The Russell Sage Foundation (RSF) is a private foundation, headquartered in New York City, that funds only social science research on social and living conditions in the United States. If your project isn’t in the social or behavioral sciences, or doesn’t bear on US social conditions, RSF is not the right funder — it does not fund biomedical, clinical, physical-science, or non-US-focused research, and its own eligibility materials say so explicitly. Read the scope section below before investing time in a letter of inquiry.
Who RSF funds: core programmes and special initiatives
RSF states its mission as funding research that seeks to “improve social and living conditions in the US.” Since August 2026, that mission is organized around four standing core research priorities, plus a set of time-limited co-funded initiatives:
- Behavioral Science and Decision Making in Context (BSDMC)
- Future of Work (FOW)
- Race, Ethnicity, and Immigration (REI)
- Social, Political, and Economic Inequality (SPEI)
Alongside these, RSF currently supports three time-limited, co-funded priorities: Immigration and Immigrant Integration (III), Implications of the 2023 Supreme Court Decision to Ban Race-Conscious Admissions at Colleges and Universities for Educational Attainment and Economic Mobility (SCD23), and Causal Research on the Criminal Justice System (co-funded with Arnold Ventures). Most RSF grant programmes — Core Research Grants, Sheldon Danziger Pipeline Grants, Dissertation Research Grants, and the Visiting Scholar/Visiting Researcher fellowships — consider investigator-initiated projects across any of the core priorities. The Causal Research on the Criminal Justice System programme is the one exception: it only funds causal research on criminal-justice policy and practice (policing, courts, jails, prisons, probation, parole, and immigration detention), using designs that can isolate a treatment effect — difference-in-differences, regression discontinuity, instrumental variables, randomized controlled trials, or mixed-methods work where a causal design is central.
Comparative or non-US data is occasionally allowed, but only in exceptional cases where the applicant demonstrates the needed data isn’t obtainable in the US and the analysis still bears directly on improving US social conditions.
Programme comparison
RSF runs six distinct funding mechanisms. They differ substantially in award ceiling, whether a letter of inquiry (LOI) is required before a full proposal, and whether indirect costs (F&A) are allowed at all — the single most consequential fact for a research office building a budget.
| Programme | Award ceiling | Duration | LOI required first? | Indirect costs (F&A) allowed? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Core Research Grants – Presidential track | Up to $50,000 (up to $75,000 for labor-intensive data collection, restricted-use data access fees, or multiple assistant-professor PIs) | 1–2 years | Yes | Yes – up to 15% on awards over $75,000 |
| Core Research Grants – Trustee track | Up to $200,000 | 1–2 years | Yes | Yes – up to 15% on awards over $75,000 |
| Sheldon Danziger Pipeline Grants | Up to $50,000 (individual) / $65,000 (team of eligible assistant professors) | 1 year | No – direct proposal, separate competition from the LOI cycle | No indirect costs allowed |
| Dissertation Research Grants | $15,000 | 1 year | No – direct proposal | No indirect costs allowed |
| Causal Research on the Criminal Justice System Grants | Up to $100,000 (indirect costs included within this cap) | 1 year | No – direct proposal | Yes – up to 15%, included inside the $100,000 ceiling |
| Visiting Scholar Fellowship | Salary support up to $150,000/year (or $75,000 for a half year), paid to the scholar’s home institution — not a research grant | 10-month academic year (Sept 1–Jun 30) or a 5-month half year | No – direct application against a fixed annual deadline | No – direct salary support only, no fringe benefits or indirect costs |
| Visiting Researcher Fellowship | No stipend or salary — office space and partially subsidized housing only | Up to 5 months (rare exceptions to 10 months) | No | Not applicable — no funds are provided |
Presidential Grants vs. Trustee Grants: the two tiers inside Core Research Grants
RSF’s flagship Core Research Grants line for PhD-holding investigators is internally split by approval authority and award size, not by topic. Presidential Grants are capped at $50,000, with PIs able to request up to $75,000 specifically when the project involves labor-intensive data collection, access fees for restricted-use data, or salary support for multiple assistant-professor PIs. Trustee Grants — the larger tier, requiring approval by RSF’s board of trustees rather than president-level sign-off — are capped at $200,000. Both tiers otherwise follow the same LOI-first process, the same 1–2 year project length, and the same budget rules; the practical difference for an applicant is simply how much the project needs and which internal RSF approval track that routes it through.
No more than five PIs may appear on a Core Research Grant proposal, and only three may receive funding; only investigators with a salary under $300,000 are eligible for salary support at all.
The letter-of-inquiry-first application model
Core Research Grants — RSF’s largest and most competitive line — use a mandatory two-stage process. Applicants submit a letter of inquiry (LOI) first: a maximum four single-spaced pages, excluding references, with a well-developed conceptual framework, specified analytical model, and clearly stated research questions or hypotheses. RSF’s own published figure is that roughly 15% of LOI submitters are invited to submit a full proposal (maximum 10 single-spaced pages) after peer review. See CASRAI’s general Letter of Inquiry for Grants guide for how an LOI differs from a short proposal as a document type.
