The John Templeton Foundation (Templeton Foundation) is a philanthropic organization founded by John Templeton in 1987. Templeton became wealthy as a contrarian investor, and wanted to support progress in religious and spiritual knowledge, especially at the intersection of religion and science. He also sought to fund research on methods to promote and develop moral character, intelligence, and creativity in people, and to promote free markets. In 2008, the foundation was awarded the National Humanities Medal. In 2016, Inside Philanthropy called it "the oddest—or most interesting—big foundation around."
Templeton was chairman until he died in 2008. Templeton's son, John Templeton Jr., was its president from its founding until his own death in 2015, at which point Templeton Jr.'s daughter, Heather Templeton Dill, became president. The foundation administers the annual Templeton Prize for achievements in the field of spirituality, including those at the intersection of science and religion. It has an extensive grant-funding program (around $150 million per year as of 2016) aimed at supporting research in physics, biology, psychology, and the social sciences as well as philosophy and theology. It also supports programs related to genetics, "exceptional cognitive talent and genius" and "individual freedom and free markets". The foundation receives both praise and criticism for its awards, regarding the breadth of its coverage, and ideological perspectives asserted to be associated with them.
Leadership John Templeton (29 November 1912 – 8 July 2008) was an American-born British investor, banker, fund manager, and philanthropist. In 1954, he entered the mutual fund market and created the Templeton Growth Fund.
John Templeton Jr. was president of the foundation from its inception in 1987. He worked as a pediatric surgeon, and he was chief of pediatric surgery at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia in 1995, when he stopped practicing medicine to join the foundation. He took over as chairman when his father died. He was an evangelical Christian and supported various American conservative causes. He always maintained that he tried to run the foundation according to his father's wishes instead of his own. He died in 2015.
Heather Templeton Dill, the daughter of John Templeton Jr., became president in 2015 and was succeeded by Timothy Dalrymple in July 2025.
Endowment Templeton bequeathed around $500 million to the foundation when he died in 2008. the foundation's total endowment had grown to $3.34 billion. The foundation reports that it has issued over 3,300 grants, with over 2,800 of those going to recipients in North America. In 2016, the foundation disbursed over $151,000,000 in grants.
Prizes
The Templeton Prize was established by John Templeton, and he administered the prize until the foundation was established in 1987, which took it over. The prize has "a value of about $1.7 million, making it one of the world’s largest annual awards given to an individual".
The early prizes were given solely to people who had made great achievements in the field of religion; Mother Teresa received the inaugural award in 1973, with other early winners including Sir Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1975), Chiara Lubich (1977), and Nikkyō Niwano (1979). In the 1980s, John Templeton began considering the intersection of science and religion, and after he appointed two scientists to the judging panel, scientists who worked at this intersection began receiving it; Alister Hardy was the first, in 1987. More recent winners of the Templeton Prize have included the Dalai Lama in 2012, King Abdullah II of Jordan in 2018, Brazilian Jewish physicist and astronomer Marcelo Gleiser in 2019, and primatologist Jane Goodall in 2021.The 2025 winner is the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople.
Grants Templeton "was a great believer in progress, learning, initiative and the power of human imagination—not to mention the free-enterprise system". While most of its funding goes to topics in science, philosophy, and religion, around 40 percent of its annual grants go to character development, genius, freedom, free enterprise, and fields associated with classical liberalism. Grants are given to people across all religions since Templeton believed progress in the field of spirituality could come from anywhere. The field of grants was broadened in the 1980s to include scientific fields like neuroscience, psychology, and cosmology, seen as being aligned with the mission.
Some research programs supported by the foundation have included the development of positive psychology by Martin Seligman, Angela Duckworth and others; the Black Hole Initiative at Harvard University; the Gen2Gen Encore Prize; the World Science Festival; Pew religious demographics surveys; and programs that engage with Buddhist, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant traditions, including support for dialogue with scientists in synagogues, and a grant for advancing scientific literacy in madrasas.
, the foundation awarded nearly a billion dollars in grants and charitable contributions and was the 55th largest grantor among American foundations.
