Cross-Cutting / Intersectional Impact: August 2026 Funding Opportunities (10 new opportunities!)
71 funding opportunities - the calls whose ambitions cross sectors by design, backed this month by the marquee funders large enough to work across all of them at once.
Hello everyone,
This is the front page for money that crosses sectors by design. Read against the currents running through the rest of the edition, two things stand out.
The cross-sector money is corporate and marquee. Google, Novo Nordisk, adidas, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Asian Development Bank, and the National Lottery Community Fund are the names on this page, and none of them is a single-issue funder. When the grantmaker is a brand or a bank rather than a foundation with one cause, the money lands across health, climate, and community at once. The National Lottery’s Change Makers, backing community leadership at up to five million pounds a project, is the clearest case of a funder buying systemic change rather than a single program.
Climate keeps arriving through other sectors’ doors, and increasingly shaped like investment. Nexa treats climate change as a health delivery crisis and funds proven solutions ready to scale; the ADB’s Laundry Transformation Challenge folds climate, water, and women’s unpaid care into a single call; and ASIF Ignite Africa backs climate-adaptation enterprises with equity-free growth capital. The money on this page increasingly arrives as scale grants and milestone-based finance rather than one-off charity, from Nexa’s Transition to Scale track to Innovation Norway’s humanitarian scaling grants. Even the frontier-technology calls fit the pattern: Gates funds AI to advance family planning and Google funds quantum-computing research, tech-giant money entering as health and science. And the Better Politics Foundation’s Resilient Futures call rounds the page out, backing the democratic resilience that underwrites all of it.
Every call here also lives on its home sector page; these are the ones worth surfacing first. Start with whichever one is genuinely yours.
The grants are organized into three categories:
Open Calls: Current grant and opportunities with a deadline. Grants are listed by closing date. 19 open opportunities – 10 new opportunities added!
Rolling Applications: current grant and opportunities with rolling applications (but it’s still best to submit as early as possible). 44 rolling opportunities!
Long term planning: Grants that have closed their current rounds, but are expected to open new windows. 8 long term opportunities!
A quick tip for returning readers: if you want to jump straight to the newest additions, use CTRL F to search for “New!” and navigate quickly to the latest funding opportunities
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Open Calls:
Change Makers, The National Lottery Community Fund. *New!*
The National Lottery Community Fund opens Change Makers, a program funding organizations across England that help community leaders drive change in and for the places they know best. The fund wants to reshape how leadership is supported, building durable systems around people who carry lived experience of poverty, disadvantage, and discrimination rather than one-off projects. It backs work that lets these leaders influence wider systems and share what they learn across the sector, treating leadership itself as the engine of lasting community change. Asking applicants to operate across multiple regions and to bring established local relationships signals a preference for organizations already rooted in the work, not newcomers. The strongest fits are experienced civil society bodies, alone or in partnership, that support community leadership at scale.
Geographies: United Kingdom.
Who can apply: Organizations applying alone or as an existing partnership that already have experience supporting community leaders, experience working with places, people and communities facing poverty, disadvantage or discrimination, and established relationships with organizations working at a local level.
Funding amount: £1,000,000 to £5,000,000 per project over 5 years (up to 12 projects; part of a ~£50 million programme).
Targeted Sectors / SDGs: Social Inclusion & Community Wellbeing; SDGs 1, 10, 16. Focus: community leadership development, systems change, equity.
Deadline: August 5, 2026.
Fondazione Prada Film Fund 2026, Fondazione Prada.
Fondazione Prada Film Fund supports independent feature films of high artistic value, continuing the foundation’s long commitment to cinema. Fondazione Prada directs its annual endowment to production companies rather than individual filmmakers, backing a small slate of projects each year at the development, production, or post-production stage. The fund places no limits on geography, theme, genre, or language, signaling that artistic vision and the strength of the production plan matter more than market fit or subject. By requiring applicants to have already premiered feature work at major international festivals and to carry a meaningful share of the budget themselves, the fund seeks established producers with films that are real and financeable, not early concepts. The strongest fits are experienced independent production companies advancing ambitious, author-driven cinema.
Geographies: Global.
Who can apply: Applications must be submitted by a production company; individuals cannot apply. The applying company must have produced at least two feature films that were selected and premiered at an international film festival on the fund’s official eligibility checklist.
Funding amount: Up to EUR 250,000 per project; total fund EUR 1.5 million per year.
Targeted Sectors / SDGs: Arts, Culture & Media; Focus areas: film development; film production; film post-production; independent producers.
