The Boston University Foundation Relations team, within the Office of Advancement, helps faculty identify, apply for, secure, and steward charitable gifts and grants from private philanthropic foundations and nongovernmental organizations. We match faculty research and programs with foundations’ priorities, which are often to support pilot projects and high-risk research that may not be attractive to traditional funders such as NIH and NSF. Additional details about how we work can be found in this overview and our tips for success in securing grants are available here.
“They were a GREAT addition to the process: proactive, professional, detail oriented, rapidly responsive, friendly, and accommodating….In short, they were a key member of our submission team. Truth be told, I am not 100% sure that we would have made the submission deadline without them.”
—Thomas Gilmore, PhD, Professor, Biology
Hundreds of foundation programs are focused on early-career faculty. Their funding can be highly beneficial, helping to seed a new project, confirm proof of concept, or generate pilot data. In contrast to federal funders, private funders are more willing to support high-risk, high-reward projects.
foundation support to BU in FY25
proposals the Foundation Relations team helped faculty submit in FY25
“Meet the Funder” events organized by the Foundation Relations team over past four years
Numerous faculty members from across the University receive foundation support. Here are a few recent examples.
Ayse Lokmanoglu is studying a key crossroads in our cultural moment: political polarization and how it’s fed by online images, including those generated by artificial intelligence (AI). Lokmanoglu, a BU College of Communication assistant professor of emerging media studies, will spend two years investigating how images “spread online during politically charged moments like elections, and […]
Researchers from the BU School of Public Health and Weill Cornell Medicine have been awarded more than $950,000 from Arnold Ventures to create a “Medicaid atlas”—a national, data-driven web platform that will illuminate how healthcare use and spending vary across Medicaid programs, plans, and populations.
Two Boston University faculty members were honored with 2026 Breakthrough Prizes—among the world’s most prestigious science awards—at a ceremony in Santa Monica, Calif., on April 18. Lee Roberts, a College of Arts & Sciences professor of physics, received a Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics, one of six top prizes awarded annually for transformative achievements in life […]
The 2026 year is the 101st class of fellows and taps 223 trailblazing artists, scientists, and scholars across 55 fields. The Guggenheim Foundation has always been committed to awarding Fellowships at the highest level. Since its founding in 1925, the Foundation has awarded nearly $450 million in fellowships to more than 19,000 Fellows. In all, 55 scholarly […]
Summary of Work Plans for Fellowship: Making good choices requires considering not just their immediate outcomes, but also their longer-term consequences, a cognitive process that exhibits substantial individual variability across development. Such variability may reflect adaptation to the predictability of experienced environments. In predictable environments, knowledge of the world can be used to forecast the […]
This study will apply a novel statistical approach to medical record data to identify subgroups of sexual and gender minority youth and young adults with intersecting factors that are associated with increased risk for suicidal ideation. The research team will also hold focus groups with sexual and gender minority youth patients at increased risk for […]
The Wagner Arts Fellowship honors mid-career to established artists who are committed to Boston’s creative arts ecosystem and to developing socially engaged, community-focused work. Three Greater Boston-based artists have been selected to receive $75,000 each to build their practices in 2026. The fellowship is geared towards contemporary visual artists, but also artists who transform our idea […]
Investments in research, development, and innovation are widely recognized as key drivers of long-term economic growth but estimates of the social rate of return on these investments vary substantially. To encourage research on this topic, sometimes called "The Griliches Question," the NBER has launched a five-year project that will be organized around the creation of […]