Carnegie Corporation of New York

Overview: The Carnegie Corporation was created by Andrew Carnegie in 1911 to promote nothing less than "the advancement and diffusion of knowledge and understanding." Carnegie wanted the corportion "to do real and permanent good in this world." Today, the Corporation is among the largest 25 foundations in the US, and still pursues this high aspiration. If you're going to apply for funding from Carnegie, be prepared to show how your project will dramatically and concretely "advance knowledge and understanding."

The Carnegie Corporation makes grants to academic institutions and to national and regional nonprofit organizations for projects that have potential for national or international impact.

The Corporation is among the top five international funders among US foundations, awarding millions for international affairs to domestic and foreign organizations, especially those located or working on issues affecting Africa.

Program Areas

1. International Peace and Security
2. Islam Initiative
3. Higher Education and Libraries in Africa
4. Higher Education in Eurasia
5. Urban and Higher Education
6. Democracy and Civic Integration
7. Carnegie Scholars
8. Future of Journalism Education
9. Dissemination


Other Carnegie Philanthropies
The Carnegie Corporation is one of seven US-based Carnegie-related institutions and the only one that awards substantial funding. The others are:

Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs
(Merrill House, 170 East 64th Street, New York NY 10021-7478) Founded in 1914 by Andrew Carnegie, the Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs is an independent, nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to research and education in the field of ethics and international affairs.

Carnegie Institute
(4400 Forbes Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA 15213-4080), 1895, comprising a music hall, museums of art and natural history, and a library. It includes the Carnegie Science Center (1 Allegheny Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA 15212-5850).

Carnegie Institution of Washington
(1530 P Street, NW, Washington, DC 20005), 1902, which conducts scientific research, primarily in astronomy, biology, and the earth sciences, and related educational activities.

Carnegie Hero Fund Commission
(425 Sixth Avenue, Suite 1640, Pittsburgh, PA 15219), 1904, for recognition of heroic acts performed in peaceful walks of life in the United States and Canada.

Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching
(555 Middlefield Road, Menlo Park, CA 94025), 1905, a private operating foundation primarily engaged in education policy studies.

Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
(1779 Massachusetts Avenue, NW, Washington, DC 20036), 1910, a nonprofit organization, conducting programs of research, discussion, education and publication on international affairs and U.S. foreign policy.

• Africa: Higher Education and Libraries in Africa
  
  The main objectives of Carnegie Corporation’s work in Africa are to enhance the capacities of educators, researchers and academic leaders in selected countries; to improve the use of information and communication technologies in teaching, research and management and to create public and university libraries to deepen academic research and public access to information and knowledge. These goals represent integrated pathways toward strengthening the next generation of academics and university leaders in Africa.
  
  The Corporation's new strategy has been developed through reviewing the accomplishments of the previous strategy; consultations within and outside of the Corporation, including with higher education stakeholders in several countries in sub-Saharan Africa and assessing the current higher education needs on the continent. At the same time that they developed this approach and made several initial grants to advance it, they also made final grants to conclude the previous strategy, which had focused on institutional transformation of several leading universities in five African countries through support for academic and administrative infrastructure, staff development and higher education opportunities for women.
  
  The Corporation's funding partners in this earlier work have been members of the Partnership for Higher Education in Africa (PHEA) and other private donors, European government agencies and U.S. Government initiatives. The Partnership coordinating office in New York is closed as of January 2010, but collaborative grantmaking in some areas of common interest will continue.
  
  Their future projects will stem from strategic grantmaking in the following areas:
  
  1) Investing in Africa’s Next Generation of Academics and University Leaders
  2) Information and Communication Technologies for Teaching, Learning and Research
  3) Libraries and Information
• Civil Rights, Immigrants:
• Democracy: Carnegie Corporation has identified immigrant civic integration as the optimum use of resources for attaining an increase in civic participation and a stronger U.S. democracy. This decision is based on several factors, including: the dramatic demographic change occurring in the United States through increased immigration; the Corporation's longstanding view of civic integration as essential to democracy; and their history as a significant funder in increasing voter/civic engagement among low propensity voters. Their greater emphasis on immigrant integration also comes in response to global labor market shifts and the growing link between higher educational attainment and social mobility in the United States.
  
