2025 Core Grants Program

Innovation Grants Program is sponsored by The Seybert Foundation. This program provides one-time grants for specific proof-of-concept purposes, intended for emergent or existing Philadelphia-youth-serving nonprofit organizations wishing to either test a bold new approach or pursue a time-sensitive opportunity that could lead to significant change. Priority is given to projects or initiatives that could help an organization dramatically increase the impact of its services to Philadelphia youth.

The UKRI Policy Fellowships 2025, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, offer 18-month placements for academics to co-design research with UK government and What Works Network host organizations. Awards range from £180,000 to £280,000 and support three fellowship tracks: core policy fellows, Natural Hazards and Resilience policy fellows, and What Works Innovation fellows. Applicants must hold a PhD or equivalent research experience, be based at a UKRI-eligible UK organization, and possess relevant subject matter or methodological expertise. Government-hosted positions target early to mid-career academics, while What Works fellowships welcome all career stages. Fellows work directly with policymakers to bridge academic research and policy development on pressing national and global challenges. The application deadline is July 15, 2025.

NSF 25-545 is the Directorate for STEM Education's consolidated K-12 research program, and its distinguishing feature for 2026 is that artificial intelligence has been written into the core framing rather than bolted on. The solicitation states that the program seeks proposals that explore how AI and other emerging technologies can be effectively leveraged to study and enhance STEM teaching and learning, and it references Executive Order 14277 on advancing AI education for American youth, with an emphasis on preparing citizens for a digital society through early learning and exposure to AI. In practice this opens two distinct lanes: AI as an object of study, meaning AI literacy curricula, computational thinking and how students reason about machine systems; and AI as an instrument, meaning intelligent tutoring, adaptive assessment, automated feedback, teacher-facing analytics and AI-supported professional development. Both are in scope, and the strongest proposals tend to be explicit about which one they are doing. Proposals may address learning or instruction in any STEM field and may operate in formal pre-K through 12 settings or in informal learning environments, which makes museums, after-school programs and out-of-school providers legitimate leads rather than junior partners. The structural advantage here is the submission model: proposals are accepted anytime on a rolling basis rather than against a hard annual deadline, which removes the usual scramble and lets a team submit when the partnership and pilot data are actually ready. Eligibility is broad, covering two- and four-year institutions of higher education including community colleges, non-profit non-academic organizations, for-profit U.S.-based organizations, state and local governments, and federally recognized Tribal Nations, with no limit on the number of proposals per organization or on PI participation.