External Funding Sources
Some of the best-known funding agencies for faculty-initiated
projects are listed below. Also see the Internal
Funding Sources page, past issues of the funding newsletter News,
Notes, and Deadlines, and the suggestions for
developing your own customized list of funding sources. For student opportunities,
see Student Research and Travel Support.
All Disciplines
Arts and Arts Education
Business and Health Administration
Education Science, Higher Education, and Teacher Education
Humanities and Humanities Education
Behavioral and Social Sciences, Health & Medicine, Health
Education
Biological & Physical Sciences, Engineering, Mathematics
International Studies and International Education
Links to other College and University Web Sites
All Disciplines
- The American Fellowship Program of the American
Association of University Women provides support to females scholars
who are U.S. citizens or permanent residents. Grants are available
for dissertation completion, postdoctoral research leave, and short-term
support for the final stages of manuscript preparation.
- Fulbright programs are administered by a number of different organizations.
The Council for the International Exchange of Scholars (CIES) administers
programs for college faculty and professionals. The Institute for International
Education (IIE) administers programs for students. The U.S. Department
of Education funds programs for faculty seminars and for curriculum development.
CIES's Fulbright
Program for U.S. Scholars provides support for international travel,
lecturing, and research. Short-term and academic-year programs are available.
The Fulbright
Program for non-U.S. Scholars allows U.S. institutions to host visiting
faculty for lecturing and research. The Fulbright
Language Teaching Assistant Program brings young graduates of foreign
universities to U.S. campuses to act as language teaching assistants.
- The Scholarly
Societies Project is compiled by the University of Waterloo Library
and provides links to scholarly society web pages and their journals
and other publications. These scholarly societies often provide
information about grants, fellowships, and scholarships pertaining
to their discipline, which provides a good starting point for finding
funding opportunities.
- Grants.gov is
a good place to search for opportunities supported by various agencies
of the federal government. You can also set up search terms and have
notifications and updates e-mailed to you automatically.
- Through its program of Diversity Fellowships, the Ford
Foundation seeks to increase the diversity of the nation’s college
and university faculties by increasing their ethnic and racial diversity,
to maximize the educational benefits of diversity, and to increase
the number of professors who can and will use diversity as a resource
for enriching the education of all students. To do this, they offer
a one year stipend of $40,000 for a postdoctoral fellowship
Arts and Arts Education
- The National
Endowment for the Arts (NEA) provides support for projects in
arts education, music, theatre, visual arts, literature (creative
writing, translation, and education), and other fields of the arts.
- The Virginia
Commission for the Arts (VCA) provides support for projects in
the arts and arts education, with particular emphasis on increasing
access to high quality arts for all Virginians.
Business and Health Care Administration
- The Virginia Health
Care Foundation makes grants for projects that will develop or
expand patient capacity; establish a broader scope of services; create
local systems of care; or strengthen the infrastructure of health
safety net providers. It will not fund research projects that do
not have a direct primary care service component.
Education Science, Higher Education, and Teacher
Education
- The U.S. Department of Education provides
funding to strengthen teaching and learning in colleges and other postsecondary
institutions as well as providing support for rehabilitation, adult education,
research and development, statistics, and assessment.
- The Fund
for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education supports innovative
grants and cooperative agreements to improve post-secondary education.
It supports reforms, innovations, and significant improvements
of postsecondary education that respond to problems of national
significance and serve as national models.
- The National
Academy of Education/Spencer Fellowship funds grant proposals
from early career scholars whose research projects are related to
education. This funding opportunity is a non-residential fellowship
open to all disciplines. They also aid in the development of the
recipients’ careers through professional development activities involving
National Academy of Education members.
- The National
Research Center for the First Year Experience and Students in Transition administers
the Paul
P. Fidler Research Grant which accepts proposals addressing students
of color, community colleges, advising, transfer and articulation,
administrative policies, and other issues related to college student
transitions.
- The Braitmayer Foundation is
a family-run foundation interested in the preparation of and professional
development opportunities for teachers, particularly those which encourage
people of high ability and diverse background to enter and remain in
K-12 teaching. The foundation provides two levels of support: grants
for up to $10,000 and grants for up to $35,000. They offer a summer and
fall grant cycle with deadlines of June 1st and November 15th, respectively.
