Carnegie Corporation of New York
/OVERVIEW: The Carnegie Corporation of New York supports education, democracy, international peace and security. It also invests in higher education and research in Africa.
IP TAKE: This funder has been in the philanthropy game for over a century, and many of its recipients have seen grants year after year for quite a while. Nevertheless, Carnegie makes room for new grantees as well. New grant seekers’ proposals should prioritize innovation backed by “deep research and scholarship.” While there’s a lot of bureaucracy here, it accepts letters of inquiry and proposals on a rolling basis. Given it’s large size, it’s not easy to pitch your work here; this funder prefers if you research the appropriate grant for your work. This funder also works to be inclusive, but does not tend to take big risks.
PROFILE: The Carnegie Corporation of New York was founded in 1911 by the industrialist Andrew Carnegie and is known as "America's oldest grant making foundation." The corporation seeks to "promote the advancement and diffusion of knowledge and understanding," prioritizing "international peace, the advancement of education and knowledge, and the strength of our democracy." Its four stated initiatives are Education, Democracy, International Peace and Security and Higher Education and Research in Africa.
Grants for Education
Carnegie's comprehensive Education program emphasizes the need for public education in the U.S. to provide "all students with the knowledge, skills and dispositions they need to be active participants in a robust democracy and to be successful in the global economy." To this end, the corporation has named five focus areas: leadership and teaching, new designs to advance learning, pathways to post-secondary success, public understanding and integration, learning and innovation.
Carnegie Corporation's education grants range from $15,000 to over $1 million, with most grants falling between $200,000 and $600,000. The foundation awards over fifty education grants each year. Grants have been awarded to organizations of all sizes. A searchable database of grantees is available on the Carnegie Corporation website.
Grants for K-12 Education
The leadership and teaching subprogram prioritizes the recruitment, preparation and development of teachers for today's diverse classrooms, while the new designs to advance learning program aims to develop and implement "whole school" models that enhance learning. The focus of Carnegie's pubic understanding program is family engagement in K-12 education. Finally, combining the priorities of Carnegie's other education sub-programs, the integration, learning and innovation initiative aims to integrate a broad scope of research findings and best practices findings to support a model of public education that "embraces complexity, interdependence and nuanced implementation." Past grantees in the area of K-12 education include Columbia University’s Teachers College, InnovateEDU, Third Sector New England and Turnaround for Children, Inc.
Grants for College Readiness
Support for college readiness stems from the corporation's new designs to advance learning program, which aims to create a "new vision" of education in which purposeful, holistic learning experiences lead to the mastery of "the higher order skills and knowledge that enable postsecondary success." Additionally, the foundation’s pathways to post-secondary success program supports efforts to align K-12 standards with the expectations and requirements of higher education.
One past grantee, Trellis Education, aims to improve the quality of California's teachers in the STEM disciplines. Another grantee, Illustrative Mathematics, used funding to develop a professional learning support system for teachers of mathematics that aims to produce "measurable growth in teachers' knowledge and quality of instruction."
Grants for Higher Education
Carnegie supports higher education through its Education and Africa programs. Working exclusively in the U.S., the education program has funded innovation in teacher education and educational research that works toward “more effective models of learning for diverse learners.” Meanwhile, Carnegie’s Africa program, working mainly in sub-Saharan Africa, seeks to “strengthen Africa’s higher education sector through enhancing academic training, research and retention.”
Recent Carnegie grants in the area of higher education have ranged from $25,000 to $1.7 million. Past grantees include New York University, Teachers College at Columbia University, the Bank Street School of Education and the Association for African Universities.
Grants for STEM Education
CCNY conducts its STEM education grantmaking through its Education program, which has a heavy STEM focus in both K-12 and higher education. Carnegie also seeks to improve the standards by which students’ progress is assessed. The corporation states that “Fewer, clearer, and higher standards are needed...to ensure that every high school graduate is ready for college and career,” a goal that “requires effective implementation of Next Generation Science Standards and Common Core State Standards.”
A significant amount of Carnegie’s STEM funding is a result of its support of the 100Kin10 network. Co-founded in 2011 by then-Carnegie-program-officer Talia Milgrom-Elcott, 100Kin10 seeks to address the shortage of STEM teachers and improve STEM learning. By encouraging more college students to study STEM-related disciplines and bring that knowledge to K-12 classrooms across the country, the initiative hopes to train 100,000 high-quality science, mathematics, and technology teachers by 2021 and do a better job of retaining them. Partners in the 100Kin10 initiative include colleges and universities, museums, foundations, non-profit organizations, and teacher recruitment organizations such as Teach for America.
