Freedom allows people to build lives of meaning and purpose.

Freedom is an essential component of human flourishing. In turn, the freedom to explore, create, and innovate is what drives human progress, creating prosperous communities and healthy societies.

The Individual Freedom & Free Markets Funding Area supports education, research, and outreach projects to promote individual freedom, free markets, free competition, and entrepreneurship. Grounded in the ideas of classical liberal political economy and with a commitment to the moral equality of all human beings, we seek and develop projects that aim to advance freedom and human flourishing for all persons. Whether by academic research, instruction, public outreach, or supporting debate on public policy, our grants contribute toward making the world more just, more prosperous, and more peaceful.

We welcome projects on any of the above topics, but we are especially interested in projects that could contribute to one of the following themes.

1. Projects promoting education and scholarship in the classical liberal tradition, building on the work of figures such as Adam Smith and Friedrich Hayek. We are especially interested in interdisciplinary projects that advance and apply the principles of the classical liberal tradition in conversation with mainstream and heterodox traditions, including projects in political economy and “Philosophy, Politics, and Economics.”

2. Projects that bring greater attention to the importance of basic political freedoms and that explore how those freedoms are effectively maintained in pluralist societies. We seek a better understanding of the importance of free expression, free press, religious liberty, and equality before the law for the flourishing of individuals and communities, as well as the legal and political arrangements most conducive to promoting them.

3. Projects that explore market- and enterprise-based solutions to poverty. We seek projects that help improve our understanding of the institutional and structural conditions that unleash the power of markets and entrepreneurship to help the most vulnerable and marginalized communities and that promote widespread prosperity. Projects that also effectively communicate the value of strong property rights, simple and transparent regulatory environments, principled entrepreneurship, and open and free competition are especially prioritized.