John Templeton Foundation
/OVERVIEW: The Templeton Foundation’s grants support research projects in science, philosophy, theology and economics at elite institutions of higher education. Other areas of grantmaking include medical research, mental health and “the nature of genius.”
IP TAKE: This is an unusual funder in that its grantmaking, which totals about $100 million a year, largely funds research and writing projects that aim to answer a specific set of “Big Questions of human purpose and ultimate reality.” Grants support elite universities in the U.S. and U.K., as well as faith-affiliated organizations around the world. This is not a major funder for small and grassroots organizations. Grantees also tend to be very closely aligned with the foundation’s conservative, religious and philosophical interests.
This funder is reasonably accessible, though bureaucratic. It invites prospective grantees to complete an online funding inquiry on its application portal. From these, the foundation selects applicants to submit full proposals. Due dates vary by grant size and program. It’s going to take some extra follow-up and patience here, but if you’re a good fit, your organization stands a good chance.
PROFILE: The Pennsylvania-based John Templeton Foundation was established in 1987 with a bequest from Sir John Templeton, an American investor who was awarded a Knight Bachelor title after establishing Templeton College, a business school at the University of Oxford. According to its mission statement, the foundation “funds research and catalyzes conversations that inspire people with awe and wonder.” With an endowment of almost $3.5 billion, this funder makes grants for for higher education, humanities research and science through funding areas which include Character Virtue Development, Individual Freedom & Free Markets, Life Sciences, Mathematical and Physical Sciences, Public Engagement and Religion, Science and Society.
Grants for Religious Causes, Humanities and Social Science Research and Community Development
A significant portion of Templeton’s grantmaking supports research and other programs that concern religion and morality. This work, stemming from the Character Virtue Development and Religion, Science and Society giving areas, supports causes in overlapping areas of humanities research, social science research and community development causes.
The Character Virtue Development program “funds research to advance the science and practice of character, with a focus on moral, performance, civic, and intellectual virtues such as humility, gratitude, curiosity, diligence, and honesty.” In addition to formal research, the foundation also supports “organizations such as schools, religious institutions, and community organizations to develop, implement, and evaluate applied and translational research on character and virtue.” The specific priorities of this program tend to change annually, but recent funding has focused on intellectual humility, love and the cultivation of character in the digital age.
Grantees of the this program have included a project at Boston College entitled Building Communities of Practice to Foster Civic Character in Crew and a program at the University of California, Irvine that worked to embed “the development of intellectual character within the university curriculum.” Other grantees include the Family and Youth Institute of Michigan, the Institute for American Values and the Enon Tabernacle Baptist Church in Philadelphia.
Via the Religion, Science and Society giving program, the foundation supports “research on culture, religious traditions, and spirituality to advance our collective understanding of the ways in which religious and spiritual beliefs and practices affect human flourishing and to apply those insights to society in meaningful and practical ways.” Grantmaking here is intended to support research that draws “from a range of fields and intellectual, religious, and spiritual traditions.” This program names three sub-initiatives.
Health, Religion and Spirituality explores “the impact of religion and spirituality on health outcomes and engaging religious and spiritual resources in health care contexts.” Areas of interest include “relationships between religion and health,” “religious and spiritual competencies” of health care professionals, the study of “medicine as a spiritual practice or calling” and the effects of religious interventions and chaplains on health care and health outcomes.
Understanding the Dynamics of Religious Change refers to the foundation’s support for the study of “patterns and processes of religious change in the world today and into tomorrow.” Grants support research “across the social, cognitive, and behavioral sciences” focusing on themes of inidvidual change, information transmission, institutional innovation and international trends.
The Spiritual Yearning Research Initiative focuses on research that addresses “the spiritual yearnings, existential concerns, and search for meaning of spiritually curious but nonreligious individuals and communities.” The main thrust of this research is the question “How can those who experience a deep yearning for a meaningful spiritual life, but find traditional religion unsatisfying, fulfill that yearning?” Specific areas of focus for this work include the nature, value, causes and effects of spiritual yearning, as well as examinations of how spiritual yearning in practice might be expressed or experienced.
Grantees of the Religion, Science and Society program include a study at Massachusetts General Hospital that assessed the impact of religion and spirituality on cardiovascular disease across multiple racial and ethnic groups and research at Monash University in Malaysia on the relationships between religion and health of elderly people in a multicultural Muslim community. Other grants have gone to Canada’s Trinity Western University, the Center for Mind and Culture, the Catholic University of America and Associação Brasileira de Filosofia da Religiao.
