4. Identifying Research Funding Opportunities
The goal of this section is to help the individual researcher become self-directed and self-sufficient in the use of a range of internet tools and search protocols for the identification of funding opportunities on the Internet.
The goal of this section is to help the individual researcher become self-directed and self-sufficient in the use of a range of internet tools and search protocols for the identification of funding opportunities on the Internet. Self-directed searches of funding agency web sites, combined with the complementary use of Google, Yahoo, or other search tools, are highly effective and efficient ways of identifying research and educational funding opportunities. Individual researchers have the most substantive and nuanced understanding of their research interests, directions, and capacities, and therefore it is most productive if the searches for research opportunities are primarily filtered through their own perspectives.
Federal agencies funding basic, applied, and applications-based research, education, and other university-centered initiatives have developed very robust and well-organized web sites to facilitate the search for funding opportunities. These are often complemented by subscription-based electronically distributed funding alerts, newsletters, and research reports from the agency targeting new funding opportunities, upcoming funding opportunities, and other information related to the research funding and the long-term investment priorities of a particular agency.
Defining the Funding Search Process
Prior to the funding opportunities search process, it is helpful to:
- Define a general disciplinary domain of interest (e.g., science, social sciences, humanities, education, health and biomedical sciences, engineering);
- Characterize the nature of the research interests (basic, applied, applications); and
- Identify a subset of federal funding agencies (or foundations) whose mission, strategic plan, and investment priorities are aligned with these specific research interests.
This subset of funding agencies then becomes the focus of the preliminary search for funding opportunities, a process that may go through several search iterations until the researcher converges on a reasonable alignment of research interests with possible funding sources.
This search for funding opportunities can be further refined by developing funding search skills that allow the researcher to:
- Identify research opportunities that have regular grant cycles within a particularly agency (e.g., NIH and NSF have regular grant cycles of specific research programs that remain open for many years);
- Identify new research opportunities and investment directions at funding agencies; and
- Expand the base of potential research funding sources.
Major Funding Agencies for Texas A&M University
Major federal agency sponsors of research across at Texas A&M University include Health and Human Services (includes National Institutes of Health), Department of Defense, National Science Foundation, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Department of Agriculture, Department of Education, and the Department of Energy, among others listed below.
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
Environmental Protection Agency
U. S. Department of Defense:
Air Force Research Office
U.S. Department of Agriculture/CSREES
Compilations and Directories of Funding Agencies
Many sites nationally maintain exhaustive directories of funding agency and foundation web sites searchable for funding opportunities. A few are listed in the table below:
Listings of Federal and Foundation Funding
LSU Libraries Federal Agencies Directory
Daily Grant Opportunities
On a daily basis, federal research agencies post new grant opportunities on the Grants.gov web site, described below, which also provides information about signing up for daily e-mail funding alerts. Grants.gov is one of the best single portals to finding funding opportunities at federal agencies by allowing access to more than 900 grant programs offered by the 26 Federal grant-making agencies.
Grants.gov
To receive automated funding alerts tailored to your research interests, visit http://www.grants.gov/Find#receive.
Select one of four automated funding alert options: “Selected Notices Based on Funding Opportunity Number,” “Selected Agencies and Categories of Funding Activities,” “Selected Interest and Eligibility Groups,” or “All Grants Notices.”
Federal Program Funding Information
FedBizOpps.gov is the single government
point-of-entry (GPE) for Federal government procurement opportunities over
$25,000.
Federal Register is the daily publication for rules,
proposed rules, and notices of Federal agencies and organizations, as well as
executive orders and other presidential documents.
Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance gives access to a database of all Federal programs.
Federal Acquisition Jumpstation
Foundation and Corporate Funding
The Foundation Center provides information on identify funding from national and regional foundations. The list provided at the following URL includes links to the 100 largest U.S. grantmaking foundations ranked by the market value of their assets, based on the most current audited financial data in the Foundation Center’s database as of October 1, 2005:
Links to corporate foundations are available at:
Electronic Funding Alert Services/ E-mail Alerts
E-mail alert services
allow the researcher to subscribe to daily and weekly automated listings of
current funding opportunities by funding agencies. Funding alerts often allow the researcher to
limit the search to selected criteria related to research areas and programs.
Examples are provided below:
MyNSF, National Science Foundation
- http://www.nsf.gov/mynsf/
- MyNSF, formerly the Custom News Service, allows you to receive notifications about new content posted on the NSF website. Notification can be received via email or RSS.
NIH National Institutes of Health Listserv
- http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/listserv.htm
- Each week (usually on Friday afternoon), the NIH transmits an e-mail with table of contents information for that week’s issue of the NIH Guide, via the NIH LISTSERV. The table of contents includes a link to the Current NIH Guide Weekly Publication as well as links to each NIH Guide RFA, PA, and Notice published for that week.
