Education Foundations

Last week, I attended the American Educational Research Association (AERA) conference and heard from several leaders at prominent education foundations on a panel. The foundations represented were the Spencer Foundation, the William T. Grant Foundation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and the Foundation for Child Development. The panelists discussed larger foundation issues and their appropriate role in education research, but each also discussed priorities and directions for their respective foundations, which I highlight below.

Na'ilah Suad Nasir, President, Spencer Foundation:
Dr. Nasir highlighted the directions of Spencer after beginning her presidency last year and listening to education researchers about their needs. Moving forward, Spencer is focused on racial inequality and reducing bias in its processes. Along with these foci, Spencer wants to build capacity and spread the wealth amongst education researchers. One of the ways they plan to build capacity is that they will begin offering feedback/reviewer comments on 100% of their proposals. In the past, some types of proposals submitted to Spencer would only receive a decision to fund or not, and the applicant would not have any sense as to why their proposal was rejected if it was.

Adam Gamoran, President, William T. Grant Foundation:
Dr. Gamoran saw the priorities of his foundation as focused on the three Ms: messaging, mobilizing, and making connections. In terms of messaging, distributing the funded research and getting the word out to policymakers who can use the research to make change. In terms of mobilizing, they were working to build bridges for researchers and funders to collaborate and make the biggest impact. In terms of making connections, again pairing researchers, funders, and policymakers with the right people to make the biggest impact in education.

Kent McGuire, Program Director of Education, The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation:
The Hewlett Foundation is focused on research that improves learning outcomes. They are interested in research partnerships with practitioners to ensure the application of research. Lastly, they are interested in diversity within the research community and are developing projects to build diversity within the research pipeline in a variety of ways.

Jacqueline Jones, President and CEO, Foundation for Child Development:
The Foundation for Child Development is focused on children, infant - eight-year-olds. They are interested in research that can inform policy and practice related to children. They are especially interested in the implementation of research, where they can see results.

Kent McGuire in the panel session compared individual research projects to "a flea biting the elephant; where to bite matters." The key to finding a fit with any funding organization is to be in agreement as to where to bite.

Resources:
Spencer Foundation
William T. Grant Foundation
William and Flora Hewlett Foundation
Foundation for Child Development