The erosion of informal relationships with federal agencies has fundamentally altered how universities assess risk. When routine questions go unanswered and faculty fear surveillance of their collaborations, innovation suffers as researchers retreat from proposals and international partnerships.

Faculty exhaustion has deepened beyond pandemic-era stress into permanent strain. At teaching-intensive institutions, even small seed grants require navigating weeks of bureaucratic obstacles. In the humanities, major NEH program cuts and shifting donor priorities toward immediate impact have left experienced scholars struggling to sustain long-term critical work.

Counter intuitively, the most stable research leaders practice restraint rather than bold transformation. By refusing to outpace federal guidance and clearly communicating realistic institutional capacity, they’ve maintained steadier operations. Many institutions have abandoned broad, small-scale bridge funding for targeted faculty cohorts receiving intensive support, while others invest in shared proposal development resources and grant-writing consultants. Yet leaders agree the critical factor isn’t funding, it is morale.

Research administrators increasingly spend time interpreting political signals and strategically reframing work. Some train faculty to avoid problematic keywords, while others align messaging with phrases like “Make America Healthy Again”. This strategic repositioning reflects a troubling reality: research is becoming a political act.

The shift toward industry partnerships to replace declining federal support raises fundamental questions about who determines research priorities and why. Leaders fear that political instability and funding volatility will force institutions to abandon long-term research strategies for short-term survival, undermining the patient cultivation necessary for transformative scholarship.

Despite these challenges, cautious optimism persists. Cross-institutional humanities collaborations are emerging, STEM fields are organizing around AI initiatives, and some leaders embrace moral clarity by honestly communicating what they cannot support. Many focus on strengthening internal collaboration rather than external competition.

The post Mounting Pressures Facing University Research appeared first on Grant Training Center Blog.

Every donor is unique. For example, the institutes that comprise the National Institutes of Health (NIH) have dissimilar missions, and each has its own culture and requirements. The same can be said of the Department of Defense (DoD) and a myriad of other donors. Chasing the money rather than good ideas is a major flaw. Donors do not fund those focused on money, they fund those who are passionate about a good idea that aligns with their goals. Consequently, here are the five things you need to know about the language and culture of any donor before you write:

• What are the priorities of the donor? Each donor has its own priorities. For example, the National Science Foundation (NSF) encourages interdisciplinary programs and transformative ideas, and their definition and characteristics appear on their website. The DoD has five major foci: peacekeeping and war-fighting efforts, homeland security, evacuation and humanitarian causes. Each of these subcategories has their own mission and language. Turning to foundations, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation seeks to understand the world’s inequities. “Whether the challenge is low-yield crops in Africa or low graduation rates in Los Angeles, we listen and learn so we can identify pressing problems that get too little attention. Then we consider whether we can make a meaningful difference with our influence and our investments, whether it is a grant or a contract.” As this demonstrates, each donor clearly addresses their funding culture via their priorities.
• What is the mission of the donor? All donors have their own missions, which give us an understanding of how they visualize their funding priorities. For example, the NSF’s mission is: “To envision a nation that capitalizes on new concepts in science and engineering and provides global leadership in advancing research and education.” The NIH’s mission is: “To seek fundamental knowledge about the nature and behavior of living systems and the application of that knowledge to enhance health, lengthen life, and reduce illness and disability.” The Congressionally Directed Medical Research Program (CDMRP) run by the US Army Medical Research and Materiel Command of DoD has a similar emphasis to NIH, but its mission is to relate health research to the armed forces. Even though both NIH and DoD fund innovative ideas to combat disease, their missions and foci are different.
• What have donors funded in the past and why? One of the best insights into a funding agency is who and what they funded in the past and how much money they awarded. Federal donors list abstracts of winning proposals, along with the name of the funded institution and the Principal Investigator/Project Director. Accordingly, we can instantly know who they consider credible and their focus. Foundations will often describe what they have funded in the past on their website. Their 990pf tax forms will also show how their funds were allocated. The decisive question for you to ask is how your idea and their funding patterns match.
• What are the evaluation criteria for awarding grants? How grants are evaluated is one of the best indicators of the donor’s culture. This will include the evaluation criteria, who the evaluators are and how they are chosen. For some donors, such as NIH and NSF, reviewer selection is not a blind process as reviewers who are chosen have a deep understanding of the agency culture. In the case of foundations, it is more difficult to discern who the reviewers are, but one good way is to understand the vision of the leadership and the makeup of the board, which will be reflected in the reviewers chosen.
• What is the language of the donor? In many cases donors speak different “languages”, which are in the same family of languages. For example, the various US Department of Education Title Programs (e.g. Title III or Title VI), address different topics. Some address underrepresented groups, others international and others centers of excellence. Similarly, NSF directorates and NIH institutes have different missions, speak to different audiences, and address their vision of the world on their own terms. It is these “languages” that need to be understood, spoken, and incorporated into grants in order to give you the competitive edge.