Humanities and Humanities Education
- The National Endowment
for the Humanities is an independent governmental agency that
supports research, education, preservation and access to cultural
resources, and public programs in the humanities. Examples of the
types of grants available are highlighted below:
- Preservation
Assistance Grants for Smaller Institutions help small and
mid-sized institutions improve their ability to preserve and
care for their humanities collections. These may include special
collections of books and journals, archives and manuscripts,
prints and photographs, moving images, sound recordings, architectural
and cartographic records, decorative and fine arts, textiles,
archaeological and ethnographic artifacts, furniture, and historical
objects.
- Digital
Humanities Start-Up Grants are designed to encourage innovations
in the digital humanities. By awarding relatively low-dollar
grants during the planning stages, the goal is to identify projects
that are particularly innovative and have the potential to make
a positive impact on the humanities.
- Teaching
Development Fellowships support college and university teachers
pursuing research aimed specifically at deepening their core
knowledge in the humanities to improve their undergraduate teaching.
- Summer
Stipends support individuals pursuing advanced research that
is of value to scholars and general audiences in the humanities.
Summer Stipends support full-time work on a humanities project
for a period of two months.
- Fellowships support
individuals pursuing advanced research that is of value to scholars
and general audiences in the humanities. Fellowships support full-time
work on a humanities project for a period of six-twelve months.
- The American Council of
Learned Societies (ACLS) provides fellowships and funding for
research in the humanities and social sciences. Social science projects
must employ a predominantly humanistic approach. Humanities include
American studies; anthropology; archaeology; art and architectural
history; classics; economics; film; geography; history; languages
and literatures; legal studies; linguistics; musicology; philosophy;
political science; psychology; religious studies; rhetoric, communication,
and media studies; science, technology, and medicine studies; sociology;
and theater, dance, and performance studies.
- The Virginia
Foundation for the Humanities funds grant proposals that seek
to develop public humanities programs which increase public understanding
of important issues and enrich the cultural life of Virginia.
- The American Philosophical Society promotes
useful knowledge in the sciences and humanities through excellence in
scholarly research, professional meetings, publications, library resources,
and community outreach. They offer several grants to individuals:
- Franklin Research
Grants are designed to help meet the costs of travel to libraries
and archives for research purposes; the purchase of microfilm,
photocopies, or equivalent research materials; the costs associated
with fieldwork; or laboratory research expenses.
- Phillips Fund
Grant for Native American Research provides grants for research
in Native American linguistics, ethnohistory, and the history
of studies of Native Americans, in the continental United States
and Canada.
- Sabbatical
Fellowships in the Humanities and Social Sciences is open
to mid-career faculty of universities and 4-year colleges in
the United States who have been granted a sabbatical/research
leave, but for whom financial support from the home institution
is available for only part of the year.
- Library Resident
Research Fellowship offers short-term residential fellowships
for conducting research in The American Philosophical Society
Library collections near Independence Hall in Philadelphia.
- Teaching
American History Grant program is designed to raise student achievement
by improving teachers' knowledge and understanding of and appreciation
for traditional U.S. history. Grants are used to improve the quality
of history instruction by supporting professional development for
teachers of American history.
Behavioral and Social Sciences, Health & Medicine,
Health Education
- The Commonwealth Health Research
Board (CHRB) provides grants for human health research, especially
for those efforts that have the potential of maximizing human health
benefits for citizens of the Commonwealth. A request for up to two
years of funding is available with a maximum of $100,000 per year.
- The National Institutes
of Health (NIH) is the primary government funding agency for
behavioral and biomedical research. They fund research on many different
aspects of human health including biological effects of environmental
contaminants, disease, mental, physical and addictive disorders,
and human growth and development. NIH uses activity
codes (e.g. R01, R43, etc.) to differentiate the wide variety
of research-related programs they support. Examples of some of the
activity codes and types of grants available are highlighted below:
- R03 provides
limited funding for a short period of time to support a variety of
types of projects, including: pilot or feasibility studies, collection
of preliminary data, secondary analysis of existing data, small,
self-contained research projects, development of new research technology,
etc.
- R15 provide
support for high quality conferences/scientific meetings that are
relevant to NIH's scientific mission and to the public health.
