The Russell Sage Foundation (RSF), a prominent private American foundation dedicated to the improvement of social and living conditions in the United States, offers Core Research Grants under its established programs. These grants support innovative social science research with a strong emphasis on social, political, and economic inequality, the future of work, and, currently, the implications of the 2023 Supreme Court decision regarding race-conscious college admissions. Notably, RSF's Behavioral Science and Decision Making in Context (BSDMC) and Race, Ethnicity, and Immigration (REI) programs, including its Immigration and Immigrant Integration (III) initiative, are not accepting applications at this time.
Applicants must first submit a Letter of Inquiry (LOI), which is required for all proposals and must detail hypotheses, research design, data plans, sample framework, and budget expectations. LOIs are reviewed in a rigorous multi-disciplinary process, and only about 15% of applicants are invited to submit a full proposal. Projects must have a clearly developed research design and analytical framework, and data should be either novel or used in innovative ways. RSF supports a variety of methods including field experiments, qualitative interviews, and ethnographies, but it avoids funding projects that rely solely on routine uses of public datasets unless paired with new or restricted data.
The grants come in two tiers: Presidential Authority grants, capped at $75,000, and Trustee Grants, which can go up to $200,000 including indirect costs. Grants fund research assistance, data acquisition and analysis, and investigator time. Matching funds are not required. Projects must be completed within two years, and indirect costs are only supported for grants exceeding $75,000. The foundation has strict budget guidelines and excludes funding for indirect costs related to data access, dissemination expenses, or general office operations.
The upcoming deadline for Letters of Inquiry under core programs is March 11, 2026, with subsequent steps including proposal submission by June 18, 2026, funding decisions by November 2026, and grant initiation starting January 1, 2027. All submissions are processed through RSF’s online Fluxx portal, and proposals are evaluated by RSF staff, external reviewers, and advisory committees. Only invited proposals are considered, and RSF emphasizes transparency and reproducibility, requiring pre-registration for RCTs and data-sharing plans for projects involving new data collection.
Eligibility is generally limited to researchers with a doctorate, although rare exceptions exist for those with significant research credentials. Students may not apply. RSF encourages interdisciplinary collaboration but requires a high standard of methodological rigor. All projects must be anchored in academic research and demonstrate a compelling contribution to social science knowledge.
