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Since 2014, the Foundation has focused much of its grantmaking toward supporting studies that examine programs, policies, and practices to reduce inequality in youth outcomes. Subtle as it is, the nuance here—calling for researchers to investigate specific strategies that can ameliorate unequal outcomes—nevertheless represents a pivot from the long tradition of social science research that […]

We are pleased to announce that the Foundation has awarded three Youth Service Capacity-Building Grants to New York City nonprofit organizations that provide services to young people in the five boroughs. Part of a new program, these grants provide up to $60,000 in unrestricted general operating support over three years, with the express purpose of […]

The William T. Grant and Spencer Foundations have awarded a Rapid Response Research grant to the University of California, Berkeley in partnership with James Burch, policy director of the Anti Police-Terror Project (APTP) and a member of the City of Oakland’s Reimaginging Public Safety Task Force. The R3 program supports reviews of existing research, conducted […]

The Foundation occasionally supplements its support for empirical research with targeted capacity-building grants. One new award, approved at the Foundation’s spring Board meeting, will support consultations for applicants and grantees and a biennial workshop for grantees to build their capacity to conduct mixed-methods research that integrates qualitative and quantitative methods. William T. Grant Foundation Mixed […]

We want to know what it takes to get research evidence used and what happens when it is used.

We are proud to announce five new research grants, including four to support studies on reducing inequality in youth outcomes and one to support a study on improving the use of research evidence. Approved at the Foundation’s March Board meeting, these grants will build theory and empirical evidence in our two focus areas. Sign up […]

President’s Note Race is a key dimension of inequality in youth outcomes. For researchers who seek to study ways to reduce racial inequality, the starting point is a well-conceived research question grounded in a rich understanding of what racial categories mean and how racism is instantiated in systems, policies, institutions, and the like. With a […]

The Institutional Challenge Grant encourages university-based research institutes, schools, and centers to build sustained research-practice partnerships with public agencies or nonprofit organizations in order to reduce inequality in youth outcomes. To do so, research institutions will need to shift their policies and practices to value collaborative research. They will also need to build the capacity […]

Social scientists are producing thousands of studies relevant to policy decisions, and policymakers are making thousands of decisions that would benefit from research evidence. Policymakers prefer to hear directly from researchers about their findings (Scott, 2021), so why is it that a disconnect often exists? What does the science say about how researchers could more […]

We are pleased to announce the newest class of William T. Grant Scholars. Launched in 1982, the Scholars Program supports the professional development of promising researchers in the social, behavioral, and health sciences who have received their terminal degrees within the past seven years. To date, the program has sponsored more than 197 talented researchers. […]

During the COVID pandemic, policy debates about how to address the crisis have often been portrayed as scientific knowledge in competition with political rhetoric for public attention. Yet even in this unprecedented case, rarely has evidence of only a single type been used in policy arguments. Rather scientific research about virus transmission and vaccines has […]

The newest grants, amounting to nearly $2,000,000, are being awarded to Johns Hopkins University, Northeastern University, and the University of California Santa Cruz. These institutions will work in partnership with local nonprofits or public agencies to address challenges such as youth suicide, youth employment, and educational inequality.

The Foundation hopes to support more solution-oriented research that not only richly theorizes anti-Asian racism but also identifies ways to counter racism, xenophobia, and other forms of oppression.

LGBTQ youth face disproportionate levels of harassment, bullying, depression, and substance abuse compared to non-LBGTQ peers. What is the current evidence on ways to reduce these inequalities and how might new research inform how grantmakers and service providers respond? In this webinar, held on March 17, 2021, we discuss the Foundation’s interest in supporting studies […]