Deadline: August 6, 2026.
Individuals cannot apply and the requirement of two prior feature premieres at eligible international festivals is a hard credential gate, so this is built for established production companies that can also carry a meaningful share of the budget, not for emerging directors.
Google Academic Research Awards 2026 (Quantum Computing), Google Research. *New!*
Google Research runs the Google Academic Research Awards to back university faculty pursuing foundational and applied work in computing and technology, with this cycle concentrated on quantum computing. The company is steering the program toward early fault-tolerant quantum computing, inviting proposals on algorithms and applications that use a small number of logical qubits to solve problems classical machines cannot, alongside a track on quantum computing security. What Google Research wants to support is research that pushes past today’s noisy hardware toward machines that do useful work, and the people training the next generation of quantum scientists. Reviewers weigh faculty track record, research alignment, and proposal clarity, signaling that the award rewards credible teams over speculative pitches. The strongest fits are professors at degree-granting institutions advancing quantum computing research.
Geographies: Global.
Who can apply: Professors (assistant, associate, full) at degree-granting institutions who advise students and conduct research in the field of technology and computing. Applications are submitted by faculty on behalf of their institution.
Funding amount: Awards generally provide up to $100,000 USD (unrestricted gift).
Targeted Sectors / SDGs: Innovation, Science & Technology; SDGs 9. Focus: early fault-tolerant quantum computing, quantum algorithms, logical qubits.
Deadline: August 7, 2026.
Truist Foundation Inspire Awards Year 4, Truist Foundation.
The Truist Foundation, through its annual Inspire Awards on the MIT Solve platform, is inviting US nonprofits that help adult workers adapt to a labor market being reshaped by artificial intelligence. The foundation reads AI less as a technology story than as an economic-mobility one: the workers most exposed to disruption need reskilling, guidance, and navigation to reach and keep quality jobs, and community-rooted nonprofits are closest to delivering it. Rather than a simple grant, the award pairs funding with a six-month capacity-building program, a sign that Truist is investing in stronger organizations, not just good ideas. Judging rewards real innovation, direct service to workers, and credible scale, and a new community vote asks whether the people served would endorse the work.
Geographies: United States, in markets Truist Bank serves (North America).
Who can apply: US-based nonprofits providing innovative direct services, training, and career navigation for adult workers in the age of AI.
Funding amount: More than USD $1,000,000 in grants and in-kind services; first place USD $250,000, second USD $150,000, runners-up USD $25,000, plus a USD $75,000 Community Choice Award.
Targeted Sectors / SDGs: Economic Development & Livelihoods; SDGs 4, 8, 10. Focus: workforce development, career navigation, economic mobility, upskilling.
Deadline: August 7, 2026.
Scaling AI Safety for a Multi-Agent World, Schmidt Sciences.
Schmidt Sciences, with Google DeepMind, ARIA, the Cooperative AI Foundation, and Google.org, opens a joint call funding technical research into the safety of multi-agent AI systems. The funders are responding to a near future in which millions of agents built by different organizations interact across shared infrastructure, where failures surface at the population level rather than inside any single model. They want foundational science that builds realistic testbeds, characterizes how agent networks fail or destabilize, hardens the protocols agents use to identify and commit to one another, and creates oversight methods that scale. The philanthropic framing, signaling a preference for work markets would otherwise skip, points toward open tools over products. The strongest fits are research teams and institutions doing rigorous, system level multi-agent safety work.
Geographies: Global.
Who can apply: Individual researchers, teams, and institutions across universities, national labs, and nonprofit research bodies; for-profits cannot lead.
Funding amount: Up to USD $1,000,000 per project (Tier 2: USD $300,000 to $1,000,000; Tier 1 up to USD $300,000), from a USD $10,000,000 call.
Targeted Sectors / SDGs: Innovation, Science & Technology; SDG 9. Focus: multi-agent AI safety, AI governance, foundational safety research.
Deadline: August 8, 2026.
The philanthropic framing here is the signal: these funders want the foundational safety science that commercial labs will skip, and their scope notes rule out single-agent alignment and product work. What resonates is rigorous, system-level research on how agent populations fail, plus open tools others can use. Position your work in that gap markets neglect, and be precise about the collective failure mode you are tackling.
