Comprehensive Universities
Expression of Interest
This Expression of Interest invites you to share your interest in grant-funded work designed to deepen a sense of belonging in your community by re-examining historic legacies of exclusion and building the skills and practices to engage across lines of difference.
A feeling of belonging emerges when individuals are intellectually respected, relationally recognized, and meaningfully situated within a community that affirms their full humanity and lived experience.
With that in mind, we believe that building communities of belonging requires strengthening the social fabric of institutional life through the simultaneous cultivation of:
Intellectual openness and discernment (feeding the Mind),
Relational capacities (nurturing the Heart), and
Place-based historical consciousness (anchoring in Place).
In 2026, we plan to make grants that provide institutions with tools, strategies, and interventions to examine how their histories, identity, and mission align with the current realities faced by members of their communities. We want to help interested institutions better understand their full histories and strengthen their educational programs and outreach to build a more inclusive and forward-looking future. This work will involve understanding how each institution’s history shapes its present: its organizational culture, community relationships, and senses of inclusion. It will also identify opportunities where intentional engagement can strengthen how students, faculty, and staff feel seen, respected, and connected.
Responses will help us assess alignment with the strategy outlined above and gauge organizational readiness for deeper engagement. We will begin with this brief Expression of Interest (EOI) form through which institutions can identify areas they wish to explore and outline emerging project concepts. The deadline for submissions is March 6, 2026.
Following a review of the EOI responses, a subset of organizations will be invited to submit a full grant proposal.
Based on grant proposals, the duPont Fund will intentionally curate a cohort that reflects a balance of project types, stages of exploration and integration, and diverse institutional contexts to support peer learning and field-building. Prior stewardship of duPont Fund resources will inform selection, including demonstrated fiscal responsibility, application of learning, and capacity to sustain momentum beyond the grant period.
Please note:
Participation in this Expression of Interest is voluntary and not a guarantee of funding.
We recognize that this opportunity will not align with every organization’s priorities or timing and that thoughtful participation depends on context, capacity, and a shared commitment to the work.
About Legacies and Belonging
We are defining legacies as the enduring results from historical systems of exclusion and injustices which manifest today in unequal access to opportunity and representation. Legacies often surface in the narratives an organization tells, the voices it elevates or excludes, the degree to which people can meaningfully participate, and the ways belonging is cultivated, or constrained, across the institution. At the same time, institutions are actively authoring legacies of the future. These are the values, practices, relationships, and narratives deliberately cultivated today that will shape who belongs and whose knowledge is honored in the years ahead. By engaging with their histories with honesty and care, institutions create the conditions for more inclusive futures, creating new legacies defined not by exclusion, but by expanded access, shared responsibility, and a sense of belonging for generations to come.
Many of our institutions of higher education were founded to serve narrow social and economic elite, whose early policies, curricula and campus life were structured around exclusion based on identity and assumption of who belonged in higher education. Today, those same institutions serve increasingly diverse student populations, making thoughtful engagement with students’ varied identities and perspectives essential to cultivating cultures of belonging and strengthening supportive learning communities.
We understand that your students arrive shaped by an array of racial, cultural, religious, socioeconomic, and family contexts, as well as by differing values, beliefs, and ways of making meaning about the world. Colleges and universities must be prepared to engage this diversity thoughtfully, equipping both faculty/staff and their students with the skills to navigate differences with intellectual openness, empathy, and respect.
Creating belonging requires intentional investment in faculty and staff capacity to facilitate constructive dialogue, affirm identity, and model respectful engagement across differences. It also requires providing students with structured opportunities to explore their own identities, encounter differing viewpoints, and develop the skills needed for civic and moral reasoning. In doing so, schools can move beyond tolerance toward communities where difference is understood as a shared educational asset and all students are supported in becoming thoughtful leaders in their communities. .