Grants for Science Research
Templeton supports scientific research via its Life Sciences and Mathematical and Physical Sciences funding areas, although it is worth mentioning that, with its religious and spiritual underpinnings, this is not a typical science research funder.
The Life Sciences program supports research that addresses fundamental questions about life including its origin and limits. The foundation is also interested the questions of “What processes led to the evolution of humanity, and can we predict future evolutionary outcomes?” This is one of Templeton’s newer programs, and it has subsumed some of the work that the foundation formerly supported via its a new program, that has subsumed some of the work supported by its past Exceptional Cognitive Talent & Genius and Genetics funding areas.
Life Sciences grantees include Global Viral, which received funding for its research on “the origins, evolution and diversity of life on Earth and beyond,” and Harvard University’s Ancient DNA Atlas of Humanity.
The Mathematical and Physical Sciences funding areas supports “research seeking to shed light on the fundamental concepts of physical reality” and “he interplay between these sciences and broader human experience.” The foundation names primary areas of interest in “rigorous scientific research” in cosmology, quantum foundations and complexity and emergence. It also prioritizes projects that focus on human reasoning, cultural and social perspectives and inspiring awe and wonder.
Grantees from this area include Harvard University’s Black Hole Initiative; Israel’s Samy Maroun Center for Research on Space, Time and the Quantum and Northwestern University, where researchers received support for work on “novel cryogenic methods for fundamental physics.”
Grants for Work, Opportunity and Democracy
The Templeton Foundation’s Individual Freedom & Free Markets giving area “supports education, research, and outreach projects to promote individual freedom, free markets, free competition, and entrepreneurship.” According to the program’s web page, this work is “[g]rounded in the ideas of classical liberal political economy and with a commitment to the moral equality of all human beings.” Three main areas of interest refer to projects “advancing engagement with the classical liberal tradition,” projects that address basic political rights and “how those rights are effectively maintained in pluralist societies” and “[p]rojects that explore market and and enterprise-based solutions to poverty.”
Grantees of this program include a project at Duke University, Enterprise Solutions to Poverty; the Mercatus Center, which used funding for a program that trained scholars to “explore Adam Smith’s approach to political economy”; and the National Constitution Center’s Constitutional Ambassadors Program.
Grants for Journalism, Media and Higher Education
Templeton’s final grantmaking area, Public Engagement, works broadly to support content creation, leadership development and campus activities that “catalyze conversations that inspire awe and wonder because we want to enable people to live lives of meaning and purpose.” Areas of interest include but are not limited to “virtues like intellectual humility, gratitude, curiosity, and love in solving society’s most pressing problems.” Grants have supported the production of film, radio, podcasts, writing projects and events, but the foundation notes that it welcomes “integrative, multi-platform proposals” and “curriculum development” projects.
One grant supported the production of the Film Collaborative’s documentary film Act Like a Holy Man, which is about the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Other recipients include the Union Theological Seminary, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the World Science Foundation and PRX Incorporated, which received funding for its podcast Voices in Science and the Big Questions.
Other Grantmaking Opportunities
Each year, the Templeton Foundation, in collaboration with the Templeton World Charity Foundation and Templeton Religion Trust, awards a $1.5 million Templeton Prize to recognize “individuals whose exemplary achievements advance Sir John Templeton’s philanthropic vision: harnessing the power of the sciences to explore the deepest questions of the universe and humankind’s place and purpose within it.” Past recipients include the health care advocate Edna Adan Ismail, Jane Goodall, King Abdullah II of Jordan, the Dalai Lama and Bishop Desomond Tutu, among others.
Important Grant Details:
The Templeton Foundation’s grants range from $20,000 to over $15 million.
More than half of its recipients are institutions of higher education, and while grantmaking is global in scope, the U.S. and the U.K. appear to be the foundation’s top geographic priorities.
While this funder supports organizations of all sizes, grantees tend to be very closely aligned with the foundation’s conservative, religious and philosophical interests.
For additional information about Templeton’s past grantmaking, see the foundation’s searchable grants database.
Application for Templeton grants begins with the foundation’s online funding inquiry, which can be accessed through the application portal. If selected, applicants will be invited to submit full proposals. Due dates vary by grant size and/or program; applicants should consult the foundation’s grant calendar and FAQ for further information.
General inquiries may be directed to foundation staff via the organization’s contact page.
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