  Adoption of this key goal follows decades in which the Corporation was a leading foundation funder in such areas as campaign finance reform, election administration and nonpartisan voter engagement, for which limited support will continue to be provided. Grantmaking in the U.S. Democracy and Civic Integration program will address:
  
  * Immigrant Civic Integration
  * Voter Engagement
• Diseases/Disabilities, AIDS/HIV Services & Research:
• Diversity: Apart from Mecca, the United States represents the most diverse array of Muslims from all over the world. Prior to 2001, Carnegie Corporation took an interest in Islam and Muslim communities in the United States, with a particular focus on their cultural and socio-economic diversity.
  
  Today, working independently and with other funders, the Corporation strives to improve understanding of Muslim communities and societies through:
  
  Increasing the outreach of academic expertise
  
  The Initiative builds on the Carnegie Scholars Program, which from 2004 to 2009 awarded research, writing and public engagement grants on the theme of Islam and Muslim societies to more than one hundred American scholars. Today, the Corporation supports the strengthening of outreach and communication by leading academic institutions with programs that increase knowledge about Muslim societies and communities. Support also goes toward creating and expanding on-line resources for the public, the media and the policy communities.
  
  Bolstering academic programs
  
  Research and scholarship are essential to understanding of the complexities of Muslim societies and their interactions. The Corporation's support goes to projects that explore not just conflicts but little-known convergences across history. Carnegie Corporation aims to strengthen expertise and build the capacity of the next generation. In addition, they work to make available original source materials, including significant writings from the past representing a variety of philosophical and cultural traditions.
  
  Facilitating international partnerships and communication
  
  Recognizing the importance of building relationships and mutual understanding, the Corporation strives to establish institutional linkages between American and overseas academic centers, think tanks and professional associations. In cooperation with other funders, the Corporation also promotes networks of foundations and nonprofit organizations that complement official efforts to improve relations with predominantly Muslim states through the involvement of civil society.
  
• Education: Throughout its history Carnegie Corporation has sought to promote and preserve a robust American democracy by supporting expanded opportunity through education. Their goal is to generate systemic change throughout the kindergarten to college (K - 16) continuum, with particular emphasis on secondary and higher education. They aim to enable many more students, including historically underserved populations and immigrants, to achieve academic success and perform at the highest levels of creative, scientific and technical knowledge and skill.
  
  To build students' college and career readiness, the Corporation supports development of high-performing systems of public secondary schools with these characteristics:
  
  * High standards
  * Accountability
  * Data-driven management and instruction
  * High quality leaders and teachers
  * School designs that maximize students' engagement with education
  * Academically rigorous curriculum
  
  They have issued an urgent call for a national mobilization to transform mathematics and science education and deliver it equitably and with excellence to all students. This objective has been explained comprehensively in the publication, The Opportunity Equation: Transforming Mathematics and Science Education for Citizenship and the Global Economy, produced in cooperation with the Institute for Advanced Study, which recommends concrete actions by organizations from labor and business to federal and state government, schools and colleges, and donors.
  
  At the same time, they are contributing to the development of higher education institutions that enroll and successfully educate a diverse range of students, preparing them to compete in a global economy and exercise leadership in a democratic society. They have identified three overlapping foundational levers of change, each representing an area for specific grant-making, through which to pursue these goals:
  
  1. Innovation: New Designs for Schools, Colleges and Education Systems
  2. Strengthening human capital
  3. Building knowledge and affecting policy
• Education, Higher Education: The Carnegie Scholars Program was established in 1999 to support innovative and pathbreaking scholarship that would extend the boundaries of the Corporation's grantmaking. From 2005-2009, the Program focused exclusively on Islam and the Modern World.
  
  No new Carnegie Scholars will be named in 2010 as the Program will pause in order to take stock of its accomplishments, and to consider future priorities.
  
