Grantsmanship on the Go

Activities that take an hour or less that will better position you for pursuing grants 

Finding Funding

• Watch "Out of Many, One: Funding the Right Funding Opportunity"
  • In this session, you will learn strategies to find and evaluate funding opportunities, with a focus on the grants.gov and SPIN databases. You will also learn where grant opportunities are listed, tips for refining your searches, how to pinpoint the opportunities that are most relevant to you, and how to assess whether they are a good fit. (30 minutes)
• Sign up for updates from federal funding agencies of interest with our Federal Agency Newsletter Registration Guide 
• Log in to SPIN and set up a funding opportunity alert
  • Or, log in to SPIN and see the results of pre-set searches in key research areas
    • After logging into InfoEd, select SPIN from the left hand menu
    • Click 'Saved Searches' on the top black menu bar
    • From the menu that pops down, select 'Public Searches'
    • Find the topic you would like to see funding opportunities for and click the box with arrow icon under the 'Run' column to run that saved search 
      • Didn't find a topic you wanted? Try running your own search or request a search
• Create custom email notifications on Grants.gov

  • Receive notifications for new opportunities matching saved search criteria that you can customize

Grant Strategy

• NEW: Learn about NIH and NSF Supplements as way to obtain more funding for your research without writing a full new proposal
• Watch the Grantseeking at Brown webinars directed for faculty in the Humanities or Social Sciences
• Browse the website of a federal grant making agency or foundation whose priorities align with yours; familiarize yourself with their funding opportunities, the program managers and their areas of research interest. Read a few of their White Papers
• Search for funded grants in your discipline

  • NSF Awards search

  • NIH Reporter

  • NEH Award Search

  • NEA Award Search

  • Many others at USAspending.gov

• Find Collaborators: fill out this request form to receive a listing of potential collaborators customized to meet your search criteria
• Familiarize yourself with the differences between NSF and NIH proposal submissions.
• Use this quick table with federal funding agency success rates to give you a wide perspective on proposal competitiveness: What are my chances?
• Read some grant strategy articles from the monthly Research Development & Grant Writing News

  • A few examples to start with:

    • Confessions of a Grumpy Reviewer

    • Funding Strategies for New Faculty in the Humanities

    • How to Analyze a DARPA BAA

    • In Proposals, Less is Often More

  • Looking for articles on a specific funding agency or topic? For a complete list of previous articles, go to http://academicresearchgrants.com/newsletter-articles/ and search using CTRL-F (the Brown link has every issue available from present day back to July 2012)

• Listen to a few episodes from DARPA’s podcast series, "Voices from DARPA"
  • This podcast offers a revealing and informative window on the minds of the Agency's program managers. In each episode, a program manager from one of DARPA’s six technical offices—Biological Technologies, Defense Sciences, Information Innovation, Microsystems Technology, Strategic Technology, and Tactical Technology—will discuss in informal and personal terms why they are at DARPA and what they are up to.
• Have an NIH institute or center of interest? Read the list of their Approved Concepts

  • These indicate upcoming areas of focus for funding opportunities

• Find resources for the DARPA Young Faculty Award program
• Register for upcoming events of interest
  • Gordon Research Seminar on Inorganic Chemistry in Newport - May 28-29, 2022
  • 2022 American Sociological Association Annual Meeting - August 5-9, 2022
  • 2022 National Humanities Conference - November 10-13, 2022
• View past webinars from funding agencies and beyond

  • NSF webinars/webcasts

  • NSF Policy Outreach Resource Center: on-demand webcasts, videos and presentations from past events

  • Official YouTube channel for the NSF

  • NIH VideoCast: recordings of past events, both scientific and policy related (also available on YouTube)

  • 2021 NIH Virtual Seminar Presentation Materials

  • 2020 NIH Virtual Seminar Presentation Materials

  • NEA Webinar Archive

  • Official YouTube channel for the NEH

  • IMLS Webinar Archive

  • National Lab Day Webinar Series, hosted by UNH and U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) national laboratories

  • 2020 online event series from The AAAS Research Competitiveness Program (RCP)

    • Lessons Learned from 10,000 Proposal Reviews: Top Reviewer Criticisms and How to Avoid Them (1 hr 20 minutes)

    • Rebooting Your Research Program (1 hour)

    • Paper Authorship Requirements and Responsibilities: A Decision Tree (33 minutes)

Proposal Documents

• Update your CV and/or biosketch

  • Be ready for the next time you pursue a grant opportunity

• Try out the new SciENcv biosketch generating tool for NSF, NIH, and IES formatted biosketches

  • This is now required by NSF

• Sign up for an ORCID iD

Brown Resources/Tasks

• Sign up for Research Notes, a bi-monthly newsletter from the Office of the VP for Research with upcoming events, funding opportunities, important agency updates, and more.
• Log in to Workday Learning to search for and watch a webinar targeted to a particular professional skill

  • A few examples to start with:

    • Writing Speeches

    • Creating Great First Impressions

    • Data Visualization: Storytelling

    • Managing Virtual Teams

• Brown Faculty: check out the VIVO FAQs and use these tips to update your VIVO profile

  • A robust VIVO profile makes you more visible to potential collaborators and students at Brown and beyond

• Browse the Annenberg Institute’s list of K-12 outreach programs and the Engaged Scholarship and Broader Impacts Working group resources