Contact: Bari Samad, Communications & Marketing Director, Second Nature; [email protected]
(July 21, 2023)– Second Nature, a nonprofit organization working to accelerate climate action in and through higher education, announced it has received a grant of $249,788 from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, a not-for-profit grantmaking institution dedicated to improving the welfare of all through the advancement of scientific knowledge.
The grant will support a pilot project to study and address federal funding barriers faced by researchers at higher education institutions not commonly involved in climate research. These institutions include undergraduate and community colleges and minority-serving institutions such as Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and Tribal Colleges and Universities (TCUs).
“Innovative ideas and expertise for new energy solutions exist at institutions not typically involved in the research enterprise. The question is, how can we mobilize this knowledge more effectively?” says Tim Carter, president of Second Nature. “With generous support from the Sloan Foundation, Second Nature will work with a cohort of researchers to study, identify and overcome barriers in the research proposal process, provide resources to these researchers to submit funding proposals, and create a knowledge base to facilitate ongoing research funding for diverse applicants in higher education.”
“High quality research is essential to effectively managing the transition to a zero-carbon economy,” says Evan S. Michelson, Program Director at the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. “We are excited to support Second Nature in its efforts to remove the barriers that prevent less well-resourced institutions from receiving the support they deserve and help promising scientific ideas get funded.”
Second Nature’s capacity-building project will specifically:
- Conduct listening sessions with researchers representing targeted institution types to understand better real-world constraints to apply for federal funding.
- Design and host fundraising capacity-building sessions to help overcome these constraints.
- Select and fund a cohort of research fellows and teams to navigate the federal funding application process and apply for grant funding.
- Produce a project report to evaluate the program and summarize the lessons to inform a fuller-scale rollout at targeted institutions.
The project will also inform how government decision-makers and other funders can design future energy research funding announcements that include more diverse institutional applicant pools, driving the energy system transition forward.
For more information on this pilot project, please visit secondnature.org.
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About Second Nature
Second Nature is committed to accelerating climate action in, and through, higher education. This is accomplished by mobilizing a diverse array of higher education institutions to act on bold climate commitments, to scale campus climate initiatives, and to create innovative climate solutions. Second Nature aims to align, amplify, and bridge the sector’s efforts with other global leaders to advance urgent climate priorities.
