Funding Priorities
RSF funds social science research that extends the methods, data, and theories of the social sciences as a means of better documenting and understanding the nation’s most pressing social, political, and economic problems. Below you will find current funding priorities under our programs and special initiatives.
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RSF will accept letters of inquiry (LOIs) under all of its core programs and special initiatives: Behavioral Science and Decision Making in Context; Future of Work; Immigration and Immigrant Integration; Race, Ethnicity and Immigration; Social, Political, and Economic Inequality. It will also accept LOIs relevant to its core programs that address the effects (a) of social movements, such as drives for unionization and mass social protests, and the effects of racial/ethnic/gender bias and discrimination on a range of outcomes related to social and living conditions in the U.S. and (b) of the 2023 Supreme Court decision on race-conscious admissions policies and the relative merits of different models to promote diversity and the educational attainment and economic mobility of underrepresented and lower-income students.
RSF rarely considers projects for which the investigators have not already fully-developed the research design, the sample framework, access to data, etc. Investigators are encouraged to submit an LOI after they have developed and pre-tested survey instruments, completed preliminary data analyses if the data are publically-available or conducted some preliminary interviews for qualitative studies.
Our priorities do not include analyses of health or mental health outcomes or health behaviors as these are priorities for other funders. For the same reason, RSF seldom supports studies focused on educational processes or curricular issues but does prioritize analyses of inequities in student achievement or educational attainment.