Research Funding Opportunities: NSF and NIH Grants

NIH

How do I Find Research Funding Opportunities?

Many people tell me they are unable to find grant opportunities relevant to their fields. Sometimes, they don’t realize that because of the economic and competitive realities of the research environment, they may have to realign their research interests to coincide with available funding opportunities (more about this in future posts).

Of course, one way to locate funding opportunities is to simply ask colleagues for advice. Interestingly, people sometimes do not take advantage of the resources available next door or down the hall. Another way to locate funding opportunities is to investigate your colleagues and competitors. Who supplies their funding? A third way to locate funding opportunities is to determine what grants a particular agency has funded in the past—focus on the funding agency and search for “grants funded.” Such information is usually available on the website, although it make take some effort to find it.

NSF

The NIH Reporter provides vast amounts of information on NIH funded grants, including researcher and organization, text search, project details, and other filters. Likewise, the NSF offers Award Search with simple search and advanced search capabilities that include awardee information, program information, and other information such as keyword search functionality. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation maintains a Grant Archive that is searchable by keyword or grant number, status (active vs. closed), date awarded, and geographical location. From evaluating the grants funded in the past, it is often easy to ascertain if your research strategy could be seriously considered for funding by any given agency.

Many times, people have told me they are simply unfamiliar with the easiest places to search for funding opportunities or it just seems to be too hard to do a thorough search. If you are really stumped, take advantage of services offered by your research development office—people there should be able to give you new ideas about funding sources.

Below, I have listed some of the most recognizable funding search sources and a few specific funding opportunities. More information on these topics will be forthcoming in subsequent blog posts.