Education Grants
STEM Education Grants for K-12: Current Funders and How to Apply
Grant Writing Service Editorial Team
June 12, 2026 · 4 min read
Table of contents
Key takeaways
- Teachers and schools usually win STEM money from foundations, corporate programs, and curriculum providers; federal STEM research grants mostly go to universities and nonprofits.
- NSF consolidated several K-12 programs into one solicitation, STEM K-12, which funds research and development projects of $350,000 to $750,000 and accepts proposals anytime.
- Several familiar federal STEM programs are paused or waiting for a new solicitation, so confirm status on the agency page before you plan.
STEM education grants for K-12 come from two very different groups of funders. Classroom and school grants for equipment, curriculum, and teacher-designed projects come mainly from foundations, corporate programs, and curriculum providers such as Project Lead The Way, and many accept applications from individual teachers. Federal STEM grants, led by the National Science Foundation's STEM K-12 program, fund research and development projects and go mostly to universities, nonprofits, and similar organizations, which K-12 schools join as partners. The tables below list programs we confirmed on each funder's own site in October 2026.
STEM grants teachers can apply for directly
| Funder | Award | Who applies | Timing |
|---|---|---|---|
| Toshiba America Foundation, grades K-5 | Up to $1,000 for a teacher-designed project | Teachers | Annual October 1 deadline |
| Toshiba America Foundation, grades 6-12 | Under $5,000 on a rolling basis; larger requests also accepted | Teachers | Requests over $5,000 due June 1 and November 1 |
| NSTA Shell Science Teaching Award | $10,000 award recognizing an exemplary science teacher | Science teachers with at least eight years of experience | Mid-December 2026 deadline for the 2027 award |
| DonorsChoose | Crowdfunded classroom projects, materials shipped to the school | Full-time public and public charter school educators who work directly with students | Year-round |
Teacher grants like these reward a specific project: what students will build or investigate, what it costs, and how you will know they learned something. Our guide to classroom and school grants across subjects covers more funders outside STEM.
STEM grants for schools and districts
Project Lead The Way awards grants to help schools launch or expand its PreK-12 programs (Launch, Gateway, Computer Science, Engineering, and Biomedical Science). It announced its 2026-27 cycle on September 8, 2026, with deadlines of November 6 and December 4, 2026, and applications stay under consideration through June 30, 2027. It reports awarding 1,150 grants totaling $12.64 million in its 2026 fiscal year.
Lemelson-MIT InvenTeams funds high school teams of students and teachers to invent a technological solution to a real problem; the 2025-2026 cohort was eight teams receiving $7,500 each. Dates for the next cycle had not been announced when we checked.
State education agencies run their own STEM and computer science grants, often with federal pass-through money, and several publish STEM funding pages (Colorado and Massachusetts are examples). Check your state department of education. Schools pursuing STEM alongside other priorities will find the broader set of funders in our guide to grants for schools.
Federal STEM funding: what changed at NSF
The National Science Foundation reorganized its K-12 funding in 2025. Its STEM K-12 solicitation (NSF 25-545) replaced four archived programs: Discovery Research PreK-12, Computer Science for All, Advancing Informal STEM Learning, and Translation and Diffusion. Key points from the solicitation:
- What it funds: research and development to improve STEM teaching and learning in preK-12 formal and informal settings, with an emphasis on artificial intelligence and emerging technologies.
- Award size: research and development projects of $350,000 to $750,000 over two to three years; conferences of $25,000 to $99,000. NSF expects about 40 awards totaling about $30 million.
- Deadline: proposals accepted anytime.
- Eligible applicants: colleges and universities, nonprofit organizations such as museums and science centers, for-profit companies, state and local governments, and federally recognized tribes. School districts are not named separately, so a district should confirm its eligibility with the program officer or apply as a partner with a university or nonprofit.
Other federal changes matter for planning:
- NSF terminated a large number of education grants in 2025, and Congress cut its STEM Education directorate by roughly a fifth in the fiscal year 2026 appropriation.
- The Robert Noyce Teacher Scholarship program and ITEST show "waiting for new publication" on NSF's site, with no current deadlines.
- NOAA's B-WET environmental education program lists no open competitions.
- NASA's Office of STEM Engagement, which the administration proposed closing, was funded by Congress for fiscal year 2026.
Federal research proposals have their own requirements, from SAM.gov registration to evaluation and budget justification. Our guide to NSF grants explains how NSF proposals are reviewed, and our NSF grant writing service supports school and university teams preparing one.
Making a STEM proposal competitive
Funders in this space see many equipment requests, and the strongest stand out by connecting tools to learning:
- Name the learning, not the hardware. A robotics kit is the means; students designing and testing a solution is the outcome.
- Show who gains access. Use your own data on course enrollment, participation, or achievement to show which students lack access today.
- Plan for teachers. Include the training time teachers need to use new equipment well.
- Plan for year two. Explain who maintains equipment and pays for consumables after the grant.
Our step-by-step education grant guide shows each section with worked examples, and our evaluation planning guide covers how to measure the outcomes you promise.
For a large STEM grant or a federal research partnership, our education grant writing team can write the full application.
