At the NEA Foundation, we support new ideas and practices to strengthen teaching and learning. Our goal is to fund and share successful strategies to educate and prepare children for bright and rewarding futures.

We have learned that the best teaching methods come from our greatest assets, educators. That is why, since 1999, we have awarded more than 2,000 individual grants totaling over $6 million to help public school teachers and other educational professionals improve student achievement.

To build our knowledge base and to uncover new, great practices in public education we invite all eligible educational professionals to apply for these grants. We hope this site provides useful information to encourage educators to realize their own potential and to ensure excellent teaching and learning in public schools.

Apply Online for Our Grants

All Learning & Leadership and Student Achievement grant applicants must complete proposals through the Foundation's online grant system. This application process gives applicants the ability to create a personal account that allows users to save versions of their application as it is being completed.

Apply Online Now

Grantee Success Stories

Great ideas run the gamut as do the educators and the students they teach. We believe our grantees have one thing in common: ideas that deserve support and recognition. Through our grants, we are rewarding innovation that creates better teachers, more dynamic classrooms, and engaged students.

Creating a “Model” Community:  Geometry and Social Studies Concepts Come to Life for Fourth-Graders

Sheila Irvin knows that her fourth-grade students at Egremont Elementary School learn best when they are given an opportunity to “play” with the concepts they are learning in their classroom, but finding the resources for hands-on activities can be a challenge.

 With this in mind, Irvin developed a proposal for an NEA Foundation Student Achievement Grant to partner with a local museum, an architect, and an environmental consultant to bring to life the concepts she was teaching her students. Her goal was to build a bridge of knowledge between shapes and geometrical concepts they were learning about in the classroom and the buildings, machines and streets that fill their community.  As a culmination of the project, the students were tasked with creating a model neighborhood.

Sign Up For NEA Foundation Updates

The NEA Foundation produces quarterly e-newsletter updates. Sign up to receive our email updates by submitting your email: