Spark Grants Platform
The Spark Grants platform is an innovative just-in-time grantmaking process that enables organizations aligned with our focus areas to receive funding within weeks. This rapid funding approach supports initiatives that would be impossible under traditional grant decision timelines.
The Smart Justice Spark Grants funding cycle will be open for proposals from September 2nd to September 16th, 2025. Join members of the grant committee for an informational webinar on August 26th at 10:00 AM PT to learn more.
Smart Justice Focus Areas
- Efforts that scale and increase higher education and workforce development pathways for incarcerated individuals pursuing firefighting careers.
- Projects that facilitate employment in firefighting careers for incarcerated firefighters, including efforts that fully certify them to pursue a firefighting career upon release and those that facilitate their employment in these careers post release.
- Policy advocacy work that supports incarcerated firefighters.
- Initiatives with innovative approaches to higher education in prison (HEP) programming
- Innovative efforts that address housing for individuals reentering the community including efforts centering specific underrepresented populations.
- Transfer pathways that help HEP programming participants with Associates degrees to seamlessly enroll in programs offering Bachelors degrees.
- Efforts that expand HEP programming at the California State University and/or University of California systems
- Policy advocacy efforts that facilitate the scaling of HEP programming across California higher education systems and carceral facilities.
- Projects that help ensure the quality of education being provided in HEP programs
- Efforts that promote/improve consistency in data collection to better understand the impact and tell the story of HEP programs.
- Programs that promote, ensure, or evaluate race equity in accessing HEP programs.
- Projects that improve training for HEP program educators and include appropriate pedagogy/practice that ensures a quality education for incarcerated students.
- Efforts focused on increasing higher education retention and completion rates for individuals in prison and individuals being released from prison.
- Policy advocacy work that help ensure the quality of education being provided in HEP programs.
- Efforts that analyze the landscape of HEP programming in California to support the launching of a California HEP consortium, a group that will advance recommendations on best approaches in HEP/Reentry programming and policy statewide.
Smart Justice Funding Cycle Details
We will be awarding grants up to $25,000 to nonprofits and educational institutions looking for support of projects that hit one of the focus areas outlined above. Please note your project must address at least one of our focus areas in order to be considered.
We welcome proposals where Michelson Spark Grant funds are part of a larger overall project with multiple funding streams.
The Spark Grant Program is available to United States–based nonprofits and educational institutions. For this round, we have decided to focus our impact on organizations that are doing work in California. Organizations whose work does not impact California will be ineligible for this opportunity.
The Spark Principles
Scalability
We support systems-level strategies that can create impact at scale and inform public policy.
Pilot Program Support
We prioritize demonstrating the viability of groundbreaking ideas, seeding innovative initiatives that are still in the proof of concept phase.
Rapid Response
We are committed to advancing or declining an LOI within one week of when the call for proposals closes. Grants are awarded within six weeks of the call for proposals closing.
Funding Cycles
In the spirit of acting quickly, grants are reviewed on a rolling basis. Below is a rough timeline of when each cycle’s call for proposals opens:
- Digital Equity (Q2 of 2025)
- Smart Justice (Q3 of 2025)
- Student Basic Needs (Q4 of 2025)
- Open Educational Resources (Q1 of 2026)
Eligibility
For our Spark Grant cycles, we generally focus our impact on organizations doing work in California. Organizations whose work does not impact California are likely ineligible, but please review our call for proposals each cycle.
Grantees
Creative Commons
FFRP
FRAC
#OaklandUndivided
PPIC
Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition
U.S. Public Interest Research Group Education Fund
University of California, Irvine LIFTED
