Dear Spencer Community,
As we welcome in the fall, and a new academic year, we are writing to share some updates to our programs and review processes.
It is not news to anyone that we are in the midst of continuing uncertainty in education, in philanthropy, and in our nation and world. Given this context, it is important to reiterate that we remain committed to funding scholarship across the field of education from a variety of disciplines and methodological traditions. Indeed, it is more important than ever that education research helps us reflect on, envision, and move toward the education systems that we need. At its best, education prepares learners of all ages for a thriving future, opens up opportunity, cultivates empathy, and deepens our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.
We also recognize that this extraordinary moment requires more than simply staying the course. Given the increased need for education research funding, we are increasing overall spending so that we can support more research. While private philanthropy cannot possibly fill the void left by federal research cuts, we are committed to funding as much high-quality research as possible.
Having said that, we must acknowledge that we, along with our peer foundations, are being impacted by the new levels of unmet need for research funding in the field, requiring us to shift some of our processes. It may not surprise you to know that one of the impacts on the foundation has been a significant uptick in the number of proposals we are receiving—as great as fivefold in some cases. For instance, in the June cycle of our Large Grants competition, we received nearly 2,000 Intent to Apply forms (we typically get 400-600).
In the face of this unprecedented demand, we are working to manage this volume in a way that is aligned with our values, our deep respect for scholars and scholarship, and our commitment to a rigorous review process. Many things will remain the same. We remain committed to funding scholarship that supports more equitable and rigorous education systems, nationally and internationally. Our grant programs remain field-initiated, and we continue to fund research across topics, disciplines, and methods. We remain committed to supporting early-career scholars. We also remain committed to providing feedback to as many applicants as possible, and to inviting resubmissions across all our grant programs.
In order to honor these commitments, there are several shifts we will make in our programs and review processes. Most significantly, we are no longer able to provide two peer reviews on every grant proposal we receive. We introduced this practice five years ago because we believed—and continue to believe—that offering peer-reviewed feedback to all eligible applicants is a critical investment in strengthening the field’s ability to recognize and produce high-quality scholarship. While we remain deeply committed to the value of feedback, we also recognize that this is a period of extraordinary strain for scholars and higher education as a whole.
For the foreseeable future, we are making these shifts to our programs and review processes:
- We will have fewer cycles of some programs but will fund more projects in each cycle and more projects overall.
- We will add a step before the full proposal for Large Grants and Research Practice Partnership Grants. All teams will first submit a preproposal, which will be evaluated. Then we will invite a subset of teams to submit full proposals that will continue through our standard review processes, including receiving two full peer reviews. In our Large Grant Program, for example, we will invite about 500 teams to submit full proposals. We will provide only light feedback to teams who are not invited to submit full proposals. We hope this saves applicants time and effort, and preserves bandwidth of reviewers in the field, while still providing in-depth feedback to many teams per cycle.
- For all other field-initiated programs, including Small Grants, we will continue to accept full proposals from all eligible teams. However, we are adding an additional step in the review process. Reviewers will evaluate all proposals that are submitted and then advance a subset of proposals through to our full peer-review process (we will likely advance 400-500 Small Grant proposals, for example, in any given cycle). We will provide light feedback to projects that do not move forward to full peer-review.
Thank you so much for continuing to be on this journey with us. We are steadfast in our commitment to improving lives and learning through education and to supporting scholarship that makes for a better world.
Na’ilah (President) & Leah (Director of Programs)