  Public Scholarship
  
  During its ten-year history, the Scholars Program has spurred innovation in research and thought, and provided critical support to public scholarship, bringing the highest quality of academic research into the public and policy realms.
  
  To date, 168 Scholars have been funded over the course of the Carnegie Scholars Program's two phases.
  
  Scholars of Vision, 2000-2004
  
  During its first five years, the Program supported "Scholars of Vision," whose work addressed the entire scope of the Corporation's grant programs at the time including: Education, International Development, Strengthening U.S. Democracy and International Peace and Security.
  
  Over these five years, 67 Carnegie Scholars drawn from public universities, liberal arts colleges, traditional research universities and also, independent researchers were selected to pursue a broad variety of subjects, including 16 Scholars whose work foreshadowed the subsequent focus on Islam.
  
  Scholars of Islam and the Modern World, 2005-2009
  
  The second phase of the Program was established with the goal of supporting individual scholars whose research extends the boundaries of knowledge about Islam and Muslim communities. The aim was to build a critical mass of thoughtful and original scholarship to add to our knowledge regarding Islam as a religion as well as the cultures and civilizations of Muslim societies and communities, both in the United States and abroad.
  
  A total of 101 Scholars were funded to deepen, broaden and bring to light new knowledge about Islam and Muslim societies. These men and women were also selected for their commitment to enriching the quality of the public dialogue on Islam.
  
• Immigrants/refugees:
• International Affairs, Arms Control:
• International Affairs, Development:
• International Affairs, Development & Peace:
• International Affairs, Peace/Security: Through the years, Carnegie Corporation has worked to achieve a more secure, peaceful and prosperous world through the advancement and diffusion of knowledge and understanding. Today their efforts in this area are threefold: meeting global security challenges through nonproliferation, reduction and eventual elimination of nuclear weapons; improving approaches to states at risk of instability or collapse; and enhancing U.S. global engagement.
  
  The international community is struggling to adapt to a multi-polar world, unsure of its implications for security, stability and prosperity. Although the risk of nuclear conflict between the United States and Russia has largely disappeared, other factors, including the emergence of terrorist groups seeking these weapons, has increased. At the same time, more than a third of the world's states currently have governments incapable of protecting their citizens and meeting their basic needs. These states threaten global security by acting as potential launching pads for terrorists, or serving as breeding grounds for internal and regional conflicts, refugee flows, human rights violations, narcotics trafficking and other ills.
  
  The Corporation believes that today's complex challenges cannot be met by governments alone, but rather demand independent analyses, technical and scientific study, international approaches and intellectual and institutional capabilities. The Corporation aims to meet these needs through strategic grantmaking in the following areas:
  
  1) Nuclear Security
  2) States at Risk
  3) U.S. Global Engagement
  
• Journalism Education: Under President Vartan Gregorian's leadership, Carnegie Corporation of New York has made journalism education a key priority. In 2003, the Corporation began a dialogue with deans of several of the United States’ most prestigious journalism schools to determine how major research universities could improve the journalism curriculum. The goal was to challenge students intellectually and prepare them for careers in the news industry at this pivotal time of change in the field.
  
  The deans at four top research universities—the University of Southern California, Northwestern University, Columbia University and the University of California, Berkeley, along with and the head of Harvard’s Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy—collaborated on a vision for journalism education in the 21st century.
  
  Vartan Gregorian created a partnership with Hodding Carter, then president of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, a leading philanthropy focused on excellence in journalism, and enlisted the aid of the consulting firm McKinsey & Co. who, on a pro bono basis, interviewed 40 news industry leaders, including news executives, editors, and correspondents, about their views on journalism education.
  
  These conversations with deans and journalism professionals became the intellectual foundation for the Carnegie-Knight Initiative on the Future of Journalism Education, launched in 2005. Since then, seven additional university schools of journalism have joined the Initiative, capping it at twelve member universities.
  