In conclusion, submitting similar proposals to different donors is a fatal flaw. In order to succeed, we have to understand first and seek to be understood secondly.

The post 5 Things to Know About the Language and Culture of a Grant Donor appeared first on Grant Training Center Blog.

Read Previously Funded Proposals

Read previously funded proposals or abstracts for the agency to which you are submitting your grant. The National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Endowment for the Arts offer complete sample applications of previously funded proposals on their websites. Knowing what a good grant looks like helps in crafting your own grant application.

Read the Guidelines

Carefully read the application guidelines. They contain valuable information, including how to assemble your grant, the review criteria, types of activities supported, and all the necessary details that need to be followed in order to be funded. Many grants are eliminated during the first phase of the review process simply because the guidelines were not followed.

Know the Audience

Know the audience for whom you are writing. Are the reviewers specialists in your field, or are they familiar with your area, but not necessarily experts? Will panels be interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary? Will the funding agency send your proposal to individual outside experts or will the review take place in-house? Knowing your audience is key to knowing how to write your proposal.

Talk to the Program Officer

Contact and ask questions of the Program Officers at the funding agency. Often, they will review a two or three page concept paper of your proposal and give important advice. These should be submitted at least six weeks prior to the grant deadline, so that the staff will have time to reply, and you will have time to make any necessary alterations to your project.

Address Four Key Questions

A proposal should clearly answer four main questions: 1. What are you going to do? 2. How will you do it? 3. Why is it significant? 4. Why are you the right person to do it?

Plan the Work

A clear plan of work gives the readers a sense of where you have been, where you are now, and what you plan to accomplish. If you received previous grants to support your work- mention them. The fact that other funding agencies feel your work is important gives strength and credibility to your project.

Think Big

It is important to think big. Emphasize the forest, not just the trees. Speak of the larger themes and methodologies and avoid getting lost in the details. Clarity and conciseness are important. The reviewers should not have to dig through a mass of details or a discourse that seems impenetrable. At the same time, your grant needs to maintain a strong focus. Think carefully about what you can accomplish in the grant period. Your project should be ambitious, but it should not be unrealistic. If you promise too much, the reviewers will notice.

Convince the Reviewers

Explaining the significance of your grant is very important. Clearly articulate what contributions your work will make to scholarly and humanistic knowledge. Here is where it helps to think big. Explain why anyone should care about your project. Can it pass the “so what” test? What difference will it make? Don’t assume the self-evident importance of your research. There may be various projects similar to yours during a particular grant cycle. Why is yours better than the others? You need to explain why your project deserves the grant.

Showcase Your Expertise

Clearly demonstrate that you are especially qualified to do this project. Do you possess unique skills essential to conducting your project? Showcase your expertise. If you have a strong publication record, let the reviewers know. A strong track record on other projects offers good evidence that you will complete the work in a timely fashion. Explain what function your project is likely to play in your professional development.

Being Persistent is Important

Funding agencies have a limited amount of funds to support grant requests. Often, some excellent grants are not funded because of budgetary limitations. If your project does not receive funding, it is important to contact the Program Officer and find out why it was rejected. Knowing why you were not funded will help strengthen your application for the next deadline. Persistence is key.

No magic formulas exist, but a successful applicant knows that there are specific steps that need to be followed to increase your chances of being awarded the grant. The steps listed above will certainly help increase your probability of success.

The post How to Write a Successful Humanities Grant appeared first on Grant Training Center Blog.

The Winners

The two agencies that appear to be favored are NASA and the NSF, both of which received modest funding increases. NASA will get approximately $18 billion, an increase of $364 million. The big winner is the agency’s science mission, which will be $94 million dollars more than the 2014 level of $5.151 billion. The NSF, which had a rocky 2014, did receive an increase to $7.344 billion. In 2014, the Republican Representative Lamar Smith (R–TX), and chair of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, campaigned to demonstrate how the NSF’s $7 billion research agency is “wasting” taxpayer dollars on frivolous or low-priority projects, particularly in the social sciences. Nevertheless, the six NSF directorates will increase by $125 million to $5.93 billion and the education directorates will grow by $20 million to $866 million.

The Stagnant

The NIH will receive $30 billion, which is $150 million above the 2014 budget. Disappointed in the appropriation results, Carrie Wolinetz, president of United for Medical Research stated: “Sustained increases to the NIH budget are necessary to close our nation’s innovation deficit – the widening gap between the current medical research funding levels and the investment required to ensure the U.S. remains the world’s innovation leader.”

The Losers

On the other hand, the areas that seem to be in continued peril are the social sciences and humanities. The social sciences have increasingly been questioned by congress, and support for their research is waning across all agencies. Funding for the arts and humanities remains flat, often reflecting the sentiments of colleges and universities.

