Global Call for Ideas: Templeton World Charity Foundation (02/13/26)
Posted: 12/18/2025 (Funding)
Organization: Templeton World Charity Foundation
Award amount: $5-20 million overall
Sponsor deadline: 02/13/2026
Description: The Templeton World Charity Foundation is looking for ideas to form the basis of future funding priorities aligned with the Foundation’s purpose.
Ideas should be bold and innovative, with the potential to deepen or expand our understanding of ultimate reality and what it means to be human. We seek ideas for rigorous research programs that can impact how we each see the world and our place within it.
Recognizing that these discoveries may come from diverse sources we seek ideas that might illuminate and point to discoveries in three of our core areas of interest:
- the fundamental processes, structures and constituents of the natural world
- what it is to be human, as well as the various ways human beings can progress spiritually through their understanding and pursuit of virtues such as love, creativity, gratitude, forgiveness, spirituality, connection, and other positive concepts.
- the nature of transcendent divinity and human responses to it.
Central to TWCF’s mission is our commitment to meaning, purpose, and truth as realities that can be known and pursued. TWCF can fund curiosity-driven research on big questions that expand the horizons of humanity’s perspectives, without necessarily expecting definitive answers. We welcome bold ideas that have potential to generate new insights, even if those ideas may be seen as too risky or contrarian by other funders.
As well as discovery-focused research, we are also open to ideas for more applied programs in specific topics (see Core Funding Areas) that will lead to long-term future benefits for humanity.
Our current priorities and funded projects exemplify, but do not limit, the range and types of topics that we are interested in. A full description of the scope of our work can also be found in the descriptions of our Core Funding Areas (see section below). We invite ideas from a wide range of disciplines, spanning the natural and social sciences, as well as humanities like philosophy and theology. Interdisciplinary ideas that integrate insights from different perspectives through open-minded inquiry are strongly encouraged.
Eligibility:
Faculty & PIs
Deadline: 02/13/2026