OVERVIEW: Rockefeller is an iconic player in large-scale American philanthropy. The foundation has a myriad of issues and causes in which it is interested, updating and reevaluating its funding areas regularly. Currently, its grantmaking supports global health and development, public health, work and economic opportunity, humanitarian and disaster relief, climate change and clean energy, science and medical research, and racial justice and equity. It also supports various types of writing and writers; however, the only direct support the foundation provides is through its writers' residency programs.
IP TAKE: This is a transparent and relatively accessible funder. However, due to its global reputation, size and reach, grantmaking is highly competitive and bureaucratic. The foundation tends to support established, large NGOs, but it also supports some smaller groups on fewer occasions. Grantseekers’ best bet to secure Rockefeller funding is to make a large enough impact on their field that it attracts the foundation’s attention.
PROFILE: The Rockefeller Foundation, founded in 1913 by John D. Rockefeller, Sr., and his son, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., has a long legacy as one of the largest philanthropic organizations in the country. It seeks to “improve lives and the planet, and unleash human potential, through innovation.” Originally dedicated to public health and “social hygiene,” it has expanded its grantmaking to include “the right to health, food, power and economic mobility.” Throughout its lifetime, the foundation has given away the equivalent of over $17 billion in today’s dollars. Its current funding priorities are Food, Health, Power, Equity and Economic Opportunity, and Emerging Frontiers, which includes Innovative Finance and Innovation across several focus areas.
Grants for Global Development and Food Systems
The Rockefeller Foundation does not have one program specifically devoted to issues related to global development, but it does have several programs and subprograms that address aspects of this area. Rockefeller’s Good Food Strategy is a $105 million initiative to make healthy and sustainable foods more accessible around the world. The Nourish the World program works to promote “a more nourishing, regenerative, and equitable food system” across the globe. Within that program are three subprograms that target different geographic regions. The Africa initiative focuses on Kenya, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Tanzania, and Uganda and supports “the growth of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) through the Ag/Energy for Nutrition Accelerator, investing in green agriculture innovations with the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, and outfitting markets with clean and sustainable infrastructure.”
The USA initiative supports transformative programming in the American food system by supporting school meal programs and organizations that work to expand access to Produce Prescription programs. It also seeks to make the food system more equitable, nourishing, and sustainable, particularly for communities of color.
The Global initiative operates similar to the previous initiative, but it makes grants to regions outside of the US and Africa.
Rockefeller’s End Energy Poverty program supports “reliable, renewable electricity in underserved, low-income communities worldwide.” The Powering the Last Mile subprogram works to expand access to electricity in undeserved, low-income communities around the world, particularly in the program’s current focus regions in Africa, India, Myanmar and Puerto Rico. The Data & Technology Solutions subprogram works to expand access to sustainable, clean energy worldwide. Finally, the Driving Global Action subprogram works through the Global Commission to End Energy Poverty to “fast-track sustainable power solutions, investments, and partnerships that will deploy globally over the next decade to provide electricity to hundreds of millions in pursuit of the UN's 2030 Sustainable Development Goal 7.”
The foundation’s Emerging Frontiers program’s Innovative Finance subprogram addresses “global development challenges by unlocking private capital for impact at scale.” It seeks to use philanthropy as a catalyst to support projects with impact and scale.
Grants for Public Health and Global Health
The Rockefeller Foundation supports public health and medical research through its Health for All program, which currently has three active subprograms. The COVID-19 Response program works to both continue to support relief and recovery from the coronavirus pandemic and to apply the lessons learned from this crisis toward future pandemics. The Precision Public Health program is a $100 million initiative to “make community health more proactive and responsive to patient and population needs.” It focuses on regions in India and Uganda and has a goal of saving the lives of at least 6 million women and children by 2030. The Universal Health Coverage program supports organizations and programs that work to bring universal health coverage to countries throughout the world, particularly in low- and middle-income and vulnerable populations.
Grants for Work and Economic Opportunity
The Rockefeller Foundation’s Equity and Economic Opportunity program is “dedicated to ensuring every American working family can meet its basic needs and have a path to a better future.”
There are two subprograms here, and the first, Scaling Solutions for Workers, supports programs and organizations that promote “evidence-based policies and pragmatic solutions that address rapidly changing needs of the workforce — advancing solutions that work for America’s workers,” specifically raising awareness of the benefits of the Earned Income Tax Credit and Child Tax Credit.
The second subprogram, Mobilizing Private Capital for Impact, works to establish “partnerships to spur greater investment in low-income communities across the country.” This initiative is active in Atlanta, Ga., Boston, Ma., Dallas, Texas, Louisville, Ky., Miami, Fla., Newark, N.J., New Orleans, La., Norfolk, Va., Pittsburgh, Pa., Oakland, Calif., Seattle, Wa., and St. Louis, Mo., and Washington D.C.
