Qatari Funding and Influence in American K-12 Classrooms
Qatar Foundation International (QFI) has funded public K-12 schools since 2009 up through the 2025-2026 school year. In June, QFI announced it was concluding operations, but its influence persists thanks to its years-long funding of curricula and teacher trainings.
QFI is a Washington, DC-based LLC that serves as the American branch of the Qatar Foundation, an organization run by the Qatari royal family. Its programs directly influenced what is being taught in school classrooms.
QFI offered grants to districts, individual schools, and teachers. QFI paid for teachers’ salaries and training; scholarships for high school students who plan to study Arabic in college; curriculum development for social studies and Arabic language and culture courses; classroom materials; and domestic and international field trips.
The result of this 17-year effort is that an entity, controlled by the ruling Qatari royal family that runs a government that finances Hamas and is a leading patron of the Muslim Brotherhood, has a hand in teaching American children about the Middle East.
The visual below maps all the QFI funding we have documented — but information about additional funding continues to emerge. You can explore by program, geography, and the purpose behind the funds. The map will be updated as more QFI funding and influence is uncovered.
QFI provided more than $10 million, from 2009 to 2026, across 24 K-12 public school districts, two universities that train K-12 teachers, and one charter school in Washington, DC.
Last updated: July 17, 2026
Geographic reach of grants
Using public records requests, we found QFI involvement in the locations mapped below. Click a bubble to filter the grant table below.
Funding breakdown
The chart below lists the purpose of the QFI grants as stated on the document, the dollar amount awarded, and schools that received QFI funding.
By school
Click a school to filter the grant table below.
By purpose
Click a purpose to filter the grant table below.
Grant-level detail
Every grant in the dataset. Click a map bubble or a school bar above to filter to those grants. Search or sort by any column; click a school name to open its source document.
| School / District | State | Grant dates | Amount | Purpose | Source |
|---|
Credits
Data Collection by Simone Weichselbaum.
Visual by Pavak Patel.
Edited by Jason Fields.