RSF funds social science research that extends the methods, data, and theories of the social sciences as a means of better documenting and understanding the nation’s most pressing social, political, and economic problems. Below you will find information about applying for funding under our programs and special initiatives.

In 2014, the Russell Sage Foundation launched research collaborations with the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Over the last two years, 7 projects have been co-funded with the Kellogg Foundation and 9 projects have been co-funded with the MacArthur Foundation.

Since 2014, The Russell Sage Foundation has made 27 housing-related grants totaling about $2 million in funding.

RSF has a long history of funding research projects, working groups, and visiting scholars, as well as publishing books and journal issues on criminal justice, incarceration, and law enforcement, with an emphasis on racial/ethnic and socioeconomic disparities.

In spring 2020, The Russell Sage Foundation announced new research priorities focused on the many effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on social, political, or economic conditions in the U.S.

After the murder of George Floyd and the subsequent protests in the spring and summer of 2020, RSF announced that it would fund research examining systeming racial inequality and the social movements protesting such inequalities.

Since 2016, RSF has collaborated with the Carnegie Corporation of New York to support research that builds on the findings of the 2015 National Academies report on The Integration of Immigrants into American Society, which was funded.

In recent years, RSF has dramatically increased the number of grants devoted to qualitative research. 

For decades, RSF has provided funding for research studies that involved significant data collection. Studies that produced publicly available datasets can now be accessed here and are searchable by keyword. The archive currently contains 76 datasets, covering topics such as child development and well-being, economic inequality, educational access, employment discrimination, immigrant integration, and political participation. You may also search here for reports and working papers funded and produced by RSF.

The Russell Sage Foundation prioritizes social science research into today’s most pressing social and economic concerns. This page features periodic overviews of research grants made on discrete topics–such the many effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on social, political, and economic conditions in the U.S.–drawn from across RSF’s four main research programs and its special initiatives. Together, they demonstrate RSF’s commitment to funding research “for the improvement of social and living conditions in the United States.”