The Office of Foundation Relations is pleased to share this open call for funding from the Spencer Foundation.
UCSC Contact: Caroline Rodriguez | caroline@ucsc.edu
Funder: Spencer Foundation
Opportunity: Research Practice Partnerships
Pre-Proposal: November 14, 2025, 10:00 AM PT
Overview
The Research-Practice Partnership (RPP) Grants Program is intended to support education research projects that engage in collaborative and participatory partnerships. Spencer views partnerships as an important approach to knowledge generation and the improvement of education, broadly construed. Rigorous partnership work is intentionally organized to engage diverse forms of expertise and perspectives, across practitioners, scholars, policymakers, and organizations, as well as disciplines and methods, in knowledge generation around pressing problems of practice and/or policy. Over the long term, Spencer anticipates that research conducted by RPPs will result in new insights into the processes, practices, routines, and policies that improve education for learners, educators, families, communities, and institutions where learning and teaching happen (e.g., schools, universities, community centers, parks, museums, other workplaces).
This grant program is open to existing partnerships between researchers and a broad array of practitioners and policymakers. Spencer expects the partners in the RPPs we fund to have engaged in fruitful long-term collaborations, and encourages applications from partnerships that include scholars and institutions of higher education, rural geographic locations, as well as partnerships that deeply engage community-based organizations and families.
The Spencer Foundation expects that partnerships will foreground issues connected to inequality in education and articulate how their project aims to disrupt the reproduction and deepening of inequities.
Research is fundamental to every research-practice partnership, and Spencer expects research activities to be the central element of every proposal. Activities that may be funded:
- Research Activities
- Research Infrastructure
- Outreach, Communications, and Relationship Building
- Capacity Development
See here for full program details.
Award Amount & Terms
- Research-Practice Partnership budget totals are limited to $400,000 including up to 15% indirect cost charges.
- The proposed duration of the grant may not be longer than 3 years.
Eligibility
- Principal Investigators (PIs) and Co-PIs applying for a Research-Practice Partnership Grant are expected to have an earned doctorate in an academic discipline or professional field, or demonstrated professional experience appropriate for this program.
- PIs and Co-PIs may only hold one active research grant from the Spencer Foundation at a time.
- PIs and Co-PIs may not submit more than one research proposal to the Spencer Foundation at a time.
Timeline
- November 14, 2025 10:00 am PT Pre-proposal due
- March 31, 2026 10:00 am PT If invited, full proposal deadline
Special Instructions
Please notify the Office of Foundation Relations if you are interested in applying to this opportunity (fr@ucsc.edu). For support developing your proposal, please contact a Research Development Specialist or send a request to resdev@ucsc.edu. Within the Division of Social Sciences, please contact Ashlee Tews (ashleeac@ucsc.edu), and within the Arts, please contact Hannah Jasper (hannahjasper@ucsc.edu) to initiate notification and proposal support.
Call Sent: October 6, 2025
The Office of Foundation Relations is a unit of University Advancement. The FR team creates and maintains mutually beneficial, long-term relationships with private organizations, matching grant initiatives with educational and research programs and centers. FR supports faculty and staff to identify and approach these and other private foundations for funding, to assist in strategic positioning of the grant application, and to facilitate funder campus visits. For a list of recent funding opportunities, please visit the FR website: FR Calls for Funding.