Bold Ideas—Big Impact

Funding partnerships and projects in conjunction with its grantees and two operating foundations—the Waitt Institute and the Waitt Institute for Violence Prevention, the foundation supports a variety of scientific and environmental programs with an emphasis on ocean conservation. We are looking for bold new ideas and people with the skills and determination to make a deep, lasting, and sustainable difference throughout the world and in our daily lives. The Waitt Foundation funds projects that help us understand the past, improve the present and prepare for the future.

The primary mission of the Waitt Foundation is to protect our oceans from the impacts of overfishing by facilitating the creation of marine protected areas, engaging stakeholders to improve management of fisheries, fostering sustainable solutions, and raising public awareness as to the problem via a network of collaborative NGO’s and foundations.  Our vision is to restore the seas to full productivity for future generations.

We support and initiate programs that are project specific with tangible and measurable results. Priority is given to initiatives addressing our core focus, ocean conservation. In general, the foundation does not support programs or organizations that fall outside of our key areas of focus, nor do we accept proposals to support individuals, event fundraisers and sponsorships, endowments, or lobbying of any kind. 

Please note that the foundation does not accept unsolicited proposals by mail. All grant requests must be submitted via our website.

Ocean Conservation

As our primary focus, the foundation supports a variety of ocean conservation efforts with an emphasis on marine protected areas and sustainable fishing practices.  By raising global awareness about declining marine resources through scientific research, innovative sustainability solutions, and policy reform, it’s our hope that people will be inspired to make informed decisions in support of a healthy marine environment. From understanding how healthy ocean ecosystems work, to strengthening and expanding the world’s marine protected areas to reducing the seafood footprint, we invest in ocean conservation projects with the potential for significant, measurable impacts on people’s lives and livelihoods. We are currently accepting preliminary grant applications in this field - to apply online, click here.

Exploration & Discovery

Serving as an exploration catalyst, the Waitt Foundation enables pioneering researchers to transform the ways in which discoveries are made. Collaborating with world-renowned scientists and cutting-edge research institutions, we pull together the global expertise needed to accelerate groundbreaking discoveries, exploring everything from the origins of man and the birth of ancient civilizations to historical mysteries that have captured our collective imaginations for generations. Our areas of interest are without boundaries taking us on archaeological journeys to the deserts of Egypt, artifact excavations in the jungles of Panama, and deep sea expeditions in the South Pacific Ocean. We are currently accepting preliminary grant applications in this field - to apply online, click here.

Scientific Innovation

Believing that goal-oriented science can inspire incredible innovation and discoveries, we look for projects with focused objectives, achievable milestones and strong strategic plans. We then bring the best minds and global resources together to resolve differences, achieve critical breakthroughs and accelerate progress through a variety of new technologies and educational advances. The foundation supports pioneering state-of-the-art research that drives the development of next-generation imaging, data analysis technologies and visualization tools for the advancement of biological research. We are currently accepting preliminary grant applications in this field - to apply online, click here.

Community Building

The foundation’s work in community-building is a balanced portfolio, strategically designed to address different urgent human needs. Bringing people and resources together to collaboratively address social, educational, economic, environmental and cultural challenges, the foundation believes in giving back to the community—from the Siouxland region where Ted Waitt was born, to the San Diego area where the foundation is based, to even the national and global level when we believe we can have a sustainable impact.

In each of these areas, we look for strategies to create tangible, measurable benefits—solutions that will make revolutionary change in the lives of many, not incremental change in the lives of a few. We are interested in proposals to test new approaches to problem-solving, as well as projects that have been successfully tested and are ready to go full scale.

Applications: We require all grant applications to be submitted via our web site.  The foundation does not accept proposals by e-mail, mail or fax. To apply online, click here.