  Carnegie Corporation’s relationship with the Knight Foundation, under the leadership of current president Alberto Ibarguen, is an equal partnership, with both foundations supporting all the intellectual and scholarly facets of the Initiative, which focuses on reform and innovation.
• Libraries:
• Russia: For the past decade, the Corporation has been supporting higher education programs in Russia and Eurasia through a special initiative on Higher Education in the Former Soviet Union (HEFSU). Launched in 1999 to support academics and intellectuals at the time of the region's post-Soviet transformation, HEFSU aimed to strengthen the newly independent states and their societies. Economic recovery and growing governmental investments in higher education in Russia have allowed the Corporation to shift resources from Russia to the South Caucasus and Western Eurasia.
  
  The Corporation works independently and with other funders to strengthen the region's academic communities through:
  
  Enhancing the capacities of educators, researchers and academic leaders in selected countries in Eurasia.
  
  At the core of the HEFSU initiative are networks of centers that offer access to academic research, publication and outreach programs for scholars in Russia, the South Caucasus and Western Eurasia. The university based centers serve as vehicles for revitalizing scholarship and connecting the regional academic and international communities. Additional Corporation-supported programs offer opportunities for research visits to American universities. The program is not considering new projects for funding.
  
• Voting, Voter Education:
• Women & Girls:
• Youth Services:

Sample Grants
$ 65,000,000 to Academy for Educational Development , Washington , DC
$ 250,000 to African Women's Development & Communication NetworkKenya
$ 49,000 to American Library Association , Washington , DC
$ 300,000 to Arab American Community Coalition , Seattle , WA
$ 300,000 to Arab Community Center for Economic & Social Services (ACCESS) , Dearborn , MI
$ 100,000 to Atlanta-Fulton Public Library , Atlanta , GA
$ 15,000 to Big Sky Institute for the Advancement of Nonprofits , Helena , MT
$ 25,000 to Black United Fund, National Headquarters , Newark , NJ
$ 300,700 to Brigham Young University , Provo , UT To study public's use of political Web sites in 2000
$ 40,000 to British American Security Information Council (BASIC) , Washington , DC
$ 750,000 to Brooklyn Public Library , New York , NY
$ 250,000 to Business Higher Education Forum , Washington , DC
$ 25,000 to Business Volunteers Unlimited , Cleveland , OH
$ 25,000 to Catholic Legal Immigration Network , Washington , DC
$ 526,700 to Center for Applied Linguistics , Washington , DC
$ 350,000 to Center for Cultural and Technical Interchange Between East and West , Honolulu , HI
$ 150,000 to Center for National Independence in Politics (CNIP) , Philipsburg , MT
$ 8,000,000 to Clark University, Schools for a New Society Initiative , Worcester , MA
$ 330,000 to Cleveland Public Library , Cleveland , OH
$ 25,000 to Coalition Of Labor Union Women - Center For Education And Research , Washington , DC
$ 25,000 to Community Foundation of Greater New Haven , New Haven , CT
$ 500,000 to Conflict Management Group , Cambridge , MA
$ 300,000 to Democracy South , Virginia Beach , VA
$ 330,000 to Detroit Public Library , Detroit , MI
$ 1,000,000 to District of Columbia College Access Program , Washington , DC
$ 500,000 to Education Commission of the States , Denver , CO
$ 165,000 to Educational Netcasting Foundation , Cambridge , MA
$ 50,000 to Fannie Lou Hamer Project , Kalamazoo , MI
$ 500,000 to First Nations Development Institute , Fredericksburg , VA
$ 25,000 to Forum for African Women EducationalistsKenya
$ 25,000 to Foundation for International Arts and Education , Bethesda , MD
$ 200,000 to Free Library of Philadelphia Foundation , Philadelphia , PA
$ 25,000 to Global Fund for Women , San Francisco , CA
$ 50,000 to Greater Washington Educational Telecommunications Association , Arlington , VA
$ 25,000 to Hudson Institute , Indianapolis , IN
$ 25,000 to Immigrant Workers Citizenship Projet , Las Vegas , NV
$ 50,000 to Indiana University , Bloomington , IN
$ 250,000 to Indianapolis Public Schools , Indianapolis , IN
$ 23,600 to Institute of Semitic Studies , Princeton , NJ
$ 900,000 to Maryland Association of Nonprofit Organizations , Baltimore , MD
$ 50,000 to Massachusetts Institute of Technology , Cambridge , MA
$ 23,000 to Media Kidz Research & Consulting , Teaneck , NJ
$ 100,000 to Minnesota Council of Nonprofits , Saint Paul , MN Toward strengthening the capacity of nonprofits that promote voter/civic engagement
$ 25,000 to Minority Task Force on AIDS , New York , NY
$ 15,000 to National Civic League , Denver , CO
$ 25,000 to National Council for Research on Women , New York , NY
$ 291,667 to National Head Start Association , Alexandria , VA
$ 500,000 to National Institute on Money in State Politics , Helena , MT
$ 575,000 to National Security Archive Fund , Washington , DC
$ 5,000 to Neighborhood Funders Group , Washington , DC
$ 3,000,000 to New York Public Library , New York , NY
$ 200,000 to Northeast Action , Boston , MA
$ 23,900 to Peace Games, Inc. , Boston , MA
$ 50,000 to Poets House , New York , NY
$ 25,000 to Proteus Fund, Inc , Amherst , MA
$ 750,000 to Queens Library Foundation , Jamaica , NY
$ 25,000 to Saint Anselm College , Manchester , NH
$ 200,000 to Seattle Public Library Foundation , Seattle , WA
$ 225,000 to Stone Lantern Films , Chevy Chase , MD
$ 900,000 to Teacher Education Accreditation Council , Newark , DE
$ 250,000 to United Nations
$ 350,000 to University of Colorado Foundation , Denver , CO
$ 29,900 to University of Kansas , Lawrence , KS
$ 1,120,700 to University of Natal , KwaZulu NatalSouth Africa
$ 1,000,000 to University of StellenboschSouth Africa
$ 25,000 to Vermont Alliance of Nonprofit Organizations , Burlington , VT
$ 50,000 to WGBH Educational Foundation , Boston , MA
$ 50,000 to Washington College , Chestertown , MD
$ 50,000 to World Affairs Council of Pittsburgh , Pittsburgh , PA

