Pipeline Grants Competition

Russell Sage Foundation

The foundation dedicates itself to strengthening the methods, data, and theories of the social sciences as a means of diagnosing social problems and improving social policies. It also funds researchers at other institutions and supports programs intended to develop new generations of social scientists.

Pipeline Grants Competition

The Pipeline Grants Competition seeks to support early- career scholars (Assistant Professors, Lecturers and Adjunct Assistant Professors) and promote diversity by prioritizing applications from scholars who are underrepresented in the social sciences and/or employed at under-resourced colleges and universities. This includes racial, ethnic, gender, disciplinary, institutional, and geographic diversity.

The primary goal of the Pipeline Grants Competition is to support innovative research on economic mobility and access to opportunity in the United States. We are also interested in research focused on structural barriers to educational attainment, economic mobility, political and civic engagement, and how individuals, communities and state entities understand, navigate and challenge systemic inequalities.

RSF has a long-standing goal of encouraging methodological diversity and inter-disciplinary collaboration. Applicants might propose exploratory fieldwork, a pilot study, field or survey experiments, in-depth qualitative interviews, ethnographies, and/or pilot or exploratory studies which support the development of a randomized evaluation (randomized controlled trial).

Areas of Interest

• Income & Wealth
• Policy Impacts and Interventions
• Neighborhood Characteristics, Gentrification and Segregation
• Climate Change & Natural Disasters
• Criminal Justice & the Legal System
• Young Adults of Color, Social Movements, and Democracy
• Accessing the Safety Net
• Labor Markets
• Immigrants, Immigration, and Immigrant Integration Policies
• Education
• Gender, Work and Public Policies

Funding

RSF expects to fund about 20 one-year projects by assistant professors, lecturers, and adjunct assistant professors. Individual applicants can apply for grants of up to $35,000; teams of two or more eligible applicants can apply for grants of up to $50,000.

RSF will pair grantees with mentors conducting research on related issues and provide an honorarium for the mentors. On occasion, RSF will deem a project or applicant more appropriate for its Presidential Grants Competition and review a Pipeline Grants proposal as a letter of inquiry for that competition instead.

Eligibility

_You can learn more about this opportunity by visiting the funder's website._

• Early-career scholars (anyone who is currently an Assistant Professor or Adjunct Assistant Professor, as well as Lecturers who received the Ph.D. in the last 10 years) are eligible to apply.
• Only faculty who have not previously received a research grant or a visiting fellowship from RSF are eligible to apply.
• Projects are limited to 1-year.
• There are no limitations on the disciplinary background of the researcher.
• Projects must contribute to RSF's mission to improve social and living conditions in the United States.
  • Appropriate projects will demonstrate use of relevant theory, data, methods and measures in the research design.
  • All projects must focus on the United States.
  • In some exceptional cases, RSF may consider data collected outside the U.S. (e.g., experimental data, survey data, etc.) if the researcher can demonstrate that the data needed for the project is not available in the U.S., and that the data has direct and strong relevance to understanding social and living conditions in the U.S.

Ineligibility

• Our priorities generally exclude research focused on health​ or mental health outcomes or health behaviors, ​as these are priorities for other funders. ​
• For the same reason, RSF seldom supports research focused on educational processes or curricular issues.
• Applicants can apply for either the Pipeline Grants Competition or the LOIs for presidential and trustee grants, but not both.
• Full professors, associate professors, and assistant professors who have previously received RSF funding are eligible to be co-PI’s on projects, but cannot receive funding.
• Post-docs are not eligible to be PIs, but can be included on and receive funding on a grant.

Apply by Wednesday, October 21, 2026, 2 p.m. ET. Applicants can apply to either the Sheldon Danziger Pipeline Grants Competition or the October 28 LOI deadline, but not both. RSF partners with J-PAL North America to support pilot randomized control trials through this competition.