NIH National Human Genome Research Institute
- http://list.nih.gov/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=nhgribulletin-l&A=1
- This screen allows you to join or leave the NHGRIBULLETIN-L list. To confirm your identity and prevent third parties from subscribing you to the list against your will, an e-mail message with a confirmation code will be sent to the address you specify in the form. Simply wait for this message to arrive, then follow the instructions to confirm the operation.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
- The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) allows users to subscribe to several mailing lists via the CDC World Wide Web site.
- To subscribe, go to http://www.cdc.gov/subscribe.html and fill out the on-line form.
GrantsNet
- http://www.grantsnet.org/funding_news_alert.cfm
- GrantsNet is a one-stop resource to find funds for training in the sciences and undergraduate science education. Through the support of HHMI and AAAS, this service is completely free.
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
- http://research.hq.nasa.gov/subs.cfm
- Once you are registered for this service you
can receive email notification of the release of research announcements
pertaining to any or all of NASA offices.
National Center for Environmental Research, Environmental Protection Agency
- http://cfpub.epa.gov/ncer_list/elists/
- Use this page to subscribe or unsubscribe to the NCER e-mail mailing list. NCER periodically sends out emails to subscribers announcing new grant and/or funding opportunities or highlight new documents in specific subject areas.
U.S. Dept. of Education, EDINFO
- http://listserv.ed.gov/cgi-bin/wa?A1=ind05&L=edinfo
- Information from and about the U.S. Department of Education publications, funding opportunities and more.
NEH Connect, National Endowment for the Humanities
- http://www.neh.gov/news/nehconnect.html
- Stay connected to the humanities with NEH Connect! Each month NEH Connect! delivers the latest news, projects, upcoming events, and grant deadlines from NEH.
RFP Bulletin, Foundation Center
Department of Energy
- DOE Pulse, a bimonthy newsletter, highlights work being done at the Department of Energy’s national laboratories. Each issue includes research highlights, updates on collaborations among laboratories, and profiles of individual researchers.
- To subscribe, go to http://www.ornl.gov/news/pulse/pulse_home.htm.
Department of Justice
- JUST INFO, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Justice National Criminal Justice Reference Service (NCJRS), is a biweekly e-mail newsletter that reports on a wide variety of criminal justice topics.
- To subscribe, send a message to listproc@aspensys.com. In the body of the message, type: subscribe JUSTINFO <your full name>.
National Institute for Standards and Technology
- NIST Update is a bimonthly report that highlights research, activities and services at National Institute for Standards and Technology.
- To begin receiving e-mail copies, sign up at http://www.nist.gov/public_affairs/mailform.htm
National Cooperative Highway Research Program
- Transit Cooperative Research Program and the National Cooperative Highway Research Program
- To register to receive e-mail notification that Requests for Proposals have been published on the NCHRP and TCRP Homepage, complete the form on web at http://www4.nas.edu/trb/crpmail.nsf/registration.
Leveraging the Internet in the Search for Funding
Leveraging the internet in the search for funding opportunities is an effective and efficient way to ensure exhaustive funding searches across all disciplinary domains of interest. In addition to the funding information available directly from federal agency and foundation web sites, universities nationally have created some excellent and very comprehensive public domain web sites focused on identifying research funding opportunities by discipline, due dates, URL links to program guidelines, and related information. The following are examples of many excellent sites in the public domain that continuously track, update and compile lists of funding opportunities across all academic disciplines.
Duke University Funding Alert Newsletter
- http://www.ors.duke.edu/find/index.html
- http://www.ors.duke.edu/find/announce/alert/current/index.html
- Arts and humanities; community development; curriculum development; environmental and life sciences; funding news; graduate funding; health sciences; international opportunities; multidisciplinary; physical sciences and engineering; postdoctoral funding; social sciences.
The University of Iowa, Funding Opportunities Bulletin
- http://research.uiowa.edu/grantTrack/grantbulletin.php
- Arts and humanities; biological sciences; international; multidisciplinary; physical and mathematical sciences; social sciences.
Iowa State University Funding Opportunities by Due Date
- http://www.vpresearch.iastate.edu/OSP/FundingOpportunities.html
- http://www.vpresearch.iastate.edu/OSP/Maillogs.html
Other
university sites offer excellent compilations of funding resources targeted to
a specific interest area; for example,
the below sites at Cornell University, Michigan State University, and Duke
University are excellent sources of national (not institution-specific) funding
information for graduate fellowship support.
The Cornell University Graduate School Fellowship Database
- http://cuinfo.cornell.edu/Student/GRFN/
- The Cornell University Graduate School Fellowship Database primarily lists fellowships from non-Cornell sources. Anyone interested in consulting the database is welcome to do so.
Michigan State University Graduate Fellowship Listings
- http://www.lib.msu.edu/harris23/grants/3gradinf.htm
- Michigan State University provides links to fellowship funding lists in more than 40 different academic disciplines.
Duke University Fellowships and Grants for Graduate Students
- http://www.ors.duke.edu/find/student/grad/index.html
- The Duke site is organized around fellowship funding in five board academic areas, including multidisciplinary, humanities and social sciences, sciences, and international opportunities.