The Department of Energy’s Office of Science did not do well, since the budget remained flat. Further, the bill’s language makes the funding contingent upon management reforms.

The EPA fared the worst. The agency’s budget has been slashed by $2.2 billion – or 21 percent – since 2010, and is $60 million less than the $8.1 billion budget in 2014. The cuts mean that the EPA will need to reduce its staffing to the lowest levels since 1989.

To Be Determined

The 2015 Budget for the Department of Education focuses on six priorities: (1)increasing equity and opportunity for all students; (2) strengthening support for teachers and school leaders; (3)expanding high-quality preschool programs; (4) affordability and quality in post secondary education; (5) promoting educational innovation and improvement; and (6) improving school safety and climate. The Obama Administration is requesting $68.6 billion in discretionary appropriations for the Department of Education in 2015, an increase of $1.3 billion – or 1.9 percent – more than the 2014 budget.

Community colleges will do well in adult education, workforce development, and affordability of education, because these are the priorities of the President. Very recently, President Obama announced a plan for free community college education.

Moving Forward

Institutions and organizations seeking funding in 2015 will have to diversify their requests. The Federal Government will continue to be a major source for research, but foundation and corporate giving will increase their weight in the formula. Equally, partnerships between government and the private sector will be favored, due to cost-sharing for major research. In all cases, accountability and performance measurements will continue to increase in significance in the decision-making process.

The post 2015 Federal Budget: What it Means to You appeared first on Grant Training Center Blog.

State Funding

The major deciding factor on which grants need to be funded and which should be cut is primarily tied to the state budgets. How those budgets are allocated is often a very complex process, and involves the public, politicians, and experts in the field. After several layers of negotiations the various areas for funding are allocated. The solicitations are a result of this process.

Federal Funding

The federal funding for various types of research reflects a broad need to keep the United States at the forefront of discovery and transformative thinking. The process is similar to that of the states, but the decision making approach remains a mystery to the general public. It is difficult to know how the power is balanced between various interests when these funding decisions are made. There are influences from the public, congress, the executive branch, all the federal funding agencies, the private sector, and experts in the field. Of these, which carries the most weight? It may be that business interests are gaining more influence.

Foundation Funding

The recent New York Times article, Billionaires with Big Ideas are Privatizing American Science argues that American science, “…is increasingly becoming a private enterprise. In Washington, budget cuts have left the nation’s research complex reeling. Labs are closing. Scientists are being laid off. Projects are being put on the shelf, especially in the risky, freewheeling realm of basic research. Yet from Silicon Valley to Wall Street, science philanthropy is hot, as many of the richest Americans seek to reinvent themselves as patrons of social progress through science research” (New York Times, Broad, William, March 15, 2014). Of course, this influence on priorities is viewed with mixed reviews from the scientific community. Currently, public money still accounts for most of America’s best research, as well as its remarkable depth and diversity. What remains to be seen is how fast and by what magnitude the balance will shift from the public to the private sectors.

What is certain, however, is the attention that donors are giving to private funding. “Medical institutions are even training their own scientists and doctors in the art of soliciting money from grateful — and wealthy — patients. And Nature ran a lengthy article giving tips on how to ‘sell science’ and ‘woo philanthropists.’ They included practicing an ‘elevator pitch’ — a digest of research so compelling that it would seize a potential donor’s attention in the time between floors” (New York Times, Broad, William, March 2014).

Implications for You

Solicitations are now so complicated and diverse both in content and approach, that a multitude of offices and players are involved in this process. On an individual level in most major institutions, funding is directly related to tenure and promotion. The stage now requires innovative ideas that include political and economic spins.

Implications for the State in the South

The Southern state to which I was invited to assist will see changes, but they will not come easily. It will take time and extensive research to understand how best to teach students for a rapidly changing global economy, where work will involve adapting quickly to new realities. This understanding, however, will ensure that the money is best allocated for the interest of the students.

The post Grants: Who Decides Where the Money Goes appeared first on Grant Training Center Blog.

Signs of ever increasing magnitude are emerging which indicate the road back to the union between these disciplines is necessary, if not crucial. When it comes to the dialogue and funding choices from various donors in the public and private sectors, a clear pattern has begun to reveal itself. The two sides are being brought together again.

What is the Current State between the Sciences and the Humanities?

The current state between the two disciplines was best exemplified by a literary critic who attended my class. He was envious of the highly collaborative research of the scientists, while he spoke of his isolation as a scholar. He wished it were different, but the reward structure for him was a book and not a laboratory. Scientists receive funds to build their laboratories, while a humanities grant will pay moving expenses, a computer, and maybe some reassigned time.What constitutes a large grant in the humanities is only a fraction of an award in the sciences. Grants, although a good thing to have, are often not part of the academic success for those in the humanities, while they are a matter of life and death for the scientists.

