Scope of Support
The primary mission of the Foundation, as articulated by its founder, Lyle M. Spencer, is "to investigate ways in which education can be improved, around the world." To achieve this goal, the Foundation is committed to supporting high-quality investigation of education through its research programs and to strengthening and renewing the educational research community through its fellowship and training programs and related activities. The Foundation defines education broadly to include all of the situations and institutions in which education proceeds, across the entire life span. An important expectation of the Foundation is that the activities it supports, taken together over the years, will contribute significantly to the enhancement of educational opportunities for all people.
The Foundation's programs fall within three general categories: Research, Fellowships, and Institutional Initiatives. In addition, a small number of programs are operated out of the Office of the President and the Office of the Vice President.
The Foundation's Research programs support work that shows promise of contributing new knowledge or understanding that may contribute to improvement of educational thought or practice. Spencer Fellowship programs support educational researchers at different stages of their professional careers, providing resources to both beginning and senior researchers to pursue concentrated intellectual activity. Institutional Initiatives are aimed at improving the work and performance of agencies and institutions, primarily universities and graduate schools of education at universities, that have as a primary mission the training and apprenticing of educational researchers. Funding programs within the President's and Vice President's Office are experimental or developmental, spanning and augmenting the Foundation's overall programmatic objectives.
As a matter of policy, the Foundation is unable to support requests for capital funds, operating or on-going program expenses, direct support for teacher or staff pre-service or in-service training, funds for developing tests, curricula, or programs, or funds for conducting program evaluation.
It is the Foundation's policy not to pay indirect costs on any proposal requesting an award of $50,000 or less. For research grant proposals requesting over $50,000, the Foundation will pay indirect costs equaling up to 15% of the direct costs of the proposed project. The Foundation does not pay government-approved overhead rates on research grants.
For all other grant proposals requesting an award greater than $50,000 (e.g., fellowship and training grants), it is the Foundation's policy not to pay indirect costs. In these grant proposals, necessary administrative costs can be built into the direct costs of the proposal, but the Foundation will generally not accept institutional infrastructure costs such as office rent, grants and contracts office expenses, institutional administrative expenses, accounting and legal services, etc. as part of the direct costs. The Foundation will review each budget individually for the appropriateness of the direct costs.
Research proposals and fellowship applications submitted to the Spencer Foundation go through a rigorous review process that relies extensively upon peer review by external scholars. The goal of the external review is not to achieve threshold ratings from reviewers; rather, it is to bring solid scholarly advice to bear on funding decisions. The Foundation receives many more well-conceived and worthwhile project proposals than it can fund. Therefore, it is frequently necessary to forgo opportunities to support high quality projects in the research programs or in the fellowship competitions even though they are well within the Foundation's area of interest.
The Spencer Foundation seeks both to support and disseminate exemplary research about education. To enhance the Foundation's capacity to disseminate the research it supports, our Interactive Technology staff has been redeveloping this web site so that we will soon be able to post more examples of outstanding research in the form of article abstracts, book chapters, and report summaries, along with links to authors' personal web pages, publishers, and other distributors of research. In this way, we hope to help our grantees reach broader audiences and become even more effective at bringing their work to the attention of other scholars, policy makers, and practitioners. If, for some reason, one of our grantees has not been able to publish his or her research independently, and we judge this research to be of high quality, we will work with that grantee to "publish" his or her research on our web site. We hope that the web site will be a valuable research tool for all those interested in education.
To facilitate this effort, Spencer now asks its grantees and their sponsoring institutions to sign an intellectual property rights agreement. This agreement protects a grantee's rights to the works generated with Spencer Foundation funds, but also guarantees the Foundation the right to disseminate works that, within a reasonable time, have not been published in other venues. It also guarantees the Foundation the right to publish excerpts of up to 15% of a particular work that results from its grants. We expect to work closely with our grantees to implement this policy, which we hope will enrich the education research community generally and assist directly the scholars we support.
The Foundation requires that a statement signed and dated by a fiscal agent and indicating acceptance of full responsibility for expenditure of grant funds accompany each proposal submitted to the Foundation.
Change of Principal Investigator(s)
If a change of principal investigator(s) occurs while a grant is active, the Foundation requires written notification of the party or parties accepting responsibility for the grant.
The Foundation asks to be notified promptly of any change(s) of address(es) affecting a grant's principal investigator(s). Please contact by letter, phone, fax, or email the appropriate program assistant.