What We Seek to Learn and Support Through This Work
Across all three areas, the duPont Fund is especially interested in projects that:
Build lasting institutional capacity rather than one-time programming
Align with academic or strategic planning processes
Engage students, faculty, staff collaboratively
Contribute to long-term cultures of belonging
Illustrative examples are provided below to clarify the types of projects that align with this strategy, but projects are not limited to those listed. If your proposed work is not reflected below yet aligns with one of these areas, we welcome a conversation prior to submitting your EOI. Please reach out to Sarah Reardon at sreardon@dupontfund.org to initiate that conversation.
Mind: Knowledge, skills, and discernment in academic contexts
Examples include:
Support training for faculty to design and facilitate courses that engage listening practices, multiple perspectives, model intellectual humility, and foster rigorous, respectful inquiry
Develop or adapt coursework (e.g., first-year seminars, general education courses, or common learning experiences) that gives students structured opportunities to analyze differing viewpoints, evaluate evidence, and practice reasoned dialogue
Equip students with practical tools for intellectual engagement, such as discussion facilitation, critical questioning, and perspective-taking, through assignments, classroom activities, and experiential learning embedded in the curriculum
Invest in rigorous research that examines your institutional historical legacies to inform more reflective, inclusive, and historically grounded institutional decision-making
Heart: Shaping institutional ethos through students
Examples include:
Co-curricular dialogue spaces that support facilitated conversation, perspective-taking, and respectful engagement across difference
Integration of dialogue and engagement practices within shared student experiences such as orientation, advising, and student success coaching
Student leader formation and values-based leadership development that equips campus leaders (ex. student government officers, residence life leaders, orientation leaders, student-athletes) with training and coaching to strengthen community care and inclusive campus culture
Place: Activating physical environments to deepen understanding, memory, and civic meaning
Examples include:
Reframing the campus as a learning text so that students’ engagement with place becomes a structured, accessible component of learning rather than a symbolic add-on. Treating its own history, founding, buildings, landscapes, monuments, and places that can be read, interrogated, and interpreted through first-year seminars, general education courses, or common experiences for students
Embedding historical inquiry into the built environment supporting research that informs markers, exhibits, or place-based storytelling that surface previously marginalized narratives tied to campus spaces and places
Co-creating interpretation with community partners, engaging descendant communities, local historians, and neighbors as collaborators in shaping how campus spaces tell institutional and regional histories, ensuring shared authority and sustained relationships
Embedding historical awareness into commencements, convocations, anniversaries, orientations, and dedications so that institutional rituals reinforce the ethical and civic significance of place
Funding Tiers
Applicants are encouraged to identify the tier that most closely aligns with the scope, maturity, and collaborative nature of the project they envision, understanding that tier placement is intended as a planning guide rather than a rigid classification. These tiers are designed to reflect differing levels of readiness, collaboration, and potential field contribution while recognizing that meaningful work can begin at multiple entry points.
Tier I
Single Institution/Early-stage
Grant Term: One year
Typical Award Range: Up to $50,000
For institutions undertaking focused, internally driven work that builds readiness, tests ideas, or deepens inquiry within their own context.
Tier II
Anchored Partnership
Grant Term: Up to two years
Typical Award Range: Up to $150,000/year
For projects where one lead institution anchors the work, but success depends on one or more substantive partners contributing expertise, perspective, or reach.
Tier III
Collaborative Field Partnership
Grant Term: Up to two years
Typical Award Range; Up to $200,000/year
For deeply collaborative efforts that aim to generate shared learning, models, or tools with relevance beyond any single institution.
A note on partnerships: As part of this initiative, the duPont Fund is especially interested in learning how the collective strengths of its grantee institutions might be activated in complementary and collaborative ways. Applicants are encouraged to review the Jessie Ball duPont Fund’s list of community anchor institution grantees as they consider potential partnerships, opportunities for alignment, and possibilities for shared learning across the network.
Submission Process
Please submit your interest via this Expression of Interest form or the button below. You may download a copy of the questions here or via the button below to help as you prepare your submission. Submissions must be received by March 6, 2026.
If you have questions, please use this form to submit them or click the button below. Procedural questions will be answered within two to three business days. Content and substance questions will be answered as well; if we receive multiple questions along the same themes, we will share an FAQ later this month.