Wallace Foundation

The Wallace Foundation funds a number of education grants each year. In most cases, they identify and evaluate prospective grantees through the issuance of Requests for Proposals or other careful screening processes. While they believe this approach strengthens the effectiveness of their investments, it also means that unsolicited proposals are rarely funded.

Nevertheless, organizations wishing to send a one- to two-page letter of inquiry (please do not send videotapes or e-mail inquiries) describing the project, your organization, the estimated total for the project and the portion requiring funding, should write to:


The Wallace Foundation
General Management
5 Penn Plaza, 7th Floor
New York, NY 10001

The mission of the Wallace Foundation is to support and share effective ideas and practices that enable institutions to expand learning and enrichment opportunities for all people. To achieve this, they are focusing exclusively on three major areas:

1. Strengthening educational leadership in ways that significantly improve student achievement.
2. Helping selected cities make high-quality out-of-school learning opportunities available to many more children.
3. Making the arts a part of many more people's lives by working with arts organizations, schools and other providers of arts education and experience to build both present and future arts audiences.

In each of these areas, their approach is to select and invest in innovation sites willing to test promising new approaches, while commissioning and sharing independent research that could benefit the work in those sites as well as many others who are interested in pursuing similar changes but who may never receive our direct funding. The specific strategies they are using in each of these three areas are described in the Grants and Programs section of their website, as well as in the Knowledge Center.

Please take a close look at this funding source and let us know if you are interested in pursuing it to support your youth education program.