Impact Goals Funding

Since 2019, IonE has competitively awarded more than $6.9 million to teams working across research, education, communication and engagement. Our aim: to support interdisciplinary collaborators who are ready to overcome barriers to sustainability and deliver meaningful outcomes.

Reflecting our mandate as a public research university, all Impact Goal grants are Minnesota-forward. Projects must demonstrate a clear and compelling connection to our state: by being conducted here; by directly informing sustainable strategies with regional relevance; or by generating transferable knowledge that strengthens Minnesotans’ capacity to act. We also encourage teams to use the University as a living laboratory for piloting ideas, testing solutions and informing institutional change.

Our approach centers partner-engaged scholarship and draws on many forms of expertise. We prioritize proposals that demonstrate meaningful partnerships, elevate underrepresented voices and build shared ownership of both the work and its impacts. Most importantly, each project must define a specific impact goal – the measurable, Minnesota-relevant outcome it seeks to advance – and articulate how the proposed work will meaningfully move the needle. By defining outcomes at the project level, we empower teams to design the pathways that will drive real change.

IonE accelerates sustainability progress in 10 interconnected domains. These 10 topic areas reflect both challenges of critical importance in Minnesota and areas where the University brings distinctive capacity, depth and leadership.

Projects must advance work within one or more of these 10 domains, which together guide our investment strategy and help teams define meaningful, outcome-oriented pathways forward. Teams select one primary domain, which most applies to their work and up to two secondary domains.

Domain Focus Areas:

• Adaptation: Building resilience to climate and environmental changes
• Biodiversity: Protecting and restoring ecosystems and species diversity
• Clean Energy: Advancing renewable energy technologies and adoption
• Decision Support: Engaging partners and developing tools that support better decision-making
• Environmental Justice: Addressing inequities in how environmental burdens and benefits are distributed
• Food Systems: Creating sustainable, resilient, and equitable food networks
• Mitigation: Reducing greenhouse gas emissions and slowing climate change
• Natural Capital: Recognizing and valuing the economic and ecological services nature provides
• Planetary Health: Linking human health and environmental well-being
• Water & Land: Managing natural resources sustainably for people and ecosystems

Research Priorities

Impact Goal projects may take many forms, but all must articulate a clear impact goal and a strategy for advancing measurable outcomes. We fund work across three interconnected modes of scholarship, recognizing that progress often requires integrated efforts across these areas.

Research & Discovery

We fund research that generates new knowledge, develops or tests different solution pathways, evaluates interventions or advances tools and methods that strengthen sustainability decision-making. Projects may include basic or applied research, modeling, laboratory, mixed methods, or field studies, design and demonstration or other forms of inquiry grounded in rigorous scholarly methods.

Education & Learning Innovation

We support education-focused research projects that develop or evaluate curricula, experiential learning opportunities, professional development programs or pedagogical innovations that advance sustainability knowledge and build capacity. Projects must demonstrate scholarly grounding, clear learning outcomes and a plan for assessing impact over time.

Communications Research

We fund communications research that identifies, tests or scales strategies for public engagement, narrative framing, audience insights or science communication. Projects may include storytelling, media development, framing analysis or other communication approaches designed to accelerate adoption, understanding or action on sustainability solutions.

Funding for Impact Goal grants comes from IonE’s core grantmaking investments, MnDRIVE Environment – a University–State of Minnesota partnership that aligns research strengths with statewide priorities – and philanthropic gifts made in recognition of the portfolio’s role as a strategic lever for advancing sustainability priorities.

RFP brochure

Catalyzing the Future of Food

Since 2021, the Seeding The Future van Lengerich Foundation has provided philanthropic support for innovative research projects addressing food systems challenges through the Institute on the Environment. This support continues in the 2026 Impact Goals funding cycle, advancing food systems projects in Minnesota and beyond.

Learn how you can support high-impact sustainability research.

Funding