- R25 education
projects are used in a wide variety of ways to promote an appreciation
for and interest in biomedical research, provide additional training
in specific areas, and/or to develop ways to disseminate scientific
discovery into public health and community applications.
- Understanding
and Promoting Health Literacy (R03) Program encourages
empirical research on health literacy concepts. Health
literacy is defined as the degree to which individuals have
the capacity to obtain, process, and understand basic health
information and services needed to make appropriate health
decisions.
- The Bridges
to the Baccalaureate Program sponsored by the National
Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS) accepts grant
applications from colleges/universities that offer a baccalaureate
degree in biomedical and behavioral sciences in conjunction with
a community college that offers associate degrees. The goal of
this program is to promote inter-institutional partnerships to
increase the number of minority students graduating with more
advanced degrees in biomedical and behavioral sciences.
- The National Science Foundation is
a governmental funding agency that funds research and education in most
fields of science and engineering. They also provide funding opportunities
for undergraduate students.
- The Virginia Academy
of the Sciences funds small research projects (<$1250) and
research in cancer (<$1500) or chemistry (<$10,000). Must
be a member of the academy for at least six months before you are
eligible to apply.
- The U.S. Department of Defense
(DoD) provides the military forces needed to deter war and protect
the security of the United States through five major areas: peacekeeping
and war-fighting efforts, Homeland Security, evacuation and humanitarian
causes. Examples of the types of grants available are highlighted
below:
- Defense
University Research Instrumentation Program (DURIP) is designed
to improve the capabilities of U.S. institutions of higher education
to conduct research and to educate scientists and engineers in
areas important to national defense, by providing funds for the
acquisition of research equipment.
Biological & Physical Sciences, Engineering,
Mathematics
- The National Science Foundation is
a governmental funding agency that funds research and education in most
fields of science and engineering. They also provide funding opportunities
for undergraduate students.
- The National Institutes
of Health (NIH) is the primary government funding agency for
medical research. They fund research on many different aspects of
human health including biological effects of environmental contaminants,
disease, mental, physical, and addictive disorders, and human growth
and development (see additional information under behavioral and
biomedical sciences).
- The Virginia Academy
of the Sciences funds small research projects (<$1250) and
research in cancer (<$1500) or chemistry (<$10,000). Must
be a member of the academy for at least six months before you are
eligible to apply.
- The AAAS
Science and Technology Policy Fellowship accepts applications
September – December 20th of each year from individuals interested
in bridging the gap between federal decision-makers and science
professionals interested in public policy. This fellowship allows
the applicant to provide scientific expertise to lawmakers dealing
with complex scientific and technical issues. In turn, the applicant
receives a unique public-policy learning experience.
International Studies and
International Education
- The
International Education Programs Service is administered by the
Office of Postsecondary Education in the U.S. Department of Education.
This service performs planning, policy development, and grant administration
functions for the international education programs. The International
Education and Foreign Language Studies domestic programs are designed
to strengthen the capability and performance of American education
in foreign languages and in area and international studies.
- Fulbright-Hays Training
Grants--Faculty Research Abroad is designed to contribute
to the development and improvement of modern foreign language
and area studies in the U.S. by providing opportunities for scholars
to conduct research abroad.
- Fulbright-Hays Seminars
Abroad--Bilateral Projects provides short-term study and
travel seminars abroad for U.S. educators in the social sciences
and humanities for the purpose of improving their understanding
and knowledge of the peoples and cultures of other countries.
- Fulbright-Hays Training
Grants--Group Projects Abroad provides grants to support
overseas projects in training, research, and curriculum development
in modern foreign languages and area studies for teachers, students,
and faculty engaged in a common endeavor. Projects may include
short-term seminars, curriculum development, group research or
study, or advanced intensive language programs.
- International Research
and Studies provides a single grant to assist a consortium
of colleges and universities to establish an institute designed
to increase the representation of minorities in international
services, including private international voluntary organizations
and the U.S. Foreign Service.
- The Vietnam Education Foundation/US
Faculty Scholars Program was founded by the US to promote the
bilateral relationship between Vietnam and the US through educational
exchange. The US Faculty
Scholars Program allows for a faculty member to teach in English
in Vietnamese universities on-site or via real-time video-conferencing
from the US for one or two semesters.
Links to other College and University Funding
Web Sites
