSF SBIR/STTR programs focus on stimulating technical innovation from diverse entrepreneurs and start-ups and small businesses by translating new scientific and engineering concepts into products and services that can be scaled and commercialized into sustainable businesses with significant societal benefits. The program provides non-dilutive funding for research and development (R&D) of use-inspired scientific and engineering activities for startups and small businesses. In Phase I, the emphasis is on de-risking those aspects preventing the innovation from reaching technical feasibility and driving the intended impact. In Phase II, R&D continues, but the emphasis starts to shift away from research and to development challenges which, if solved, would result in new sustainable competitive advantages to allow the company to differentiate itself and drive new value propositions to the market and society.
This NSF program is governed by 15 USC 638 and the National Science Foundation Act of 1950, as amended (42 USC §1861, et seq.).
Other application deadlines: 11/6/24, 3/5/25, 7/2/25, 11/5/25
The NSF SBIR/STTR program encourages startups and small businesses to submit proposals across nearly all areas of science and engineering. *
While startups and small businesses face many challenges, the NSF SBIR/STTR funding is intended to specifically focus on challenges associated with technological innovation; that is, on the creation of new products, services, and other scalable solutions based on fundamental science or engineering. A successful Phase I proposal demonstrates how NSF funding will help the small business create a proof-of-concept or prototype by retiring technical risk. Funding from NSF may only be used to conduct research and development (R&D) to demonstrate technical feasibility.
NSF seeks SBIR/STTR proposals that represent success in three distinct, but related merit review criteria: Intellectual Merit, Broader Impacts, and Commercialization Potential.
The Intellectual Merit criterion encompasses the potential to advance knowledge and leverages fundamental science or engineering research techniques to overcoming technical risk. This can be conveyed through the Research and Development (R&D) of the project. R&D is broadly defined in 2 CFR § 200.1, but specified for the NSF SBIR/STTR program as follows:
the application of creative, original, and potentially transformative concepts to systematically study, create, adapt, or manipulate the structure and behavior of the natural or man-made worlds;
the use of the scientific method to propose well-reasoned, well-organized activities based on sound theory, computation, measurement, observation, experiment, or modeling;
the demonstration of a well-qualified individual, team, or organization ready to deploy novel methods of creating, acquiring, processing, manipulating, storing, or disseminating data or metadata; and/or
the novel integration of new theories, analysis, data, or methods regarding cognition, heuristics, and related phenomena.
NSF SBIR/STTR proposals are evaluated via the concepts of Technical Risk and Technological Innovation. Technical Risk assumes that the possibility of technical failure exists for an envisioned product, service, or solution to be successfully developed. This risk is present even to those suitably skilled in the art of the component, subsystem, method, technique, tool, or algorithm in question. Technological Innovation indicates that the new product or service is differentiated from current products or services; that is, the new technology holds the potential to result in a product or service with a substantial and durable advantage over competing solutions on the market. It also generally provides a barrier to entry for competitors. This means that if the new product, service, or solution is successfully realized and brought to the market, it should be difficult for a well-qualified, competing firm to reverse-engineer or otherwise neutralize the competitive advantage generated by leveraging fundamental science or engineering research techniques.
The Broader Impacts criterion encompasses the potential benefit to society and contribution to the achievement of specific, desired societal outcomes as outlined in the NSF PAPPG Merit Review Broader Impacts Criteria.
The NSF SBIR/STTR program funds the development of new, high-risk technology innovations intended to generate positive societal and economic outcomes. Proposers should also consider the Broader Impacts Review Criterion at 42 U.S.C. §1862p-14:
Increasing the economic competitiveness of the United States.
Advancing of the health and welfare of the American public.
Supporting the national defense of the United States.
Enhancing partnerships between academia and industry in the United States.
Developing an American STEM workforce that is globally competitive through improved pre-kindergarten through grade 12 STEM education and teacher development and improved undergraduate STEM education and instruction.
Improving public scientific literacy and engagement with science and technology in the United States.
Expanding participation of groups underrepresented in STEM.
The Commercialization Potential of the proposed product or service is the potential for the resulting technology to disrupt the targeted market segment by way of a strong and durable value proposition for the customers or users.
The proposed product or service addresses an unmet, important, and scalable need for the target customer base.
The proposed small business is structured and staffed to focus on aggressive commercialization of the product/service.
The proposed small business can provide evidence of good product-market fit (as validated by direct and significant interaction with customers and related stakeholders).
More details and information regarding the NSF SBIR/STTR merit review criteria can be found in Section VI of this solicitation.
* The NSF SBIR/STTR program does not support clinical trials or proposals from companies whose commercialization pathway involves the production, distribution, or sale by the company of chemical components, natural or synthetic variations thereof, or other derivatives related to Schedule I controlled substances.
Other application deadlines: 11/6/24, 3/5/25, 7/2/25, 11/5/25. APPLICANTS MUST BE INVITED TO APPLY! Submit a Project Pitch here.
Applications for grants are considered in the following areas:
• Education
• Social Service
• Healthcare
• Civic and Cultural
• Environmental
The categories above are not intended to limit the interest of the Foundation from considering other worthwhile projects. In general, the Foundation guidelines are broad to give us flexibility in providing grants.
The majority of our grants are made in the U.S. However, like Dr. Scholl, we recognize the need for a global outlook. Non-U.S. grants are given to organizations where directors have knowledge of the grantee.
Nonprofits required to have 3 years of financial activity at minimum. Application opens annually on October 1st.
The Brabson Family Foundation (formerly Brabson Library and Education Foundation) is a philanthropic family foundation that honors the grantors and reflects the family’s passion for bold, innovative ideas that may have a significant and long-term impact especially in education, sciences and the arts.
Yearly grant cycles from September 1 - March 1.
This program is designed to assist Native American tribes in improving core library services for their communities. Reflecting IMLS’s agency-level goals of championing lifelong learning, strengthening community engagement, and advancing collections stewardship and access, the goals for this program are to:
Improve services for learning and accessing information in a variety of formats to support needs for education, workforce development, economic and business development, health information, critical thinking skills, digital literacy skills, and financial literacy, and other types of literacy skills.
Enhance the skills of the current library workforce and leadership through training, continuing education, and opportunities for professional development.
Seems to be a regular, yearly, opportunity