In January 2013, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation awarded CHCI a three-year grant of $1.2 million for Integrating the Humanities across National Boundaries, a three-year pilot program designed to foster new forms of collaborative research and partnerships among CHCI's international membership The objective of the program is to advance innovative programmatic ideas and new forms of collaborative research across national, regional, and disciplinary boundaries. The grant helped to identify new priorities and potential roles for CHCI, and explore the ways in which a networked consortium can further scholarly innovation in the humanities on a global scale.

In January of 2014, the Mellon Foundation awarded CHCI an additional three-year grant of $1.35 million to support a second pair of pilot projects through 2017. These two generous grants funded the following four collaborations:

• Religion, Secularism, and Political Belonging (RelSec)
• Humanities for the Environment (HfE)
• The CHCI Medical Humanities Network Program (MedHum)
• Integrative Graduate Humanities Education Research and Training (IGHERT)