Our Purpose
Templeton World Charity Foundation aims to provide scientific breakthroughs and practical tools relating to the search for meaning, purpose and truth.
Through sharing these spiritual discoveries, we seek to impact individual lives across the world.
Our Vision
Templeton World Charity Foundation has committed $100 million to support new scientific research on human flourishing and to translate related discoveries into practical tools.
We hope that these resources will help a diverse group of researchers and innovators discover new knowledge, develop new tools, and launch new practices or interventions that make a lasting impact on human flourishing. In line with the vision of Sir John Templeton, we want our efforts to focus on dimensions of human flourishing that are often neglected.
Core Funding Areas
Five Core Funding Areas form the cornerstones of the Templeton World Charity Foundation’s grantmaking.
To learn more about these areas, click on any of the links below:
Understanding the universe and humanity’s place within it is core to our mission. The Big Questions funding area promotes an open-minded willingness to find new information through different perspectives.
Freedom is necessary for a healthy, prosperous, and ethical society. We support projects that explore individual freedom, free markets, free enterprise, and entrepreneurship with the ultimate aim of improving society.
Projects in this area explore character strengths such as compassion, creativity, curiosity, diligence, empathy, entrepreneurship, forgiveness, generosity, gratitude, honesty, hope, humility, humor, integrity, joy, kindness, love, optimism, perseverance, responsibility, self-regulation, selflessness, and wisdom
We support programs that identify or nurture genius, as well as projects that research contributing factors to genius.
We support research projects and practical tools around the world that promote equitable, accessible, and voluntary use of family planning methods.
Human flourishing is a broad concept that can include many dimensions of physical, mental, social, and spiritual wellbeing. Flourishing connotes growth, resilience, and progress.
For humans to flourish, it means we’re on a path towards physical and mental wellbeing that’s holistically good, both for individuals and communities. For us, human flourishing begins with self-determination and agency, scaffolded by strong social relationships. We flourish when we live with purpose; when we practice gratitude, forgiveness, and open-mindedness. We cultivate character strength and resilience to flourish in adversity, to lead with empathy and virtue. We flourish by maintaining a sense of wonder, curiosity, and humility about the world we all share and our place in it.
Our focus on flourishing is concerned with studying how an extension of these interior traits, habits, and behaviors can impact social goals.
The many ways flourishing unfolds at different times in peoples’ lives and in diverse cultures are important considerations in the areas of flourishing science we fund. The research and development we support seeks to better understand flourishing across cultures and in various contexts, including amid modern challenges and adversity.
As with other concepts such as intelligence or consciousness, we believe that human flourishing can have a range of useful definitions depending on the context. That said, when the success of a project relies on a particular definition of human flourishing or a particular definition of a subcomponent, we expect the project to adhere to the highest scholarly standards.
We plan to focus on dimensions of human flourishing that are less prominent or under-studied. We will not be able to support important topics that are well-recognized and well-funded, such as medical research or poverty alleviation.
Our Strategic Framework
Through this commitment, Templeton World Charity Foundation will support projects that will form a robust pipeline of innovations aimed at improving key aspects of human flourishing.
Our strategy is not just about having good ideas or making interesting new discoveries but also about translating discoveries into new practices that can be developed using rigorous testing and launched for the benefit of individuals and communities. To that end, we plan to support a range of activities across three different stages in the pipeline for new innovations: Discovery, Development, and Launch.
When supporting scientific research, we believe it is important to make sure that it is based on a sound conceptual framework and that key information about the experiments is accessible to anyone who may benefit from it. The projects we support adhere to best practices in open research. See our Open Science Priority here, and view our Open Access Policy here.
Discovery:
This stage involves rigorous and imaginative interdisciplinary research to answer key questions related to human flourishing, or research that contributes to the potential discovery of innovations that can promote human flourishing. Not all scientific discoveries can be predicted, so we remain enthusiastic about bold, high-risk projects where the benefits may not be immediately obvious.
Development:
This stage involves the development of new interventions to promote one or more aspects of human flourishing. Many types of activities fit within the Development stage, including the following:
• Research and practice review, innovation design;
• Iterative prototyping and pilot testing;
• Efficacy trials or other forms of proof-of-concept testing; and
• Replication, effectiveness, or scale-up testing in real-world settings.
These various activities aim to thoroughly test innovations to the point where we know whether they work, for whom, and under which circumstances they are effective. It is important to use an iterative process to consider qualitative, practice-based evidence early on in the development process.
Launch:
This phase focuses on creating resources and platforms to spread awareness of innovations. The academic setting, where many innovations are discovered and tested, does not always provide the best channel for distribution. We will facilitate partnerships with leading organizations across many sectors—such as business, government, NGOs, academia, and the media—for uptake and impact.
We will support programs across each of these phases of this framework. In most cases, however, grant activities will align with one of these phases.
We support open research and open access to research for two reasons. First, Templeton World Charity Foundation seeks to support discovery science. Such research can have a significant impact, but only if it can earn the trust of the broader scientific community. This is particularly vital for projects that aim to make impactful or contrarian discoveries because they carry a higher burden of proof.
Second, we have embraced a global mandate to support projects wherever they can have the greatest impact. It is crucial for this vision that the outputs of our projects are openly accessible to anyone with an internet connection.
We seek to support open science through multiple approaches such as building infrastructure, developing a community of inquiry, realigning incentives, and changing policy.
Our Priorities