Application Procedures:: Submitting a Letter of Inquiry

Carnegie Corporation of New York requests a Letter of Inquiry to initiate the formal grant application process. Letters of Inquiry are accepted on a rolling basis; there are no deadlines.

Only representatives of nonprofit organizations who have read the program description relevant to their own project and reviewed recent grants made by that program should submit a Letter of Inquiry using the online form found Here.

While Carnegie Corporation will continue to accept Letters of Inquiry via regular mail, such submissions will take longer to process than those received online. Letters of Inquiry submitted via the online form are acknowledged by an auto reply response when received.

Following an initial staff review, only representatives of nonprofit organizations whose Letters of Inquiry fit with a program's strategy and funding priority may be invited to submit a formal grant proposal.

Organizations invited to submit a formal grant proposal will be contacted within 4-6 weeks following their online submission of a Letter of Inquiry.

Due to the large volume of online submissions received, the Carnegie Corporation cannot respond to phone calls requesting status updates on a submitted Letter of Inquiry.

Submitting a Grant Proposal

If, after reviewing your Letter of Inquiry, Carnegie Corporation program staff determines that your project fits with a specific program's strategies and funding priorities, you will be invited to submit a formal grant proposal.

Once a formal proposal has been submitted, Carnegie Corporation will evaluate it and come to a decision about whether funding for the proposal will be offered.

Grants Paid

2000 ($60,800,000 )

2001 ($56,400,000 )

2002 ($82,900,000 )

2003 ($75,542,000 )

2004 ($91,053,489 )

2005 ($69,427,985 )

2006 ($110,249,470 )

2007 ($80,272,806 )

2008 ($101,314,879 )

2009 ($100,968,656 )

  ← back | ↑ top

©2006 Access Philanthropy
2100 Stevens Avenue S., Minneapolis, MN 55404
phone: 612-886-1362 • 4info@accessphilanthropy.com