Greetings,

We are excited to share this new funding opportunity from the Henry Luce Foundation and the American Council of Learned Societies (ALCS). Civic Education for Democratic Life (CEDLife) is a new grant competition that seeks to reframe civic education as real-world preparation for meaningful, collaborative participation in democracy; this program supports campus-community partnerships that have the potential to strengthen civic engagement and to build public trust in institutions of higher education. More information about the award can be found in the synopsis and links below. For a full list of currently open opportunities that have been announced through our office, please visit our Current Opportunities web page. As a reminder, our Research Development team is available to provide proposal development support to FAS ladder faculty.

Luce/ACLS Civic Education for Democratic Life (CEDLife) Grants

• OSP Deadline: November 24, 2026 at 9:00 AM ET
  Departments or areas may require additional time for proposal review and submission. Please discuss a timeline with your grants administrator.
• Sponsor Letter of Intent (LOI) Deadline: December 1, 2026 at 5:00 PM ET
• Award Amount: Up to $130,000 over a 12 month period 
  CEDLife funds cannot be used for indirect costs. This falls short of the 15% overhead required by FAS policy. Please discuss this with your grants administrator before preparing an application.

Program Overview

The American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) has been awarded a $1 million grant from the Henry Luce Foundation to launch the Luce/ACLS Civic Education for Democratic Life Program (CEDLife). ACLS and the Henry Luce Foundation share deep concern about the increase in political polarization nationwide and in public skepticism about the value of higher education. This new initiative is designed to boost higher education’s contribution to civic thriving by strengthening community engagement projects hosted by colleges and universities across the United States. The program operates on the principle that an active, fully engaged citizenry is the foundation for an inclusive model of democracy, one that is informed by the full breadth of social and political thought and equipped to accommodate a diversity of perspectives. CEDLife will identify and support the scaling up of five existing exemplary programs that engage community members, undergraduate students, and faculty in the co-creation of civic knowledge through curricular opportunities in the humanities or interpretive social sciences. 

 

Grantees should plan to make their work visible to their academic and non-academic communities in innovative ways, whether through archives, websites, public art projects, exhibitions, media partnerships, toolkits, or other alternatives. ACLS staff will support grantees in the development of communication and outreach plans. As a part of the CEDLife program, grantees will participate in convenings to open and close the program, as well as a series of in-person and virtual curriculum development workshops and peer exchange opportunities with cohort members. These convenings will be designed to build capacity and coordination in the contributions of humanities disciplines to civic engagement in higher education.

Priority Areas

• Projects funded by CEDLife will:
  • Support undergraduate students in developing civic skills and dispositions as a component of curriculum; 
  • Engage students in co-creating civic knowledge with a longstanding community partner(s) of the students’ institution;
  • Model the use of humanistic skills such as communication, literacy, argumentation, critical analysis, and perspective-taking as a democratic practice.
• ACLS is especially interested in supporting projects that address one or more emergent needs of the field of community-engaged civic learning. These needs include the following:
  • Faculty engagement and buy-in
  • Institutional supports
  • Coordination in the field
  • Communication on campus
  • Shared governance
  • Inclusion of institutions

Eligibility Criteria

• At least one of the project’s principal investigators must be a scholar in the humanities and/or the interpretive social sciences at an accredited U.S. college or university.
• The course or curricular component of the project should be offered in a humanities or interpretive social science discipline.
• The project team must include both community member(s) or organization(s) and faculty member(s) from institutions of higher education.
• The project team must be proposing an expansion or extension of a well-established community partnership.

LOI Materials

• LOI materials must be submitted through the online application form and must include the following components: 
  • Name and contact information for the principal investigator, who will serve as the main contact for the project.
  • Draft narrative of no more than one page single-spaced summarizing the proposed project, and its goals, activities, and outputs (if known).
  • A preliminary list of project team members and affiliations (if known), summarizing their roles in the project and brief plan for collaboration (no more than one page). Briefly describe the history of any community partnerships, and if applicable, coursework and undergraduate engagement.
  • Offices, centers, or institutes on campus that can be engaged to play a supporting or advisory role in the project.
  • A brief preliminary budget describing how the grant funds will be used (a short paragraph is sufficient).

Selection Criteria

• Potential to promote a more inclusive, civically engaged society as students and community members co-create civic knowledge.
• Intellectual significance of the project as an exemplar for using humanistic skills in engaged civic life.
• History and depth of the community partnership involved in the project.
• Potential for the project to serve as a replicable model for other faculty and institutions of higher education, and/or to scale an existing model.
• The project’s potential for sustainability or impact beyond the grant period, and the clarity and feasibility of the work plan and budget.

Additional Information and Resources

 

 

• Community service or volunteering independent of undergraduate curricula.
• Community outreach or research independent of undergraduate curricula.
• Voter registration or voter engagement initiatives.
• Community research initiatives that do not offer opportunities for students and community partners to co-create knowledge together.
• Public art projects without a humanistic curricular component.
• STEM discipline partnerships without a humanistic or qualitative component.
• Graduate or professional education (though graduate students may be involved as members of the team).
• Regranting programs.

 

 

 

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