Overview

Targets of Opportunity grants fund efforts that use timely opportunities to make a difference on an important issue or problem or to support a particularly innovative, creative, or interdisciplinary approach to an important question.

In 2005, the Foundation began soliciting ideas from creative and thoughtful leaders across many disciplines and sectors. An ad hoc Board Committee on New Ideas was formed to review and select ideas to support. The Foundation has supported four significant ideas to date:

1. The Encyclopedia of Life, an online information resource with a web page for each known living species, was launched in May 2007.
2. International Commission on Education for Sustainable Development Practice was formed with MacArthur support by the Earth Institute at Columbia University. It released its final report October 10, 2008.
3. The Research Network on an Aging Society will grapple with the implications for society and its institutions of more people living longer lives, including sponsorship of new population and life expectancy forecasts as a base for all of its work.
4. The Law and Neuroscience Project was launched with a grant to the University of California at Santa Barbara in June 2007. It plans two research networks, one on criminal responsibility, which addresses the issues of prediction and intervention, and one on neuroscience in the courtroom, which covers rules of evidence and privacy.

What MacArthur Funds

Updated December 16, 2010