The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation is a private, New York-based philanthropic foundation established in 1934 by Alfred Pritchard Sloan Jr., the longtime president and CEO of General Motors. It is one of the oldest and largest general-purpose science philanthropies in the United States, and a name research administrators encounter regularly when a principal investigator wants to pursue original, often higher-risk work in the physical sciences, economics, or science communication that doesn’t fit neatly inside a federal program announcement.
This guide covers Sloan’s general grantmaking programs — the ones an institution applies to on a PI’s behalf. It does not cover the separately administered Sloan Research Fellowships individual award (see the dedicated section below on how that program differs), and it should not be confused with the general concept of a foundation grant as a funding mechanism.
What the Sloan Foundation funds
Sloan organizes its grantmaking into a small number of standing program areas, all rooted in its founding charter purpose of advancing “the welfare of mankind” through science, technology, and economic performance. As of this writing, the Foundation’s programs cluster around:
- Science — core disciplinary research in fields such as physics, chemistry, mathematics, computer science, neuroscience, and ocean sciences, including support for research infrastructure, scientific software, and data/methods work that underpins those fields.
- Economics — research on the economics of science and technology: industrial strategy, emerging technologies, regional economic development, scientific careers and labor markets, funding practices, and the productivity of the research enterprise itself. This is a distinctive niche for Sloan relative to most science funders — it treats the research system as an object of study, not just a beneficiary of funding.
- STEM Higher Education — programs aimed at strengthening pathways into STEM careers and improving equity and opportunity in STEM graduate and faculty populations.
- Public Understanding of Science, Technology & Economics — support for books, film, television, theater, radio, and digital media that build public science literacy, plus related public-engagement initiatives.
- Digital Information Technology — work on the infrastructure and governance of digital and open-science tools, including data curation, research software, and open-source scientific computing.
- Energy & Environment, and Working Longer — narrower, more recent programs on energy-system research and the economics/policy of extended working lives, respectively.
Program scope and names shift periodically as the Foundation adjusts strategy, so an applicant or grants office should always confirm current program definitions and open calls directly at sloan.org/programs rather than relying on a static list — including this one.
A distinctive footprint in research infrastructure
Research administrators may recognize Sloan’s name from infrastructure it has funded rather than from a direct application. Two examples relevant to research data management practice: the Foundation provided founding support for the Data Curation Network, the multi-institution shared-curator-staffing consortium hosted by the University of Minnesota Libraries, and it funded the original NISO Alternative Assessment Metrics (Altmetrics) Initiative that produced the field’s early altmetrics definitions and use cases. Neither of these came out of a competitive research-project proposal in the ordinary sense — they’re illustrative of Sloan’s willingness to fund field-level infrastructure and standards work, not just individual PI-led studies.
What the Sloan Foundation explicitly does not fund
Sloan is unusually direct, compared to many peer foundations, about publishing a negative scope alongside its positive one. Per the Foundation’s own published guidance, it does not make grants:
- in religion;
- for medical research (including disease-specific, clinical, or translational biomedical work); or
- for research in the humanities.
This is a meaningful distinction for a grants office triaging a faculty request: Sloan’s “Science” program funds physical, computational, and life-science research broadly, but it is not a biomedical or health-research funder in the way a disease-specific foundation or the NIH is. A PI proposing clinical or disease-mechanism research should generally be redirected elsewhere; a PI proposing methods, instrumentation, computational, or foundational-science work is more plausibly in scope. As with the program list above, applicants should verify current exclusions directly with the Foundation before investing proposal-development time, since foundation scope statements can be updated.
Not to be confused with: the Sloan Research Fellowships
The Foundation’s best-known program by public visibility is the Sloan Research Fellowships, an annual competition that recognizes early-career researchers and faculty across chemistry, computer science, economics, mathematics, neuroscience, ocean sciences, and physics. It is administered on a fundamentally different track from the general grant programs described above:
- Fellowships are awarded to individual early-career researchers, not to institutions for a defined project;
- candidates are nominated, typically by a department chair or senior colleague, rather than self-applying through the general grants process; and
- the award is a relatively unrestricted, time-limited research stipend intended to give an early-career scientist flexibility, rather than a project grant tied to specific deliverables.
A sponsored-programs office fielding a faculty question about “Sloan funding” should confirm early which track is actually relevant — a Fellowship nomination runs through a completely different internal process (and deadline) than a standard Sloan program-area proposal.
Who can apply, and how
As with most large general-purpose foundations, Sloan’s general grant programs are structured around organizational applicants — typically accredited nonprofit institutions such as universities, museums, and research organizations — rather than direct awards to individual researchers (the Fellowships track above is the individual-researcher exception). Programs and current guidelines, including whether a given program area accepts unsolicited letters of inquiry or works primarily through invited proposals, are published and updated at sloan.org/grants/apply. Because Sloan’s programs are narrower and more strategically directed than a broad federal funding opportunity, research development staff should read the specific program page closely for fit before drafting a letter of inquiry — a generic “basic science” pitch is less likely to land than one framed against the program’s stated current priorities.
How Sloan compares to other private science foundations
For a grants office weighing where a given proposal might fit, Sloan sits alongside other major U.S. general-science and biomedical-adjacent foundations that CASRAI covers separately — see the W.M. Keck Foundation guide for a foundation with a similar emphasis on distinctive, high-risk basic science (but including medical research, unlike Sloan), the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation guide for chemistry- and instrumentation-focused funding, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation guide for the health-focused funder that sits in the space Sloan explicitly excludes. Also relevant: the Foundation vs. Federal Indirect Cost Rates comparison, since like most private foundations, Sloan’s indirect-cost allowances differ materially from a federal negotiated rate — confirm the applicable rate cap in the specific program’s guidelines before budgeting a proposal.
Frequently asked questions
When was the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation founded?
1934, by Alfred Pritchard Sloan Jr., then president and CEO of General Motors. It remains headquartered in New York City.
Does the Sloan Foundation fund medical research?
No. The Foundation’s published guidance explicitly excludes medical research, along with religion and humanities research, from its general grantmaking scope.
Can an individual researcher apply directly to the Sloan Foundation?
Not through the general grant programs, which are made to organizations (typically nonprofit institutions). The exception is the Sloan Research Fellowships, an individual early-career award made through nomination rather than direct application.
Is the Sloan Research Fellowship the same as a Sloan Foundation grant?
No. The Fellowships are a separate, nomination-based individual award program distinct from the Foundation’s institutional grant programs in Science, Economics, STEM Higher Education, Public Understanding of Science, and related areas.
What is the Sloan Foundation’s Public Understanding of Science program?
A program area supporting books, film, television, theater, radio, and digital media projects intended to build public understanding of and engagement with science, technology, and economics — distinct from its research-funding programs.
Where can I find current Sloan Foundation application guidelines?
Directly at sloan.org — program scope, funding priorities, and application mechanics are updated periodically, so treat the Foundation’s own program pages as the authoritative current source rather than any third-party summary, including this one.