Critically, the four core programmes and three special initiatives don’t all accept LOIs on every deadline — RSF alternates which priorities are open at each of its three annual cycles. As of this guide’s last verification (August 16, 2026), the published cycle was:
| LOI deadline | Open programmes | Invited-proposal deadline | Funding decision | Grant start (on/after) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Oct 29, 2025 | BSDMC, REI, III, SCD23 | Feb 18, 2026 | Jun 2026 | Sept 1, 2026 |
| Mar 11, 2026 | SPEI, FOW, SCD23 | Jun 18, 2026 | Nov 2026 | Jan 1, 2027 |
| Jul 15, 2026 | BSDMC, REI, III, SCD23 | Oct 26, 2026 | Mar 2027 | May 1, 2027 |
| Oct 28, 2026 | SPEI, FOW, SCD23 | Feb 22, 2027 | Jun 2027 | Sep 1, 2027 |
All LOIs and proposals are due by 2pm ET / 11am PT on the stated date; RSF describes its deadlines as strictly enforced. Because this alternating schedule changes and gets extended roughly a year forward each cycle, confirm the currently open programmes and next deadline directly on RSF’s Application Deadlines page before drafting an LOI — do not rely on a cached date.
The other four programmes run on their own separate, direct-proposal calendars (no LOI stage): Sheldon Danziger Pipeline Grants next closes October 21, 2026 (note: an applicant may apply to either the Pipeline competition or the concurrent October Core Research Grants LOI deadline, not both); Dissertation Research Grants next closes February 2027; Causal Research on the Criminal Justice System Grants next closes April 2027; and Visiting Scholar/Visiting Researcher fellowships run on fixed annual deadlines roughly a year ahead of the residency year, described below.
Visiting Scholars: a distinctive residential-fellowship offering
RSF’s Visiting Scholars Program is unusual among research funders in structure: instead of funding a project at the researcher’s home institution, it relocates the scholar to RSF’s own headquarters at 112 East 64th Street, New York City, for a 10-month residential fellowship (September 1 – June 30), with an option for a 5-month half-year residency (either September–January or February–June). RSF selects roughly 15 to 17 Visiting Scholars annually, plus a small number of working groups of two (occasionally three) scholars collaborating on a shared project.
The award is paid to the scholar’s home institution as salary support — typically up to 50% of the scholar’s academic-year salary, capped at $150,000 for a full year or $75,000 for a half year — not as a research grant with a project budget, and it carries no separate indirect-cost allowance. Scholars whose institutions won’t provide a paid sabbatical (untenured assistant professors, non-tenure-track staff, or those at non-academic organizations) may receive up to 100% salary replacement within the same cap. RSF also provides an office, computer and software, access to research databases, partially subsidized housing for non-NYC-area scholars, relocation/shipping reimbursement, and a limited childcare allowance. A related but unfunded track, the Visiting Researcher Fellowship, offers office space and partially subsidized housing (no salary) for short-term visits, generally up to five months, to a small number of scholars each year as space allows.
Eligibility for Visiting Scholars requires a PhD or comparable terminal degree (or an equivalent career research record) and being at least two years past the doctorate at the application deadline. An individual may serve as a Visiting Scholar at most twice, with at least seven years between visits, and first-time applicants receive priority when competition is close.
Eligibility, including the doctoral requirement
- Core Research Grants: all PIs and co-PIs must hold a doctorate. RSF says it will only rarely consider an applicant without one, and only if they can demonstrate an equivalent record of high-level, peer-reviewed scholarly research. No restriction on nationality or institution location.
- Sheldon Danziger Pipeline Grants: open to Assistant Professors, Adjunct Assistant Professors, and Lecturers who have not previously received an RSF research grant (Dissertation Research Grants don’t count against this). Postdocs cannot be PIs but may work on the project as research assistants; full and associate professors may be listed as co-PIs but cannot receive salary support.
- Dissertation Research Grants: limited to doctoral students at US institutions who have completed all requirements except the dissertation itself; there is a lifetime limit of one such grant per applicant, and the dissertation committee must confirm the proposed research matches the funded proposal before funds are released.
- Causal Research on the Criminal Justice System Grants: restricted to tenure-track assistant professors at a US college or university as of August 1 of the application year. Associate professors may be co-PIs without salary support; full professors cannot be co-PIs at all.
- Visiting Scholar / Visiting Researcher Fellowships: PhD or equivalent required (Visiting Researchers must additionally be several years past the doctorate with an established publication record); see the residency-specific rules above.
All of the early-career programmes (Pipeline Grants, Dissertation Research Grants, Causal Research on the Criminal Justice System Grants) explicitly prioritize applicants from groups underrepresented in the social sciences and those at under-resourced institutions.
