Sheldon Danziger Pipeline Grants

Sheldon Danziger Pipeline Grants

Status: ACTIVE
Funder: Russell Sage Foundation
Amount: US $35,000 - US $50,000
Last Updated: December 29, 2025

Summary

The Pipeline Grants Competition by the Russell Sage Foundation aims to bolster early-career scholars and enhance diversity in the social sciences. It supports innovative research focusing on economic mobility and systemic inequalities in the U.S. Eligible applicants can receive up to $35,000 individually or $50,000 in teams. The foundation emphasizes methodological diversity and interdisciplinary collaboration, encouraging novel data usage. Projects should align with RSF's mission to improve social conditions, prioritizing underrepresented scholars from under-resourced institutions.

Overview

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. We are interested in novel uses of new or under-utilized data, and creative uses of administrative data or new data linkages across systems (e.g., in and across criminal justice, safety net, labor markets). 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 & WealthPolicy Impacts and InterventionsNeighborhood Characteristics, Gentrification and SegregationClimate Change & Natural DisastersCriminal Justice & the Legal SystemYoung Adults of Color, Social Movements, and DemocracyAccessing the Safety NetLabor MarketsImmigrants, Immigration, and Immigrant Integration PoliciesEducationGender, 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.