Grants for Humanitarian and Disaster Relief
Announced in 2020, Rockefeller’s COVID-19 Response is a three-year, $1 billion program and currently the foundation’s most active humanitarian program. Its long-term focus is two-fold and includes “catalyzing billions of dollars in private and concessional investments to scale distributed renewable energy across developing countries; and ensuring more equitable access to Covid-19 tests and vaccines, science-based tools, and data to fight the pandemic, while strengthening public health systems to prevent future outbreaks.” In the short term, it supports efforts to increase access to testing and accelerate the vaccine rollout. The immediate program goal is to support “policies that recognize the cascading benefits of getting back to work, going back to school and taking back control of our lives.”
Grants for Climate Change and Clean Energy
Rockefeller’s End Energy Poverty program supports “reliable, renewable electricity in underserved, low-income communities worldwide.” The Powering the Last Mile subprogram works to expand access to electricity in undeserved, low-income communities around the world, particularly in the program’s current focus regions in Africa, India, Myanmar and Puerto Rico. The Data & Technology Solutions subprogram works to expand access to sustainable, clean energy worldwide.
As part of its massive three-year, $1 billion COVID-19 Response, Rockefeller has pledged “billions of dollars in private and concessional investments to scale distributed renewable energy across developing countries.” According to the initiative’s news release, the foundation will collaborate “with global investors, international organizations, and governments” to focus “on driving historic public-private investment in infrastructure that accelerates access to clean, safe, and reliable renewable energy across Africa, Asia, and Latin America.”
Grants for Science Research
The foundation’s Emerging Frontiers program’s Innovation subprogram works to “amplify and complement work across all the Foundation’s other initiatives by finding new ways to utilize data, to strengthen partnerships and to extract more leverage from existing networks.” It has two active initiatives: Data.org, which seeks to facilitate “better connections between data resources and those on the front lines of social impact,” and Digital Transformation, which partners with governments and the social sector “to build the tools, policies, and institutions that will ensure that technological change promotes inclusion, equity, and human rights by reimagining what public goods look like in the digital era.”
Grants for Racial Justice and Indigenous Rights, Housing and Community Development
Rockefeller does not have a program dedicated to racial equity and justice in the United States, but it does have a lengthy history of making grants in this area. It often conducts work through an anti-racist lens. Relatively recently, the foundation awarded $1.5 million to Boston University’s Center for Antiracist Research. The Rockefeller Foundation has also committed $10 million to The Rockefeller Foundation Opportunity Collective, an initiative housed under the umbrella of the Mobilizing Private Capital for Impact program, which seeks “invest $10M in partners, projects, and programs across 10 U.S. cities with two core goals: protecting communities from displacement, and eliminating barriers to access capital and credit among low-wage workers and small businesses operated by women, black and Latinx owners.”
Grants for Writing
It funds creative and academic writing through its Residency Program, a two to four week program at the Bellagio Center, which is open to collaborative residencies of up to four people working on the same project.
Its Academic Writer's Residency supports academic writers whose work contributes to "the well-being of humanity or in some way connects with the Rockefeller Foundation’s focus areas: advance health; revalue ecosystems; secure livelihoods; and transform cities."
The foundation's Arts and Literary Arts Residency supports playwrights, poets, novelists, or otherwise "creative artists in all career stages." Though Rockefeller welcomes projects of all types of subject matter, it has a keen interest in projects that are inspired by or relates to global or social issues that align with the foundation's overall grant making priorities as mentioned above.
The Practitioner Residency is open to “senior-level policymakers, nonprofit leaders, journalists, private sector leaders and public advocates with ten or more years of leadership experience in a variety of fields and sectors.” Bellagio only accepts proposals for this residency from applicants whose work aligns with the foundation’s “efforts to promote the well-being of humanity, particularly through issues that have a direct impact on the lives of poor and vulnerable populations around the world.”
All Bellagio Center residencies prioritize "team projects that bring residents together from different geographies, institutions, or disciplines since this reinforces the Center's goal of establishing new connections." Residencies generally occur sometime from August through November. Applications usually open in October, with a final deadline in the beginning of December. However, applicants should note that residencies have been suspended until further notice due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Grantseekers should review the Writer’s Residency application and the Bellagio Application Resource Center before applying.
Important Grant Details:
Rockefeller grants range from $25,000 to the tens of millions. It does not accept unsolicited applications or requests for funding. To gain a better understanding of the types of organizations Rockefeller supports and at what level, explore its Grants Database. The database allows you to search recent grants by initiative and keywords.
This is a transparent and relatively accessible funder. However, due to its global reputation, grantmaking is competitive. Rockefeller typically funds bigger organizations that have the ability to exact large and widespread change.
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