The sizes of Carnegie grants for STEM education range significantly, generally falling between $15,000 and $500,000. Even though it does not have an education program dedicated exclusively to STEM, this area is a priority for Carnegie, and there are certainly grants available for education nonprofits and providers, both domestic and international.
Grants for Journalism
Although Carnegie does not have a grantmaking program specifically dedicated to journalism, it awards a number of related grants through its other programs. For example, the WGBH Educational Foundation received funding for its Nova Science Studio project, which was used to launch a pilot program connecting Boston-area students with science writers and communicators in order to foster student engagement with science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) professions.
CCNY grant amounts vary widely, ranging anywhere from $5,000 to $2.5 million, though most grants fall in the $50,000 to $200,000 range. To learn more about the types of organizations CCNY supports and at what level, explore its excellent grants database.
Grants for Civic and Democracy
Carnegie’s Democracy program area seeks to “foster a pluralistic, vibrant democracy through the civic integration of immigrants, support for nonpartisan voter registration and education, and voting rights.” It conducts grantmaking through four main focus areas. Alliance building grants “strives to build alliances that bring together a left-to-right spectrum of viewpoints on civics, citizenship, and immigration, while reflecting America’s long tradition of acceptance and respect for newcomers of all nationalities, cultures, and religions.” Field building grants work to improve “the capacity of organizations supporting immigrant integration in states and localities across the country.” Strategic communications grants promote “balanced and nuanced coverage of immigrants and immigration in the news media.” Policy development grants support “the development of policies that focus on fixing the current immigration system” and fund “research around multiple issues impacted by immigration” such as deportation. Nonpartisan civic engagement promotes “nonpartisan voter engagement, especially among groups that have traditionally shown low levels of voting and who have little access to information about government.”
Grants typically range from $100,000 to $1 million, but may be as large as $3 million. Past grantees include the Migration Policy Institute, iCivics and Ballot Initiative Strategy Center Foundation. A searchable database of grantees is available on the Carnegie Corporation website.
Grants for Security and Human Rights
CCNY makes grants through its International Peace and Security to “build a more secure, peaceful, and prosperous world through independent analysis and action addressing critical global challenges.” It conducts grantmaking through five main focus areas. Nuclear security grants seek to “avert the spread or use of nuclear weapons.” Global dynamics grants “address the sources of global instability stemming from geopolitical trends with emphasis on the Euro-Atlantic and Asian regions, rapid technological advances, and other related trends.” Transnational movements and the Arab region grants seek “to empower local institutions and scholars to improve outcomes for the region, promote cross-regional analysis and dissemination, and contribute to international policymaking.” Peace-building in Africa grants promote “policy-relevant research and outreach by African scholars, and international engagements of relevance to peace-building in Africa.” Finally, cross-cutting challenges grants “support rigorous, evidence-based and policy-relevant academic research and its connectivity and applicability to the policymaking community and the public at large.” Cybersecurity is another concern here, and CCNY has made grants to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace to support the endowment’s ongoing work into cyber warfare.
CCNY global security grant amounts vary widely, ranging anywhere from $10,000 to over $2 million, though most grants fall in the $50,000 to $200,000 range. Past grantees include Atlantic Council of the United States, Inc., Century Foundation, Lancaster University, Georgetown University, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and Center for International Policy. A searchable database of grantees is available on the Carnegie Corporation website.
Important Grant Details:
New grant seekers should review the eligibility criteria under the How to Apply section before sending letters of inquiry (accepted year-round). It is important to note, however, that the foundation does “not seek” and “rarely fund[s] unsolicited grant applications.” For international projects, grant seekers should keep in mind that Carnegie is only able to offer support “for a small percent of funding to be granted to nonprofit organizations based in countries that are, or have been, members of the British Commonwealth.”
Grant seekers should also keep in mind that CCNY does not fund individuals; endowments, buildings or fundraising drives, including fundraising dinners; political campaigns, to support political activities or to lobby for or against particular pieces of legislation; existing deficits; scholarships; churches or other religious organizations.
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