Nexa: From Climate Risk to Health Resilience - Transition to Scale Grants, Science for Africa Foundation / Grand Challenges Canada. *New!*
Nexa is a global climate and health initiative co-led by Grand Challenges Canada and the Science for Africa Foundation, with backing from Wellcome Trust, the Novo Nordisk Foundation, and Sanofi. Its premise is that climate change is not only an environmental crisis but a health delivery crisis, and that the local health actors closest to it are the least resourced to respond. Nexa funds innovations that let communities act on climate-driven health risks, specifically mosquito-borne infection, extreme heat, and poor air quality. Backing solutions that already carry proof-of-concept evidence and can move toward scale signals that the initiative wants field-tested approaches ready to grow, not early experiments. The strongest fits are organizations implementing in Africa or in Latin America and the Caribbean with demonstrated results behind them.
Geographies: Africa (all 54 countries for both tracks) | Latin America & Caribbean (Brazil only for PoC; 28 countries for TTS).
Who can apply: Any incorporated organization is eligible, including companies, social enterprises, NGOs, non-profits, for-profit organizations, and research or academic institutions. Individuals, sole proprietorships, unincorporated trusts, partnerships, and UN agencies are not eligible.
Funding amount: $250,000–$2,000,000 USD Transition to scale.
Targeted Sectors / SDGs: Health.
Deadline: August 12, 2026.
Active Play Challenge 2026, Cities for Better Health (Novo Nordisk). *New!*
Cities for Better Health, Novo Nordisk’s global urban health initiative, has launched the Active Play Challenge to fund organizations creating more opportunities for active play for children and young people in cities. The program treats shrinking space for everyday play as a health equity problem: unsafe streets, unequal access, and overscheduled routines raise the risk of childhood obesity and chronic disease. Winning initiatives receive implementation funding plus technical guidance, with three categories spanning spatial design, everyday services, and early years, the last backed by the Van Leer Foundation. The two-stage jury process, with feedback and resubmission for finalists, signals that the partners want implementable, scalable projects, not concepts. The strongest fits are legally registered organizations, especially youth-led ones, already working on play, public space, or child health in underserved communities.
Geographies: Global.
Who can apply: Legally registered organizations worldwide that have the mandate, expertise, and capacity to lead and implement initiatives creating opportunities for active play for children and young people aged 0-25.
Funding amount: USD $50,000 - $100,000 per winning initiative (up to six winners).
Targeted Sectors / SDGs: Health; SDGs 3, 10, 11. Focus: play by design, play in action, play for early years.
Deadline: August 14, 2026.
Window II - Cross-Cutting Capacity Strengthening, National Research and Innovation Fund (NRIF).
The National Research and Innovation Fund of The Gambia is opening Window II of its grants program, Cross-Cutting Capacity Strengthening, to fund training, mentorship, and knowledge transfer that build research and innovation capacity across sectors. As the country’s statutory research funder, NRIF is using this window to grow the human and institutional base its wider portfolio depends on, rather than fund research projects directly. It wants to back institutions that have already assessed their own capacity gaps and can show where the shortfalls sit, and it rewards consortia that pair a knowledge-producing body with delivery partners, signaling that it sees capacity as something built together. The strongest fits are Gambian universities, government training agencies, and established civil society organizations with a track record in capacity building.
Geographies: The Gambia (Africa; Western Africa).
Who can apply: Universities and accredited higher education institutions in The Gambia (e.g., University of The Gambia, American International University West Africa), government agencies with a mandate for training or human resource development, local government authorities with documented capacity development mandates.
Funding amount: Award Range: Up to GMD 1,500,000; Total Budget: GMD 2,000,000.
Targeted Sectors / SDGs: Education; SDGs: SDG4; SDG9; SDG17; Focus areas: capacity building; research systems; higher education; institutional development.
Deadline: August 15, 2026.
This window funds capacity-building rather than research itself and is restricted to Gambian institutions, so the strongest applications come from bodies that have already documented their own capacity gaps and can form a consortium pairing a knowledge producer with delivery partners.
Humanitarian Innovation Programme (HIP) Call for Proposals 2026, Innovation Norway. *New!*
The Humanitarian Innovation Programme, financed by the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and administered by Innovation Norway, funds humanitarian organizations partnering with private sector actors to co-develop or scale solutions for people affected by crises. The structure is deliberate: the humanitarian organization is always the applicant and grant recipient, with the private sector partner engaged through the project, not as co-applicant. Two streams operate, an Innovation Lab for early-stage co-development and innovation-friendly procurement, and Scaling for solutions already validated with a private partner in pilot. Priorities span green humanitarian response, health and sanitation, protection including sexual and gender-based violence, innovative finance, and food security. Eligibility is narrow: UN agencies, Norwegian-registered INGOs with Norwegian boards, and the Red Cross Movement.
