MDC's mission is to help young people be successful in school and in finding careers. MDC uses the following strategies to support its mission:

• increasing institutional capacity to better serve disadvantaged students and their communities
• reforming public policies and systems to increase the quality and availability of higher education
• promoting the critical link between postsecondary education and economic well-being for people and communities

Michael and Susan Dell established the foundation in 1999 with an endowment that has grown to more than $1 billion. The gift was inspired by their passion for supporting children’s causes as a way to make an even greater difference in a measurable way, particularly for those children living in urban poverty. Based in Austin, TX, the foundation initially focused on improving education and children’s health in Central Texas; but our mission soon expanded to reach children globally. To date, the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation has committed almost $450 million to assist nonprofit organizations working in major urban communities in the United States and India. Our vision is to focus on opportunities with the greatest potential to directly and measurably transform the lives of children living in urban poverty.

Funding catagories: education, science, arts, and civic engagement

Deadline: 12/12/08

The Maurice and Marilyn Cohen Fund for Doctoral Dissertation Fellowships in Jewish Studies encourages scholarly research, publication and teaching in the various disciplines of Jewish studies.

The Doctoral Dissertation Fellowships in Jewish Studies are made for one academic year and are given for the final stages of completing a dissertation, typically in the fifth year of study. Applicants should be completed all doctoral requirements, except for the completion of their thesis, and must show evidence of being able to complete their thesis within the fellowship year.

The Foundation currently awards five Fellowships at $16,000 per grant.

The aim of this program is to increase access to human knowledge and the fruits of human culture while developing a better framework for understanding the information economy. To date, the program has primarily encouraged digitizing material in the public domain; assuring public archiving, preservation and open access of this material; and fostering its availability to people everywhere through such technologies as books on demand. The technology now exists for universal access to the sum of all knowledge. The potential benefit to humanity is enormous, but it needs to be done in a truly open and non-exclusive basis, with the emphasis on the public good.

Scholarly Communications program focuses broadly on all stages in the life cycle of scholarly resources. The program complements fellowships and other kinds of support for research and teaching at research universities, independent research centers, libraries, and museums by promoting the cost-effective creation, dissemination, accessibility, and preservation of high-quality scholarly resources in humanistic studies broadly defined.

Grantmaking occurs principally in five main categories: new methods of creating scholarly resources, innovations in scholarly publication, cataloging and other forms of access, preservation, and research and evaluation. The Foundation is especially interested in developments that:

• Use forms of scholarly communications to stimulate collaborations among scholars and scholarly institutions in ways that substantially advance knowledge;
• Foster the means economically to sustain forms of scholarly communication; and
• Apply technology to forms of scholarly communications in order to improve quality, lower costs, speed up work, open new perspectives, or make work possible that would otherwise be difficult or impossible.

Research in Information Technology (RIT) is dedicated to supporting the thoughtful application of information technology to a wide range of scholarly purposes. The Foundation is interested in promoting the study of uses of digital technologies that can be applied to research and online and distance learning and teaching. The Foundation also supports investigations of new technical approaches to the archiving of textual and multimedia materials that require improved search and storage techniques and improvements in user-interfaces. The impact of information technology (and especially digitization) on scholarship, scholarly communication, and libraries is indisputable.

The Foundation seeks proposals related to technology that benefits one or more of its constituencies and/or multiple institutions, can realistically be developed by the grantee within the proposed timeframe and budget, provides a significant cost savings, is shareable, reliable, and objectively assessible, and has available IP.

The main goal of the Foundation’s higher education program in South Africa is to develop capacity in higher education by providing opportunities for individuals who were previously disadvantaged and individuals who have demonstrated a commitment to the previously disadvantaged.

Grants from the Foundation have supported regional library collaborations of universities and technikons (now universities of technology). All 21 higher education institutions and the National Library of South Africa have benefited from our support of five regional consortia. The Foundation also made grants to the South African Bibliographic Network (SABINET) to support library collaboration at the national level and to promote access to JSTOR, a scholarly journal archive (www.jstor.org). In addition, the Foundation has worked to improve access to the Internet for all of South African higher education through the Tertiary Education Network (www.tenet.ac.za).

The Hewlett Foundation Open Educational Resources Initiative seeks to use information technology to help equalize access to knowledge and educational opportunities across the world. The initiative targets educators, students and self-learners worldwide.

Supports high quality digitized educational materials offered freely for anyone with Internet access. Over 50 funded projects, including:

MIT OpenCourseWare, African Virtual University, Creative Commons, Widernet eGranary

See site/newsletter for more info

List of awardees, project descriptions, and pdfs of successful proposals Open Educational Resources/Open Content grants.

Directory of foundations making grants in PA

News stories related to philanthropy.  See Guide for database of funding resources

The Doris Duke Clinical Interfaces Award Program seeks to catalyze activity at the interface of clinical and other research disciplines by:

• Supporting the formation of new collaborations and strengthening existing collaborations of outstanding scientists across disciplines;
• Demonstrating successful models for clinical research at the interface of multiple disciplines; and
• Supporting interdisciplinary and inter-institutional endeavors that go beyond the program project mindset.

Page related to funding opportunities for Judaic studies, maintained by Arthur Kiron

Center for Effective Philanthropy's publications