Examples
Worked examples
- Is an instance
A university-based education researcher, with an earned doctorate and institutional (501(c)(3) or public-institution) sponsorship, submits a Small Research Grants application requesting $48,000 over two years to study a curriculum intervention -- this fits the program's budget ceiling and PI eligibility rule.
- Is an instance
A multi-investigator team requests $300,000 over four years through the Large Research Grants program to run a multi-site study of teacher-evaluation policy -- this falls within the program's $125,000-$500,000 tier structure and multi-year duration allowance.
- Is an instance
A doctoral candidate whose dissertation examines the history of bilingual education policy applies directly, as an individual, for the NAEd/Spencer Dissertation Fellowship rather than through an institutional Small or Large Research Grant, since the fellowship (unlike Spencer's own research grants) is designed for and awarded to individual doctoral students.
Counter-examples
Looks similar, but isn't
- Not an instance
An individual investigator with no non-profit or public institution willing to serve as the administering organization cannot receive a Small or Large Research Grant directly from the Spencer Foundation -- the Foundation does not make awards straight to individuals for these two programs, unlike the separately run NAEd/Spencer Dissertation Fellowship.
- Not an instance
A graduate student proposed as the sole Principal Investigator on a Small or Large Research Grants application does not meet the PI eligibility rule, which requires an earned doctorate in an academic discipline or professional field; a graduate student may participate on the research team but not serve as PI or Co-PI on these two programs.
Editorial commentary
What the Spencer Foundation is
The Spencer Foundation is a private, non-federal philanthropic foundation headquartered in Chicago, established in 1962 to support research that will lead to the improvement of education. Unlike broader social-science or child-welfare funders, its mandate is exclusively education research — it does not fund school operating budgets, classroom mini-grants, direct service delivery, or advocacy work. In the U.S. education-research funding landscape it sits alongside the federal Institute of Education Sciences (IES) and the National Science Foundation’s Directorate for STEM Education as one of the three funders that define the field, and it is the most prominent private foundation among them; see CASRAI’s Education Research Funding guide for how all three compare.
For a research administrator, the practical significance of the Spencer Foundation is that it is a non-federal award source with its own eligibility rules, budget restrictions, and review timeline, distinct from federal grant mechanics governed by the Uniform Guidance in 2 CFR 200. Spencer awards are not subject to federal cost-principles the way an NIH or NSF award is, and — notably for its flagship Small Research Grants program — indirect costs are not an allowable budget line at all, which is a sharper restriction than most federal or foundation sponsors apply.
Focus areas
Spencer funds research addressing the understanding and improvement of education broadly construed: it is not limited to a single discipline (education, psychology, economics, sociology, and other fields are all in scope), a single methodology (qualitative, quantitative, and mixed-methods work are all eligible), or a single level of education (early childhood through postsecondary and adult education all qualify). The Foundation’s own framing emphasizes rigorous, intellectually ambitious, and technically sound research with the potential to inform education policy, practice, and public discourse, rather than research confined to a narrow disciplinary silo.
Grant types
Small Research Grants on Education
Supports projects with total budgets up to $50,000, for durations of up to five years. Indirect costs are explicitly excluded from the allowable budget for this program. Applicants may also request an optional supplemental award of up to $10,000 for course release, which requires the PI to carry a minimum course load. Principal Investigators and Co-PIs must hold an earned doctorate in an academic discipline or professional field; graduate students may be part of the research team but cannot serve as PI or Co-PI.
Large Research Grants on Education
Supports projects with total budgets of $125,000 to $500,000, structured across three funding tiers ($125,000-$250,000; $250,001-$375,000; $375,001-$500,000), for durations of one to five years. As with the Small Research Grants program, applicants must be affiliated with an eligible administering institution — a university, school district, research organization, or other non-profit or public/governmental entity — since Spencer does not make awards directly to individuals under either research-grant program.
NAEd/Spencer Dissertation Fellowship
A separately administered mechanism, run jointly with the National Academy of Education (NAEd) rather than through Spencer’s own research-grant portal. It provides a $27,500 fellowship directly to individual doctoral candidates whose dissertations show potential for bringing fresh, productive perspectives to the history, theory, analysis, or practice of formal or informal education. Fellowship tenure runs a minimum of one academic year (nine months) up to a maximum of two calendar years (24 months). Because it is awarded to an individual rather than routed through an institutional administering organization, research-administration offices should not assume it follows the same proposal-submission or award-setup workflow as Spencer’s Small or Large Research Grants.
Application process
Spencer’s programs run on their own cycles, separate from federal deadlines like Grants.gov or NIH’s standard receipt dates, and program windows and deadlines change year to year — applicants and grants offices should always confirm current dates on spencer.org rather than relying on a prior cycle. In general, Spencer’s programs use a staged process: an initial step (an intent-to-apply or a full initial application, depending on the program) followed, for some programs, by an invited full proposal, rather than a single-stage submission. Full research-grant applications are submitted through Spencer’s online application portal and include a proposal summary, budget and budget justification, a research narrative describing methodology and significance (word-limited, commonly around 1,800 words for the Small Research Grants program), a project timeline, and personnel/team credentials. All proposals must be submitted in English with budgets expressed in U.S. dollars regardless of the applicant institution’s country, since Spencer accepts applications from outside as well as inside the United States.
Worked examples
In scope: A doctorally-qualified investigator, sponsored by their university as the administering institution, submits a Large Research Grants application requesting $250,000 over three years to study the effects of a district-level literacy intervention. This fits the program’s budget tier, duration limit, and institutional-sponsorship requirement.
In scope: A doctoral candidate applies directly for the NAEd/Spencer Dissertation Fellowship to fund the final year of a dissertation on assessment policy in higher education — eligible because the fellowship, unlike Spencer’s institutional research grants, is designed for direct award to an individual doctoral student.
Counter-example
A proposal for a school district’s direct classroom technology purchase, with no research question, hypothesis, or intended peer-reviewed dissemination, would not fit any Spencer Foundation program — the Foundation funds research about education, not education service delivery or program implementation itself.
Related terms
See also
Machine-readable encodings
Use in your systems
<role vocab="credit"
vocab-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/"
vocab-term="Spencer Foundation"
vocab-term-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/spencer-foundation" />{
"@context": "https://schema.org",
"@type": "DefinedTerm",
"@id": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/spencer-foundation",
"name": "Spencer Foundation",
"identifier": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/spencer-foundation",
"description": "The Spencer Foundation is a private, non-federal U.S. foundation dedicated exclusively to funding research aimed at the understanding and improvement of education, broadly construed across disciplines, methodologies, and education levels. A project qualifies as Spencer-funded research if it is submitted under one of the Foundation's active grant mechanisms -- principally the Small Research Grants on Education program (budgets up to $50,000) or the Large Research Grants on Education program (budgets of $125,000 to $500,000) -- through an eligible non-profit or public administering institution, since the Foundation does not award grants directly to individuals. A related but separately administered mechanism, the NAEd/Spencer Dissertation Fellowship, supports individual doctoral candidates directly through the National Academy of Education rather than through Spencer's own research-grant portal.",
"inDefinedTermSet": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/domain/funding-finance#set",
"url": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/spencer-foundation",
"sameAs": [],
"license": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
"publisher": {
"@id": "https://casrai.org/#organization"
},
"dateModified": "2026-07-23T12:42:55",
"inLanguage": "en"
}
