# John Templeton Foundation **Entity class:** Philanthropic foundation ## Definition The **John Templeton Foundation (JTF)** funds research and public engagement around what it calls “Big Questions,” including science, philosophy, religion, character, human flourishing, free will, consciousness, and fundamental reality. Its grants are support relationships, not proof that every grantee shares one doctrine or coordinates with every other grantee. ## ICE and adjacent funding - **Grant 55342:** $4,145,147 to the Trustees of [[wiki/Dartmouth College|Dartmouth College]], led by [[wiki/Marcelo Gleiser|Marcelo Gleiser]], for the [[wiki/Institute for Cross-Disciplinary Engagement|Institute for Cross-Disciplinary Engagement]]. - **Seven Days of Genius:** $1,844,999 to the organization behind [[wiki/92NY|92Y]], including programming on consciousness, artificial intelligence, the brain, creativity, morality, and technological genius. - **GivingTuesday:** grants of $195,000 in 2014 and $200,000 in 2015 to 92Y-centered projects using behavioral-science and prosocial-participation framing. - **Templeton Prize:** awarded to [[wiki/Marcelo Gleiser|Marcelo Gleiser]] in 2019 for work joining scientific questions with the human search for meaning. Templeton World Charity Foundation is organizationally related but separately governed; its grants include [[wiki/The Seekers|The Seekers]] and the [[wiki/Spiritual Loop Project|Spiritual Loop Project]]. ## Relationships - **institutional grantees:** [[wiki/Dartmouth College|Dartmouth]], [[wiki/92NY|92NY]], and [[wiki/Center of Theological Inquiry|Center of Theological Inquiry]] through separate awards. - **themes:** [[wiki/Science and Religion|Science and Religion]], [[wiki/Human Flourishing|Human Flourishing]], consciousness, free will, and public intellectual life. - **evidence boundary:** shared funding ecology does not establish secret coordination or that JTF brokered the ICE–92Y partnership. - **disambiguation route:** [[wiki/ICE|ICE disambiguation]]. ## Sources / Provenance - [Templeton — Institute for Cross-Disciplinary Engagement](https://www.templeton.org/grant/the-institute-for-cross-disciplinary-engagement-at-dartmouth-2) - [Templeton — Seven Days of Genius](https://www.templeton.org/ar/grant/seven-days-of-genius-an-exhibition-of-ideas) - [Templeton — GivingTuesday 2014](https://www.templeton.org/es/grant/givingtuesday-2014-2) - [Templeton — GivingTuesday 2015](https://www.templeton.org/es/grant/givingtuesday-2015) ## British influence and Rhodes genealogy The Foundation’s genealogy includes a literal Rhodes loop. Founder [[wiki/John Templeton|John Templeton]] was a [[wiki/Rhodes Scholarship|Rhodes Scholar]] at [[wiki/Balliol College|Balliol College, Oxford]], became a naturalized British citizen, and was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II. In 2016, Templeton World Charity Foundation awarded the [[wiki/Rhodes Trust|Rhodes Trust]] $215,000 for its Character, Service & Leadership Programme. The distinction from [[wiki/Cecil Rhodes|Cecil Rhodes]] is essential. Rhodes’s project explicitly joined scholarship selection to British imperial unity; Templeton’s philanthropic program instead centered science, religion, character, freedom, meaning, consciousness, human potential, and fundamental reality. The structural comparison concerns durable transnational selection, funding, prestige, and network propagation—not an assertion of one concealed command structure. The Foundation’s published 2025 metrics—$4 billion endowment, $150 million annual giving, 5,049 grants since inception, organizations in 60 countries, $355 million to top-25 world universities, and research outputs counted in tens of thousands—make it a major [[wiki/Philanthropic Capital as Civilizational Middleware|epistemic-infrastructure]] node. Collection route: [[collections/War With Empire|War With Empire]]. - [Templeton — Grants metrics](https://www.templeton.org/grants) - [Templeton — Sir John Templeton](https://www.templeton.org/about/sir-john-templeton) - [Templeton World Charity Foundation — Rhodes Trust grant](https://www.templetonworldcharity.org/projects-resources/project-database/0183)