Grant and Funding Programs Offered by Canada Gives Foundation #CG 0742

The Stoneleigh Foundation is a philanthropic organization that invests in individuals and organizations to drive systems change for youth, with a primary focus on the Greater Philadelphia region. It concentrates its funding on youth-serving systems such as youth justice, child welfare, education, health, and responses to gun violence. Rather than operating direct services, Stoneleigh deploys flexible, multiyear funding to leaders and partners whose work can transform policies, practices, and narratives that shape young people’s lives.

The Foundation’s portfolio is structured around two main fellowship programs and complementary project streams. Stoneleigh Fellows are established leaders who receive salary support and multiyear funding to step back from day‑to‑day duties and pursue ambitious, system-level projects. Emerging Leader Fellows are early career professionals who, in partnership with host organizations, implement discrete projects that build their skills while advancing the host’s mission. In addition, Youth Partnership Projects provide support to youth-centric organizations that build young people’s leadership and advocacy capacity.

Fellowship and project funding is targeted to several priority domains: youth justice, child welfare, education, health, and cross-cutting issues such as housing stability and gun violence. Within youth justice, for example, Stoneleigh invests in strategies to minimize young people’s contact with the justice system, promote developmentally appropriate alternatives to incarceration, mitigate the harms of system involvement, and support successful reentry. Similar systems-change goals guide its work in child welfare, education, and health.

Projects can include action-oriented research, policy analysis, program design and implementation, narrative change initiatives, and efforts to improve data use. The Foundation highlights both Fellowship Projects—typically led by individual fellows embedded in or collaborating with public agencies, universities, hospitals, or nonprofits—and Youth Partnership Projects, which are led by grassroots or community-based organizations.

Stoneleigh explicitly “awards Fellowships to exceptional individuals who work within and alongside youth-serving systems to catalyze change.” Its selection processes emphasize applicants’ track records, their capacity to work collaboratively with systems partners, and the potential of their ideas to produce lasting improvements for youth. For the Emerging Leader Fellowship, organizations first apply to host a fellow and propose a project; Stoneleigh then advances a subset to full proposal, candidate recruitment, interviews, and final selection with Board approval.

While detailed scoring rubrics are not published on the pages provided, the Foundation’s stated values—individual leadership, action, expertise, and collaboration—suggest that feasibility, evidence-informed approaches, attention to structural inequities, and meaningful youth outcomes are central to how projects are judged.

The website showcases extensive information on current and past fellows, their host institutions, and the projects funded. It also features news, reports, and evaluations generated through Stoneleigh-supported work, including empirical studies, policy reports, and convenings with academic and public-sector partners. Although specific governance structures are not fully detailed in the excerpts, multiple references to Board of Directors approval for fellowship selections indicate formal oversight of funding decisions.

Stoneleigh’s funding ultimately aims to improve outcomes for youth—particularly those who are poor, system-involved, or affected by racial and structural inequities. By resourcing police leaders, public defenders, researchers, physicians, attorneys, community organizers, and youth-led groups, the Foundation helps develop and scale alternatives to punitive systems, strengthen community-based supports, and elevate evidence-based and trauma-informed practices. Its long-term, relationship-driven approach, coupled with alumni networks of fellows, is designed to sustain impact well beyond the duration of individual grants.