The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation is an American philanthropic family foundation founded in 1934 by Alfred P. Sloan, former president and CEO of General Motors. The Sloan Foundation today serves as a grantmaking organization which funds projects in science, economics, and technology.
A number of the Sloan Foundation’s grants support left-of-center advocacy on environmentalist issues, on economic policy, and in the arts.
History
The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation was founded in 1934 by Alfred P. Sloan. 6
Grantmaking Activity
The Sloan Foundation disbursed nearly $98.5 million in grants in 2017 alone. 7 Most of these grants were targeted at educational institutions and projects focused in the sciences, specifically economics, energy policy, and environmental science. The organization awarded its largest single grant in 2017 to Wikimedia Foundation in the amount of $2 million for the structuring of data to create greater user accessibility on Wikipedia. 7
Environmentalism and Energy
The Sloan Foundation provides substantial funding to projects in environmentalism and energy policy, giving to both educational institutions and independent nonprofit organizations to promote environmental research.
In 2017, the Sloan Foundation offered grants to numerous left-of-center environmentalist organizations, including $664,260 to the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) for various environmentalist projects. 7 The Foundation also gave $150,000 to the Council on Foreign Relations for studies of American energy usage and the impact climate change may have on US foreign policy. 7 The Foundation gave one of its largest environmentally-focused grants to Resources for the Future, donating $1.4 million to the organization for research on “social cost” estimations of carbon usage and the efficacy of top-down environmental regulations. 7
The Foundation also provided substantial grants to various universities for environmental projects, including grants to MIT totaling $925,000 for the study of nuclear energy technologies, research on energy storage technologies, and the establishment of a fund in honor of former Sloan Foundation president and MIT Professor Paul Joskow. 7 In 2017, the Sloan Foundation donated nearly $9.4 million to fund scientific research in the University of California system, providing grants targeted at projects on microbiomes in the constructed environment, deep carbon science, and energy policy. 7
After President Donald Trump disbanded a board of environmental scientists overseeing the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), an independent group of researchers formed the External Environmental Economics Advisory Committee to continue to evaluate each new EPA rule. 7
In 2017, the Foundation provided grants to numerous left-of-center think-tanks to fund economic research, including the Brookings Institution ($945,584) and Innovations for Poverty Action ($400,000). 7 The Foundation also gave a $354,000 grant to the New Venture Fund (NVF), a left-of-center funding and fiscal sponsorship organization. 7
Most of the Sloan Foundation’s economic giving centered on funding projects at large, elite research universities. MIT received more funding than any other individual university, with grants totally nearly $1.9 million in 2017 for economics research. 7 Grant funding focused primarily on innovation in American markets and the impact of automation on labor trends. 7
The Sloan Foundation gave $1.8 million in grants to Stanford University for the funding of economics projects, with researchers focused on the aging workforce and the development of new methodologies for empirical economics. 7
In 2017, the Foundation provided Harvard University with a $141,606 grant for the express purpose of examining human capital depreciation, and another $104,647 for the creation of a postdoctoral program on aging and labor force participation. 7 Later that year, the Sloan Foundation contributed another $273,082 for an additional project on how age and employment status affect worker preferences for working conditions. 10 Altogether, the Sloan Foundation funded over $1.6 million in economics projects at Harvard in 2017 alone. 11
New York University also received substantial funding from the Sloan Foundation to increase diversity in economics, with grants for economics projects totaling $1.4 million in 2017. 7
Higher Education
Aside from investing in particular projects at post-secondary institutions, the Sloan Foundation has funded numerous educational initiatives, focusing on minority recruitment in science, economics, and engineering.
In 2017, the Foundation gave a total of almost $2.4 million to the National Action Council for Minorities in Engineering (NACME) to recruit and fund ethnic minority students in doctoral engineering programs. 7 The Foundation also gave $449,500 to the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute to fund students from underrepresented groups in doctoral programs in mathematics. 7 The Sloan Foundation also gave $436,320 to the Tribeca Film Institute in order to raise the profile of science film production and screenings. 10
Technology
In 2017, the Sloan Foundation awarded 33 grants to projects in technology at various universities and research organizations. 7 The Foundation awarded several other grants targeted at preserving and expanding access to digital information, including $900,000 to the Paris School of Economics, $774,770 to the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and $747,258 to the University of California system. 13
The Foundation has an extensive list of trustees, including powerful investor Richard Bernstein, CEO of Richard Bernstein Advisors. 0){
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