About SBN Spark Grants

In California, nearly half of community-college students report food insecurity and approximately three out of five students struggle with housing instability. When students face unstable housing or skip meals, their academic focus and completion rates suffer. Systems that integrate policy, benefits, and housing supports across institutions help students build stability.

The Michelson 20MM Student Basic Needs Initiative works to remove barriers that prevent students from thriving in higher education by addressing housing, food, and financial insecurity as core issues of equity and academic success. Grounded in student voice and lived experience, the initiative advances systems change through research, advocacy, and collaboration. We focus on sustainable, scalable solutions to ensure every student has the stability needed to graduate and achieve long-term economic mobility. Through the 2026 Student Basic Needs Spark Grants funding cycle, we’re seeking to make student basic needs supports sustainable.

The cycle opens on May 26th, 2026 and closes on June 9th, 2026. During this cycle, Michelson 20MM seeks to fund projects that support systems-level strategies with potential to create positive impact at scale and inform public policy.

Focus Areas and Funding Priorities

This year, we’re focusing on projects in California. Focus areas include:

Systemic approaches and actionable strategies for higher education systems to address student housing insecurity and housing affordability. We are primarily focused on:

• Integrating affordable housing into broader student basic needs strategies across higher education systems, for example, rising utility costs and tenant rights
• Aligning housing plans, policies, and implementation efforts across segments (e.g., community colleges, CSU, UC)
• Leveraging and streamlining existing housing grant programs and funding mechanisms to maximize impact
• Innovative approaches that utilize existing housing infrastructure and cross-sector partnerships to address the housing crisis
• Policy advocacy efforts that systematically address student housing insecurity

Innovative approaches that strengthen equitable economic mobility and long-term student stability. Areas in which we hope to achieve this include:

• Expanding workforce development pipelines that promote economic mobility for low-income and first-generation students (including those that strategically leverage work study).
• Efforts that expand and streamline student access, enrollment, and maintaining of  public benefits at scale, including CalFresh, CalWORKs, and Medi-Cal
• Models that move basic needs operations from grant-based to sustainable, institutionalized systems with skilled, permanent staff (including innovative approaches that mitigate the impact of recent federal policy shifts).

Actionable research, data, and strategies that inform policy and advocacy efforts. Priorities include:

• Research and practice that supports timely policy response to emerging federal and state changes, (e.g., HR1 impacts), such as expanded emergency aid from campuses and government funding
• Student-centered storytelling, narrative-building, and messaging that strengthen advocacy and policy implementation
• Data collection and analysis related to student access to healthcare and public benefits (including Medi-Cal enrollment and uninsured student populations)
• Analysis of funding flows and impact, including federal dollars brought into California through student benefit enrollment
• Tools and systems that improve tracking, coordination, and responsiveness to both short-term and long-term basic needs challenges

Funding Cycle Details

• We will be awarding grants up to $25,000 to nonprofits and educational institutions looking for support of projects that hit one of the focus areas outlined above. Please note your project must address at least one of our focus areas in order to be considered.
• We welcome proposals where Michelson Spark Grant funds are part of a larger overall project with multiple funding streams.
• The Spark Grant Program is available to United States–based nonprofits and educational institutions.

If you have any questions or need assistance while completing this form, please reach out to Natasha at grants@michelsonphilanthropies.org