Grants

Funding Focus

At the Oberkotter Foundation, we fund programs in the United States that promote listening and spoken language (LSL) for children who are deaf or hard of hearing. We know that early learning is critical to a child’s language development and lifetime success, and because parents and caregivers are crucial to children reaching their full potential, we put families at the center of everything we do.

In our grantmaking, we look for organizations and projects that share our commitment to supporting families to ensure their children who are deaf or hard of hearing will have the same opportunities as their hearing peers to capitalize on the critical early period for brain development. We focus on organizations and projects committed to providing coordinated pediatric audiology and LSL intervention to families and their infants and toddlers as close as possible to birth or onset of acquired hearing loss. And we place special emphasis on those projects that will meet the needs of families efficiently and cost-effectively.

Watch the Hearing First LSL Life docuseries sharing the stories of families who had access to the supports, resources, pediatric audiology and LSL intervention they needed for their children to have opportunities to achieve their full potential.

 

Current Activities

Since our founding, the Trustees of the Oberkotter Foundation have been committed to carrying out the Oberkotter Family’s vision that children who are deaf or hard of hearing should have access to listening and spoken language services in their community.  Over the last 36 years, we have awarded over $400 million to help families receive services.   

Today, we are exploring how our future work will continue to carry out that vision and ensure that children who are deaf or hard of hearing have the same opportunities to meet critical developmental milestones as their hearing friends.   

As we explore our future work, we have discontinued our twice-yearly formal grantmaking cycles.  We are no longer accepting grant requests for projects, operations, general support or business-as-usual.   

When we have more information about our future work, we will share it here.  While we cannot say exactly what that work will look like, we know that we will continue to focus on meeting families’ needs for access to accurate information and access to coordinated pediatric audiology and LSL intervention services as close to birth or onset of hearing loss as possible. 

If you have any questions concerning a current grant from the Foundation or would like to discuss a project that has the potential to make a profound impact on audiology or transform the coordinated hearing healthcare continuum, please reach out to David King, grants and projects leader, at dking@oberkotterfoundation.org.