The top ten largest grants as of 2018 were:
Project Applicants Institution Amount Science for Seminaries: Phase II Jennifer Wiseman, Se Kim American Association for the Advancement of Science $6,182,109 Character Lab Research Network: Revolutionizing Research on Character Development Angela Duckworth, Sean Talamas The Character Lab $3,717,258 Doing Development Differently Matt Warner, Brad Lips Atlas Economic Research Foundation $3,095,213 Freedom Forum Global Expansion Thor Halvorssen, Alex Gladstein Human Rights Foundation $3,074,788 Small-Scale Fundamental Physics Block Grant Gerald Gabrielse Northwestern University $3,000,000 Epigenetic Diagnostics for Preventative Medicine Michael Skinner Washington State University $2,936,242 Exploring the Informational Transitions Bridging Simple Chemistry and Minimal Life Sarah Walker, Paul Davies Arizona State University Foundation for a New American University $2,904,374 Spiritual Exemplars: A Global Project on Engaged Spirituality Donald Miller, Megan Sweas University of Southern California $2,783,594 Reasoning in moral thought and action Liane Young, Fiery Cushman Boston College Trustees $2,743,961 Character Strength Interventions in Adolescents: Engaging Scholars and Practitioners to Promote Virtue Development Sarah Schnitker, Benjamin Houltberg Fuller Theological Seminary $2,616,085
The ten largest grants from 2012 through 2017 Project Applicants Institution Year Amount Putting the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis to the Test Kevin Laland, Tobias Uller University of St Andrews 2016 $7,480,634 Gratitude Britain James Arthur University of Birmingham 2012 $8,514,979 Landmark Spirituality and Health Survey Neal Krause University of Michigan 2013 $8,028,154 Service Britain James Arthur University of Birmingham 2015 $7,940,543The Black Hole Initiative: Towards a Center for Interdisciplinary Research Sheperd Doeleman, Abraham Loeb Harvard University 2016 $7,204,252Nautilus Media John Steele Nautilus Ventures, LLC 2012 $7,127,212Intellectual Humility in Public Discourse Michael Lynch, Brendan Kane University of Connecticut 2016 $6,054,682Transformative Britain James Arthur University of Birmingham 2017 $5,747,960Advancing the Science of Imagination: Toward an "Imagination Quotient" Martin Seligman, Scott Barry Kaufman Imagination Institute 2014 $5,647,094New Frontiers in Astronomy and Cosmology Don York The University of Chicago 2012 $5,559,107
The ten largest grants up to 2011 Project Amount Foundational Questions in Evolutionary Biology$10,500,000 Foundational Questions in Physics and Cosmology$8,812,078 The SEVEN Fund: Enterprise Based Solutions to Poverty$8,742,911 Establishing an Institute for Research on Unlimited Love$8,210,000 The Purpose Prize for Social Innovators Over the Age of 60$8,148,322 Templeton–Cambridge Journalism Fellowships and Seminars in Science and Religion$6,187,971 Accelerating Progress at the Interface of Positive Psychology and Neuroscience$5,816,793 AAAS Dialogue on Science, Ethics, and Religion$5,351,707 Promoting a Culture of Generosity, Part I: Feature Film$5,000,000 Promoting a Culture of Generosity, Part II: The Philanthropy Channel$5,000,000
Physics
QISS (Quantum Information Structure of Spacetime) The John Templeton Foundation granted over two million dollars in 2019, and then 4.5 million dollars in 2022 to QISS. The QISS consortium brings together specialists from quantum gravity, quantum information, foundations of quantum mechanics, as well Philosophy of Science. According to the organization, "QISS aims to found the physics of quantum spacetime on an information theoretical basis, bring within reach empirical access to quantum gravity phenomenology leveraging rapidly advancing quantum technologies, and promote interactions between physicists and philosophers. The broader scope of the consortium is to establish a long-term research program that brings together the represented communities." Marios Christodoulou and Carlo Rovelli are the project leaders.
Black Hole Initiative In 2016, the foundation granted over seven million dollars to the Black Hole Initiative (BHI), an interdisciplinary program at Harvard University that includes the fields of Astronomy, Physics and Philosophy, and is said to be the first center in the world to focus on the study of black holes. Notable principal participants include Sheperd Doeleman, Peter Galison, Avi Loeb, Ramesh Narayan, Andrew Strominger, and Shing-Tung Yau. The BHI Inauguration was held on 18 April 2016 and was attended by Stephen Hawking; related workshop events were held on 19 April 2016.
Complexity at the Santa Fe Institute In 2015, the Santa Fe Institute was awarded a three-year, $2.5 million grant to support the development of a general theory of complexity, constituting "a concise, parsimonious, and potentially mathematizable framework for understanding complex adaptive systems".
Biology and human development
In 2016, the foundation awarded $5.4 million to the Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution (FfAME) to study the origin of life on Earth, particularly investigating questions of how early RNA interacted with water, which is necessary for life but also degrades RNA, and how the introduction of energy to organic materials yielded life rather than turning it into tar. The project is headed by molecular biophysicist and chemist Steven A. Benner. The foundation also awarded an $8 million grant to a program examining a theory in evolutionary biology called extended evolutionary synthesis. This project is headed by evolutionary biologist Kevin Laland.
Several grants specifically supported inquiry into various aspects of human evolution. A 2014 grant of $4.9 million supports an effort at Arizona State University by paleoanthropologist Donald Johanson to explore how we became human, and a $3.2 million grant to Indiana University and the Stone Age Institute supports the study of "what factors led human ancestors to develop skills like making tools, developing language, and seeking out information".
In March 2019, the foundation provided the bulk of a group of grants adding up to over $7 million to enable the Institute for Interdisciplinary Brain and Behavioral Science (The Brain Institute) at Chapman University to examine "how the human brain enables conscious control of decisions and actions".