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How to find sources of funding
Grants.gov
Grants.gov lists all current discretionary funding opportunities from 26 agencies of the United States government,
including the National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, Department of Energy, and many others
— in other words, all the most important public funders of research in the United States.
National Institutes of Health (NIH) Office of Extramural Research
www.grants.nih.gov/grants/oer.htm
24 of the Institutes and Centers (ICs) of the NIH make grant awards. Each has a different mission and focuses on a
particular disease area, organ system, or stage of life. Many research topics may be of interest to multiple ICs, so
make contact with different scientific program officials around NIH. Another way to determine which IC may be
interested in your idea is to use the Matchmaker tool in RePORTER (https://projectreporter.nih.gov/).
National Science Foundation (NSF)
http://www.nsf.gov/funding/
The NSF is an independent federal agency that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-
medical fields of science and engineering. NSF grants mainly go to individuals or small groups of investigators who
conduct research at universities. Other grants fund mid-scale research centers, instruments, and facilities that
serve researchers from many institutions. Still others fund national-scale facilities that are shared by the research
It's important to consider the percentage of grants that are
successfully funded, how closely your research topic fits the funding
source's mission, and what types of projects are typically successful
before deciding whether or not to apply.
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