Lego Foundation Awards $100 Million to Sesame Workshop: Grants Roundup

Here are notable new grant awards compiled by the Chronicle:

Lego Foundation

$100 million to Sesame Workshop for its ongoing efforts to bring play-based educational interventions to refugee children fleeing Syria, and to expand the program to include Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh.

The program, in partnership with the International Rescue Committee, received its first $100 million grant from the MacArthur Foundation last year.

Bezos Day One Fund

$97.5 million to 24 organizations that work with homeless families in 16 states and the District of Columbia. Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, created the fund to address family homelessness. The grantees received between $2.5 million and $5 million each for their work in this first round of funding.

Horace G. Fralin Charitable Trust

$50 million to Virginia Tech for research at the newly renamed Fralin Biomedical Research Institute, which is part of the Virginia Tech Carilion Academic Health Center, in Roanoke. Horace Fralin, who graduated from the university in 1948, died in 1993. The university says some of the $50 million will be a gift from his brother and sister-in-law, Heywood and Cynthia Fralin. Heywood Fralin is the chairman of Medical Facilities of America.

O’Neal Industries

$30 million to the University of Alabama at Birmingham to hire cancer researchers and clinicians, conduct additional clinical trials, plan a biotechnology park in Birmingham, and bolster marketing efforts for what will be known as the O’Neal Comprehensive Cancer Center.

Grover Hermann Foundation

$5 million to the University of the Cumberlands to renovate its library.

Walmart

$4.1 million to the Colorado Workforce Development Council to pay for skills training and other services that help people in the retail industry advance in their careers.

John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation

$3 million to the Natural Resources Defense Council for general operating support of its work promoting environmental protections and clean-energy solutions in China, India, and the United States.

Salesforce.org

$2 million to New Leaders for its leadership-development programs in schools.

CHS Foundation

$1.5 million to South Dakota State University to support its program on precision agriculture, which uses technology and data analysis to monitor soil and weather conditions and improve crop yields, and to build the Raven Precision Agriculture Center.

ECMC Foundation

$1.1 million to the Association for Career and Technical Education for its Postsecondary Leadership Success Program.

Ball Brothers Foundation

$1 million to Ball State University for leadership efforts to improve Muncie Community Schools, in Indiana.

Russell Family Foundation

$1 million to the Greater Tacoma Community Foundation for the Puyallup Watershed Initiative and its Communities of Interest, focusing on transportation, agriculture, environmental education, forests, food systems, and storm water in Pierce County, Wash. The foundation is also providing an additional $750,000 directly to the Puyallup Watershed Initiative.

New Grant Opportunity

The California Breast Cancer Research Program will award $15 million in grant funding over the next five years. The program will support both individual scientists and teams, as well as nonscientists from organizations devoted to primary prevention of breast cancer. Applications are due January 7.

Send grant announcements to grants.editor@philanthropy.com.

The Chronicle of Philanthropy subscribers also have full access to GrantStation’s searchable database of grant opportunities. For more information, visit our grants page.