Indirect costs (F&A): the decisive budgeting fact
This is the single most important number for a sponsored-programs office to get right before a PI drafts a budget, and it varies by programme — it is not a single foundation-wide rate:
- Core Research Grants allow indirect costs of up to 15%, but only on the portion of the award over $75,000 — a grant at or below $75,000 gets no indirect-cost allowance at all. RSF also explicitly disallows indirect costs on data-purchase or data-access fees, and on subcontracts to survey firms for data collection.
- Causal Research on the Criminal Justice System Grants also allow up to 15% indirect costs, but that percentage is included inside the programme’s flat $100,000 ceiling rather than paid on top of it.
- Sheldon Danziger Pipeline Grants, Dissertation Research Grants, and the Visiting Scholar/Visiting Researcher fellowships allow no indirect costs whatsoever.
- Where a project subcontracts to another university, only the subcontract organization — not the prime grantee — may claim indirect costs, and only on its own portion of the direct costs.
This 15%-above-$75,000 structure is well below a typical federally negotiated F&A rate (NICRA), which is standard for private-foundation funding generally — see CASRAI’s Indirect Cost Rate (F&A Rate) entry and How to Calculate Indirect Costs vs. Direct Costs guide for how foundation caps like this one compare to federal Uniform Guidance treatment.
What RSF explicitly does not fund
Per RSF’s own published FAQ, the foundation does not:
- Make general operating-support grants to other institutions — only specific research-project grants aligned with a declared programme.
- Provide scholarships or student college-funding support.
- Fund residential fellowships at other institutions (i.e., it doesn’t underwrite a scholar’s residency elsewhere the way it funds its own Visiting Scholars program).
- Fund research that has already circulated as a working paper or been submitted for publication.
- Typically fund standalone conferences or workshops independent of a specific funded project (rare, partial exceptions exist for a conference that directly furthers RSF’s programme goals; open-ended conferences are not considered).
- Fund research on social and living conditions outside the United States, except in narrow, well-justified comparative cases.
- Fund general educational-process or curricular research — though it will fund research on the causes and consequences of inequality in student achievement or attainment, which is a different, in-scope question.
Frequently asked questions
Does RSF require a doctorate for every programme?
For Core Research Grants and the Visiting Scholar/Visiting Researcher fellowships, yes, with a narrow exception for an equivalent scholarly track record. Dissertation Research Grants are for doctoral candidates who haven’t yet finished. Pipeline Grants and the Causal Research on the Criminal Justice System programme are restricted to specific faculty ranks (assistant professors, lecturers, adjuncts) rather than gated on the doctorate directly, though nearly all eligible applicants will hold one.
Can my institution charge its full federal negotiated F&A rate on an RSF award?
No. RSF caps indirect costs at 15%, and only on the portion of a Core Research Grant or Causal Research on the Criminal Justice System award above $75,000 — well below most institutions’ federally negotiated rate. Three of RSF’s six programmes (Pipeline, Dissertation, and the Visiting Scholar/Researcher fellowships) allow no indirect costs at all.
What’s the difference between a Presidential Grant and a Trustee Grant?
Both are Core Research Grants using the same LOI-first process; they differ in size and internal approval authority. Presidential Grants are capped at $50,000 (up to $75,000 in specific circumstances) and are approved at the president level. Trustee Grants, capped at $200,000, require approval by RSF’s board of trustees.
Is the Visiting Scholars award a research grant?
No — it’s salary support paid to the scholar’s home institution so the scholar can spend a year (or half year) in residence at RSF’s New York headquarters, plus in-kind office space, research-database access, and (for non-NYC scholars) partially subsidized housing. It does not fund a separate research budget, and it carries no indirect-cost allowance.
Does RSF fund research outside the social sciences, or outside the US?
No to both, with narrow exceptions. RSF’s mandate is social science research that improves social and living conditions specifically in the United States; non-US or comparative data is only considered when the applicant can show the needed data isn’t available domestically and the analysis still bears directly on US conditions.
Related CASRAI resources
- Private Foundation Research Funding: How It Differs from Federal Grants — the concept-level hub this page belongs to.
- Private Foundation Funders for Institutional Research — comparison of RSF against other major research foundations.
- Letter of Inquiry for Grants — format and funder expectations for the document RSF requires before an invited Core Research Grant proposal.
- Indirect Cost Rate (F&A Rate) and How to Calculate Indirect Costs vs. Direct Costs — for comparing RSF’s 15%-above-$75,000 cap to a federally negotiated rate.
Last verified against russellsage.org: August 16, 2026. RSF’s application deadlines, award ceilings, and indirect-cost rules are set unilaterally by the foundation and change without a fixed public revision schedule — confirm current figures on russellsage.org before submitting a letter of inquiry or building a proposal budget.
