The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation is the largest private funder of arts, culture, and humanities work in the United States, with an endowment of roughly $7.8 billion at the end of 2025. Where most of CASRAI’s other large-foundation coverage – the Simons Foundation, the W. M. Keck Foundation, the John Templeton Foundation – centers on mathematics, the physical and life sciences, or science-adjacent inquiry, Mellon is structured around the opposite end of the research spectrum: the arts, the humanities, and the institutions and people who sustain them. For a research office or humanities scholar, that distinction shapes almost everything about how the foundation operates, from what counts as a fundable project to how an applicant gets in the door.
What is the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation?
The foundation was established in 1969 through the merger of two smaller philanthropies, the Avalon Foundation and the Old Dominion Foundation, which had been created separately by Ailsa Mellon Bruce and Paul Mellon, the children of banker and Treasury Secretary Andrew W. Mellon. It is named for their father but is a distinct legal entity from other Mellon-named institutions (for example, Carnegie Mellon University, which traces to a different Mellon family philanthropic history). Since its founding, the foundation reports having made more than $9 billion in charitable grants; in 2024 alone it awarded approximately $555 million across roughly 699 grants, according to its own published financial disclosures.
Current grantmaking program areas
As of 2026, Mellon organizes its grantmaking into five areas, each with its own strategy and staff:
- Arts and Culture – support for artists, arts organizations, and the infrastructure (presenting venues, service organizations, archives) that sustains creative practice.
- Higher Learning – funding for the humanities and liberal arts within colleges and universities, including curricular innovation, faculty support, and institutional capacity at four-year, degree-granting institutions.
- Humanities in Place – support for telling a fuller range of American histories and lived experiences, including preservation of archival materials, historic sites, and public history projects that are physically grounded in specific communities.
- Public Knowledge – funding aimed at keeping scholarly and cultural knowledge accessible, spanning libraries, archives, digital infrastructure, and open scholarship.
- Presidential Initiatives – signature, foundation-led efforts (past and current examples include work on monuments and public memory, Puerto Rico and its diaspora, and the criminal legal system) that sit outside the four standing program areas.
For a research office, digital humanities projects are a useful reference point: Mellon has long been one of the field’s principal funders, alongside the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) – but Mellon is a private foundation with its own strategy and application process, entirely independent of NEH’s federal grant mechanisms and requirements.
How the funding model actually works
Mellon’s grantmaking is predominantly invitation-based rather than open-application, which is the single most important operational fact for a research office to understand before spending time on a proposal. In the foundation’s own description of the process, program staff proactively identify and build relationships with organizations, scholars, and creators working in areas that match current strategy, and most grants originate from staff-initiated invitations rather than unsolicited submissions.
That said, the foundation does periodically issue open calls for proposals within specific program areas – for example, Higher Learning has run an open call for concepts inviting accredited nonprofit four-year institutions offering a liberal arts education to submit ideas, and Humanities in Place has accepted applications on a rolling basis through the foundation’s online grants portal (hosted on the Fluxx platform). Because open calls are time-limited and vary by year and program area, the most reliable way to track them is to monitor the foundation’s own grant-seekers page and sign up for its email announcements rather than assuming a standing, evergreen application channel exists.
Eligibility
Mellon funds organizations, not individuals. Eligible applicants are U.S. organizations recognized as section 501(c)(3) public charities, or international organizations that are the equivalent of a U.S. public charity. The foundation does not make direct grants to individuals, does not fund K-12 education, does not provide tuition support, and does not sponsor fundraising events. A university, museum, library, archive, learned society, or arts organization applies as the institution; an individual scholar cannot apply to Mellon directly the way they might to an early-career fellowship program.
What a research office should actually do
- Confirm the project fits squarely within one of the five current program areas before investing staff time – Mellon’s strategy pages change over time, so check current framing on mellon.org rather than relying on older program names (the foundation has restructured its program areas more than once in the past decade).
- Sign up for Mellon’s grant-seeker communications to be notified of open calls, since most application windows are time-limited and not permanently open.
- Treat cold, unsolicited full proposals as a low-probability path; where the foundation’s own guidance allows for an initial inquiry outside an open call, use it to establish institutional fit before preparing a full narrative and budget.
- Route the application through the institution’s sponsored-programs or advancement office as an organizational applicant, not an individual one, consistent with the eligibility rules above.
How Mellon compares to peer foundations CASRAI covers
Large private foundations funding research differ substantially in subject scope, eligibility, and process, and Mellon sits at a distinctive point on that map:
- Subject scope – Mellon is arts- and humanities-specific. By contrast, the Simons Foundation concentrates on mathematics, the physical sciences, life sciences, and autism research, and the W. M. Keck Foundation funds distinctive, high-risk science, engineering, and medical research. The John Templeton Foundation occupies a middle ground, funding work at the intersection of science, philosophy, and theology. Foundations like the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and the Andrew Carnegie Foundation (formerly Carnegie Corporation of New York) fund across broader portfolios that include education and international affairs alongside the arts.
- Application model – Mellon’s staff-driven, invitation-first model is similar in spirit to Carnegie’s largely proactive, relationship-based approach, and differs from foundations that run more standing, publicly posted funding programs.
- Eligibility – like most large general-purpose foundations, Mellon requires an eligible nonprofit organization as the applicant and does not fund individuals directly, which is consistent with the pattern across most of the large foundations CASRAI has covered.
The practical takeaway for a research administrator: Mellon is the right foundation to have on the radar specifically for arts, humanities, and humanities-adjacent digital and public-history work, and a poor fit for STEM proposals that would be better matched to Simons, Keck, or a federal science agency.
Frequently asked questions
Does the Mellon Foundation fund individual researchers?
No. Mellon funds only eligible nonprofit organizations – U.S. 501(c)(3) public charities or their international equivalents – not individuals. A scholar interested in Mellon funding needs an eligible institutional applicant, typically their university, museum, library, or another qualifying organization, to submit on their behalf.
How do I apply for a Mellon Foundation grant?
Most Mellon grants originate from the foundation’s own staff identifying and inviting potential grantees rather than from unsolicited applications. The realistic path for most institutions is to monitor Mellon’s periodic open calls for proposals (announced via its grant-seekers page and email list) and apply within a specific program area when a call is active, rather than submitting a general, uninvited proposal.
Is the Mellon Foundation the same as the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH)?
No. Mellon is a private foundation funded from its own endowment, while NEH is a federal grantmaking agency funded through congressional appropriations. Both are major funders of humanities work in the U.S. and have supported overlapping fields such as digital humanities, but they operate under entirely separate governance, eligibility rules, and application processes.
Is the Mellon Foundation related to Carnegie Mellon University?
Not directly. Carnegie Mellon University’s name reflects a 1967 merger involving the Mellon Institute, founded by Andrew W. Mellon’s family. The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation is a separate philanthropic organization, created in 1969, though both trace back to the same Mellon family philanthropic tradition.
How large are typical Mellon Foundation grants?
Grant size varies widely by program area and project scale, from smaller planning-level and project grants up to large, multi-year awards for major institutional or field-wide initiatives. Because figures vary considerably by program and year, a research office should treat any specific dollar range as illustrative rather than a fixed ceiling or floor, and consult current guidance for the specific program area under consideration.
For related funding models, see CASRAI’s guides to the Simons Foundation, the W. M. Keck Foundation, the John Templeton Foundation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and the Andrew Carnegie Foundation, as well as the grants management pillar for broader pre-award and compliance guidance.
