Request for Proposals: Caplan Foundation for Early Childhood (01/31/26)
Posted: 12/18/2025 (Funding)
Organization: Caplan Foundation for Early Childhood
Award amount: Undisclosed award amount, but past amounts have averaged around $50,000.
Sponsor deadline: 01/31/2026
Description: The Caplan Foundation for Early Childhood is an incubator of promising research and development projects that appear likely to improve the welfare of young children, from infancy through 7 years, in the United States. Welfare is broadly defined to include physical and mental health, safety, nutrition, education, play, familial support, acculturation, societal integration and childcare.
Welfare is broadly defined to support, acculturation, societal integration and childcare. Grants are only made if a successful project outcome will likely be of significant interest to other professionals, within the grantee’s field of endeavor, and would have a direct benefit and potential national application.
The Foundation’s goal is to provide seed money to implement those imaginative proposals that exhibit the greatest chance of improving the lives of young children, on a national scale. Because of the Foundation’s limited funding capability, it seeks to maximize a grant’s potential impact.
The foundation invites letters of intent in the following categories:
- Early Childhood Welfare: According to the foundation, children can only reach their full potential when all intellectual, emotional, and physical aspects of their development are optimally supported. Providing a safe and nurturing environment is essential, as is imparting social living skills in a culturally diverse world. The foundation supports projects that aim to perfect child-rearing practices and identify models that can provide creative, caring environments in which all young children thrive.
- Early Childhood Education and Play: Research shows that children need to be stimulated and nurtured early to succeed in school, work, and life. That preparation relates to every aspect of a child’s development and everywhere a child learns—at home, in childcare settings, and in preschool. The foundation aims to improve the quality of early childhood teaching by developing innovative curricula and research-based pedagogical standards and designing imaginative play materials and learning environments.
- Parenting Education: The foundation supports programs that teach parents about developmental psychology, cultural child-rearing differences, pedagogy, health issues, prenatal care and diet, and programs that provide cognitive and emotional support to parents.
Eligibility:
Faculty & PIs
Deadline: 01/31/2026