The American Psychological Foundation's Visionary Grants seek to seed innovation through supporting research, education and intervention projects and programs that use psychology to solve social problems in the following priority areas:

• Applying psychology to at-risk, vulnerable populations (e.g., serious mental illness, returning military, those who are incarcerated or economically disadvantaged).
• Preventing violence.
• Understanding the connection between behavior and health (e.g. wellness, diabetes, obesity).
• Understanding and eliminating stigma and prejudice (e.g., race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, age, disability and socioeconomic status).

Preference will be given to pilot projects that, if successful, would be strong candidates for support from major federal and foundation funding agencies, and “demonstration projects” that promise to generalize broadly to similar settings in other geographical areas and/or to other settings.

Funding Information

One-year grants are available in amounts of up to $20,000.

Eligibility Criteria

• Applicants must:
  • Be a graduate student or early career researcher (no more than 10 years postdoctoral).
  • Be affiliated with a nonprofit charitable, educational or scientific institution, or governmental entity operating exclusively for charitable and educational purposes.
  • Have demonstrated competence and capacity to execute the proposed work.
• APF will not consider the following requests for grants to support:
  • Political or lobbying purposes.
  • Entertainment or fundraising expenses.
  • Anyone the Internal Revenue Service would regard as a disqualified group or individual.
  • Localized direct service.
  • Conference/workshop expenses.

IRB approval must be received from host institution before funding can be awarded if human participants are involved.

Evaluation Criteria

Proposals will be evaluated on:

• Innovative and potential impact qualities (introduction of proven interventions in a similar setting, minor extensions of established theory or work that has little chance of replication or use beyond the proposed setting do not qualify as innovative or impactful).
• Quality, viability and promise of proposed work.
• Criticality of proposed funding for proposed work (mere contributions to larger funded efforts, or “add-ons” that could/should be carried out under that funding are discouraged).
• Clear and comprehensive methodology.

For more information, visit American Psychological Foundation.