New Frontiers Toward a Creative Union

Donors across the U.S. and Europe are encouraging the creation of new frontiers for research. Most recently:

• Opening up new dimensions in the collaborative efforts between physics and music was exemplified via the University of Chicago May 2014 Arts and Sciences Collaboration grant. “Xu and Peters, graduate students in physics, and Aharony, a graduate student in music, crushed and melted ice in the laboratory, recording the entire process. Next, they used their data and video to create a multimedia composition that incorporated live cello, interactive electronics, and video“ (News, University of Chicago, 06/06/2014, Erin Fuller and Steve Koppes).
• The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the Arts and Humanities Research Council of the United Kingdom (AHRC) are cooperating to advance research focused on the humanities and health and well-being. Applications for grants must support collaborative research projects that use humanities disciplines to better understand health, well-being, disability, medical science, and technology, or other aspects of the health sciences. Projects might investigate, for example, literary narratives of healing, the role of culture or cultural difference in health and medicine, or comparative cultural perspectives on disability.
• The National Library of Medicine (NLM), the world’s largest medical library and a component of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the NEH are forming a new partnership. They will collaborate to develop initiatives that bring together scholars, scientists, librarians, doctors and cultural heritage professionals from the humanities and biomedical communities in order to share expertise and develop new research agendas.
• The National Science Foundation (NSF) has at least 10 awards in collaboration with the humanities including languages, culture, and preservation of history and literature.
• The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities (TORCH) has been granted more than $560,000 by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation towards its forthcoming headline program, Humanities and Science: Two cultures or a shared enterprise?
• Numerous private donors such as the Von Humboldt, Simons, Sloan, and MacArthur foundations are also encouraging innovative approaches, respectively, in collaboration between the arts and sciences.
• The NEH is funding research that uses the knowledge and perspectives of the humanities and historical or philosophical methods to enhance understanding of science, technology, medicine, and the social sciences.

Bridging the self-imposed gap between humanities and the sciences is long overdue. Engineers build bridges to advance the human condition, and the humanities possess the understanding of the human condition to enhance the work of the scientists, whether in physics or medicine. When donors speak of transformation and innovation, we need to be prepared to answer the call with the disciplines that – for a moment in history – thought they could live without each other.

The post Science & Humanities: Should You Bridge the Divide? appeared first on Grant Training Center Blog.

Preservation

There are a multitude of funders that give substantial grants to preserve the cultures of the world. The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) has partnered with the National Science Foundation (NSF) to preserve the many endangered languages that are at the point of extinction. The Sustaining Cultural Heritage Collections program, an NEH initiative, helps cultural institutions preserve large and diverse holdings of humanities materials by funding preventive conservation measures.

Aside from the NEH, numerous foundations fund preservation efforts for all aspects of culture around the world. The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation recently contributed $10 million to the Detroit Institute of Arts, as part of an effort to keep the museum from having to sell off important works. In another example, the Getty Foundation’s MOSAIKON project seeks to preserve mosaics in the Middle East. Whether you want to collect oral histories or preserve sewing techniques, foundations and federal agencies have grants available.

Creation

Time is the necessary ingredient needed for the creative process in literature and works of art. The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) supports these efforts through various initiatives, one of which is Grants to Individuals. This program funds Creative Writing Fellowships that enables writers in several genres to spend time writing and researching their works.

Again, numerous foundations also provide funding for creation of works of art and culture. For instance, The Pew Center for Arts and Heritage announced their fellowships which included a classical music composer, folk singer, poet, and an architect. Likewise, the MacArthur Foundation supported a medieval historian, choreographer, playwright, and photographer among their fellows. No matter where your creative talents lie, funding is within your reach.

Exploration

Over the last decade, the trend of interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary teams has grown until it is now a requirement for many grants. An interdisciplinary exploration of the humanities along with science and medicine can answer questions of great concern to scientists and medical researchers. History, philosophy of science, ethics, literature, and art can inspire great strides in the sciences. Within these disciplines lie answers to the questions of who we are, what is right, how to think, and when to act.

In this vein, the NIH and NSF spotlight interdisciplinary importance in the study of science, medicine, and the humanities. Recently, the National Library of Medicine (NLM) and the NEH have developed a partnership. The goal is the formation of teams that include scholars, scientists, librarians, doctors, and cultural heritage professionals who will share experience and create innovative research strategies.

The grants and programs mentioned above are a small sample of funding available for humanities professionals. Abundant and filled with a plethora of fields, topics and possibilities in the humanities and arts can be found in many forms. As long as there are dreams, the funds are available to make these dreams come true. Let us dream the possible dream!

The post Dreaming the Possible Dream: 3 Areas of Humanities Funding appeared first on Grant Training Center Blog.