Other university sites offer excellent links to categories of funding opportunities especially of interest to university researchers, as at the Berkeley and University of Massachusetts sites.
The University of California at Berkeley
- http://www.spo.berkeley.edu/funding.html
- Links to table of programs, profiles, and URLs for researchers seeking funding in the following areas: Faculty individual prizes and awards, equipment grants, new and young faculty grants, travel grants, women and minorities grants, and postdoctoral funding in the biosciences.
University of Massachusetts New Faculty Research Funding
- http://www.umass.edu/research/ogca/funding/newfacultydisc.html
- This site offers an excellent, comprehensive compilation of federal agency and foundation research awards targeting tenure track faculty in the following areas: Agriculture and food science, arts and humanities, cancer, chemical sciences, computer and information science, education, engineering, environmental science, health and medical, history, mathematics, neuroscience, nursing, physical and life sciences, religion, social and behavioral sciences, and science education.
The Doreen B. Townsend Center for the Humanities, UC Berkeley
- http://townsendcenter.berkeley.edu/postdocs.shtml
- This is excellent listing of national Postdoctoral fellowships in the humanities organized in a table of URLs.
Sites for Targeted Funding Opportunities
Environmental Emphasis http://www.environment.psu.edu/faculty/fundinglist.asp
Equipment Grants http://www.spo.berkeley.edu/Fund/equipment.html
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/opg/fund/fedequip.pdf
http://www.research.buffalo.edu/spa/instrumentation.htm
Faculty Prizes & Awards http://www.spo.berkeley.edu/Links/Fed.html
http://research.uth.tmc.edu/awards.htm
http://www.msu.edu/~biomed/awards/
New & Junior Faculty Grants http://www.spo.berkeley.edu/Fund/newfaculty.html
http://www.umass.edu/research/ogca/funding/newfacultydisc.html
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/opg/fund/newinvest-1105.pdf
http://www.physics.harvard.edu/grants.htm
http://www.unh.edu/osr/funding/support/young_pi.pdf
http://www.sfsu.edu/~ptf/docs/NewInvestigatorAwards.pdf
http://grants.nih.gov/grants/new_investigators/index.htm
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/opg/fund/newinvest-1102.pdf
Post doc Funding, Biological Sciences http://www.spo.berkeley.edu/Fund/biopostdoc.html
Post doc Funding, Humanities http://www.spo.berkeley.edu/Fund/hpostdoc.html
Post doc Funding, Social Sciences http://www.spo.berkeley.edu/Fund/socpostdoc.html
Travel Grants http://www.spo.berkeley.edu/Fund/newfaculty.html
Women & Minority Grants http://www.spo.berkeley.edu/Fund/womenminority.html
Google Is Your Best Friend!
Google and Yahoo searches, particularly done in tandem to take advantage of the two different search algorithms, offer a very robust complement to known web sites containing funding opportunities information. In many cases, a modified question used as the search text string will identify sites helpful in the search for funding opportunities, help narrow the focus of the search, and in many cases identify funding sources unknown to the researcher. The search text may be as simple as “funding undergraduate research,” “funding graduate fellowships,” “research funding alerts.”
Funding Opportunities and Information Management
Over time, the researcher may become awash in information related to funding opportunities, funding alert subscription services, program information, and the like. Developing an organizational structure to manage all this information becomes important. For example, identification of research funding opportunities for various programs within very large agencies is expedited considerable by compiling a range of very targeted URLs within a particular agency, something especially helpful at an agency such as NIH with a $28 billion research budget. Moreover, a researcher may be conducting research in areas funded by several federal agencies, as well as foundations; this information needs to be easily accessible on a continuous basis without difficulty.
Early in this process it might be helpful to set up email folders for daily and weekly email alert notifications from various agencies, something that over time becomes an important funding opportunities resource file for the researcher since the alerts typically contain information by program name, synopsis, and URL, and most often represent programs with due dates that recur annually or semi-annually, or on some other reasonable predictive schedule. Another useful organizational tool is to create a “Hotlink Table of URLs” to serve as a single document visible on the “desktop” containing funding agency URLs, multiple URLs within the agency, and other web sources that can be leveraged in developing a very comprehensive funding opportunities listing very nicely tailored to the individual researcher.
Community of Science (COS)
The paid subscription access only Community of Science lists funding opportunities across all academic disciplines, including those for national and international programs and for some private funding sources. To receive COS automated funding alerts tailored to specific research interests, investigators must be registered with the Community of Science.
To register, visit the COS home page , click on the “Join” button, and enter the requested information to create a profile. After creating a profile, there is an option to sign up for automated funding alerts. To do this, log on to the “COS Workbench” page, then go to the “View Your Funding Alerts” section of the page and click on the “Add an Alert” link. This is a link to the search interface, where searches can be created using the funding alert fields. All information from the subscription-only COS is readily and easily available from the public domain sites detailed in this section.