Geographies: Global crisis contexts; applicant headquartered in Norway, or any UN humanitarian agency.
Who can apply: UN agencies with a humanitarian mandate; Norwegian-registered humanitarian INGOs with a Norwegian board; the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement (IFRC, ICRC); consortia.
Funding amount: Innovation Lab grants NOK 4,000,000 to 6,000,000 (USD ~$375,000 to ~$565,000), up to NOK 8,000,000 (USD ~$750,000) for consortia of three or more; Scaling grants NOK 2,000,000 to 10,000,000 (USD ~$190,000 to ~$940,000). Total envelope historically NOK 100,000,000 (USD ~$9,400,000).
Targeted Sectors / SDGs: Humanitarian & Emergency Response; SDGs 3, 9, 13, 16, 17. Focus: humanitarian-private sector partnership, green response, protection, innovative finance, food security.
Deadline: August 17, 2026.
Every funded project must engage a private sector partner; the partnership is the methodology, not an enhancement. Name the company, its commercial logic for participating, and the co-design process. A humanitarian project with a vendor attached is not what this program buys.
ASIF Ignite Africa Cohort 1 2026, UNIDO Climate Tech Innovation. *New!*
UNIDO Climate Tech Innovation, working through the Adaptation Small and Medium-sized Enterprises Innovation Facility, opens the first African cohort of its Ignite accelerator to fund early-stage founders building climate adaptation solutions across food and agriculture value chains. The facility treats climate resilience as a market problem, backing ventures that already earn revenue rather than organizations living on donations, and its eight-week remote format pushes founders toward evidence of customer traction. What it wants to strengthen is the ability of vulnerable farming communities to withstand climate pressure as food is grown, stored, and sold. Requiring a working prototype and a revenue path, while welcoming founders new to AI tools, signals a preference for practical builders over polished pitches. The strongest fits are revenue-seeking African agritech founders validating climate-resilience products with users.
Geographies: Africa.
Who can apply: Early-stage micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs), startups, social enterprises, or other founder-led ventures across Africa that have a functional prototype and are developing solutions strengthening climate adaptation and resilience in food and agriculture value chains.
Funding amount: Equity-free grant funding (per-startup amount not specified on source).
Targeted Sectors / SDGs: Climate & Environment; SDGs 2, 13. Focus: climate adaptation, food and agriculture value chains, agritech.
Deadline: August 17, 2026.
Build with Gemini XPRIZE, XPRIZE.
XPRIZE’s Build with Gemini hackathon, backed by Google, is funding 25 prizes across a USD $2 million prize pool to individuals, teams, and small organizations under 25 employees that can launch a real AI business with real users and real revenue in 90 days (19 May to 17 August 2026). The funder logic is non-technical-builder catalysis rather than R&D subsidy: the competition is explicitly framed for teachers, nurses, farmers, and others with lived experience of real problems, not for AI engineers, and the test is whether participants can use AI tools to build commercially viable businesses rather than build novel AI systems. Five categories scope the eligible problem space: Education and Human Potential; Entrepreneurship and Job Creation; Small Business Services; Money and Financial Access; and Professional Services Access. Participants must use at least one Google Cloud product and the Gemini API. Five finalists compete live at the Moonshot Gathering in Los Angeles on or around 25 September 2026.
Geographies: Global (excluding OFAC-sanctioned countries including Russia, Crimea, Cuba, Iran, North Korea).
Who can apply: Individuals at or above legal age of majority; teams; small organizations with fewer than 25 employees (corporations, not-for-profits, LLCs, partnerships). No technical background required. Must use at least one Google Cloud product and the Gemini API. OFAC-sanctioned country residents excluded.
Funding amount: USD $500,000 grand prize; USD $200,000 second place; USD $100,000 each for 3rd-5th; USD $50,000 each for 15 runner-up and 5 category prizes. Total prize pool USD $2,000,000.
Targeted Sectors / SDGs: Economic Development & Livelihoods; Innovation, Science & Technology; Education. Focus areas: education and human potential, entrepreneurship and job creation, small business services, money and financial access, professional services access.
Deadline: August 17, 2026.
The competition explicitly selects against pre-existing AI businesses with prior XPRIZE or Devpost financial support; submissions are scored on the 90-day build window. Entrants should treat 19 May as the project start date and document business genesis from that point forward; prior-art-heavy submissions read as misaligned with the “build something new” framing.
