USA Scholarships
Foundation Grant Guides
Foundation Grants
Guides for grants made by private foundations and funds. Most go to organisations rather than to individuals, and most turn on fit with a funder's stated priorities rather than on academic record. Each guide sets out what the money is for, the grant sizes on offer, how the application runs, and the exclusion list that quietly decides the majority of proposals.
AAUW Career Development Grant 2027 - Up to $8,000
AAUW Career Development Grants pay up to $8,000 to women who are U.S. citizens, nationals, or permanent residents and hold at least an associate degree. The grant funds accredited certificate or training programs that help you enter, change, or advance in fields where women are underrepresented, including STEM, business, and law, or executive leadership training when women hold fewer than half of senior roles. Your program must start between 1 January and 30 June 2027 for the winter/spring cycle. Applications open 18 August 2026 and close 30 September 2026 at 5pm ET, with notification in November 2026 and funds in November or December 2026.
Citadel Travel Grant 2026 - Fully Funded Conferences
The Citadel Conference Travel Grant sends students in quantitative fields to the world's top technical conferences with the bill paid. Citadel buys the full-access conference pass, books round-trip airfare and lodging through its own travel agency, hands out Uber vouchers for the airport and the week, and adds a meal stipend on top. Grace Hopper is the one exception, where the pass itself is not part of the grant. Eligible conferences run from Grace Hopper and NeurIPS to ICML, ICLR, ACL and the Global Physics Summit, and you can apply to as many as you like. The application is unusually light: an email address and a resume. For the 2026 round, Grace Hopper in Anaheim closes 25 September 2026 and NeurIPS in Sydney closes 5 October 2026. Citadel publishes no cash figure for the grant and there are no post-conference obligations.
AAUW Research Publication Grant 2027 - $8,000 Award
The AAUW Research Publication Grant 2027, formally the American Short-Term Research Publication Grant, pays women scholars $8,000 in a single tranche to get a research manuscript ready for publication. The money covers drafting, editing, replicating research and answering reviewers, and can also go on housing, food and dependent care while you write. All fields qualify, with STEM researchers and those working on gender issues especially encouraged. You need a doctoral or terminal degree already in hand, US citizenship or permanent residency, and sole or first authorship on the manuscript. Applications open 17 August 2026 and close 30 September 2026 at 5pm ET, with awards announced in April 2027.
Horowitz Foundation Grant 2026 - $10,000 for PhDs
The Horowitz Foundation for Social Policy gives $10,000 to PhD candidates at the dissertation stage whose research speaks to contemporary social policy. The money arrives in two parts: $7,500 when you are selected, and $2,500 once the project is finished. Applications close on 1 December 2026 at 11:59pm EST, which is also the deadline for your recommender to file, and winners are announced the following June. Eligibility is tight in one direction and unusually open in another. You must be a current PhD or DrPH candidate who has defended a proposal or had a topic approved, and anyone who already holds a PhD is out. But there is no citizenship rule and no institutional one: applicants can come from any country and any university in the world. The application itself is short, built around a 750-word project description.
Nathan Cummings Foundation Grant 2026 - $50k to $250k
The Nathan Cummings Foundation grant programme funds organisations working on racial, economic and environmental justice in the United States, with most grants between $50,000 and $250,000. The Letter of Inquiry portal is open year-round with rolling review, and staff aim to come back to applicants within 12 weeks. Three grant types run alongside each other: Venture Grants up to $100,000 for one year, Advancement Grants up to $250,000 a year for up to two years, and invitation-only Enterprise Grants above $250,000 a year for longer. Program Related Investments run separately at $250,000 to $750,000, usually repaid over three to seven years. Read the exclusion list before anything else, because NCF does not fund individuals, 501(c)(4) organisations, direct service work outside an advocacy strategy, campus or prison-based programmes, or conservation projects.