Use the resources on the Research Development Office's Find Funding section of the UNH Research Office web site
Find Funding contains a variety of resources, strategies, and search tools. Of special note:
- Read the Research Development and Grant Writing News, a monthly newsletter available to the UNH community that provides timely advice on how to compete successfully for research and education funding from federal agencies and from foundations.
- Use the tools and strategies for identifying and evaluating funding opportunities.
- Targeted or Limited Programs includes grant programs for Early Career Researchers and Scholars, postdoctoral fellows, graduate students, information about grant programs that are particularly well-suited to UNH, and links to resources re: international scholarship and other focused needs.
- Internal (UNH) Funding Opportunities includes campus-wide and college-specific programs available to faculty.
Sign up for the Research Development Office's agency and interest lists
Messages are sent to members of these email lists about noteworthy funding opportunities, changes in agencies' policies or submission requirements, availability of new tools and resources created by the Research Development Office staff, and opportunities to participate in agency planning and review activities. Messages also are sent about opportunities to collaborate around common interests, workshops and seminars, and relevant federal-level issues.
Sign up for any or all of the lists that are maintained for these topics and agencies:
- Arctic & Antarctic
- Arts & Humanities
- Big Data & Data Science
- Cybersecurity
- Food, Energy, & Water Systems
- Industry Collaborations
- International
- Mathematics & Statistics
- Neuroscience & Behavior
- STEM Education
- Sustainability
- Transportation
- DOD & DHS – US Dept. of Defense & US Dept. of Homeland Security
- DOE – US Dept. of Energy
- DOJ – Dept. of Justice
- DOL– Dept. of Labor
- EDA – Economic Development Administration
- EPA – Environmental Protection Agency
- NASA – National Aeronautics and Space Administration
- NIH – National Institutes of Health
- NIST – National Institute of Standards and Technology
- NOAA – National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
- NSF – National Science Foundation
- USDA – US Dept. of Agriculture
- US ED – US Dept. of Education
Search the SPIN database and set up automatic notifications
Find access information and user support for this funding opportunity database on the SPIN-SMARTS-GENIUS page.
Use sponsors’ web pages and free electronic mailing lists
Explore potential sponsors’ web sites to learn about their organizational goals, priorities and long-term plans, funding opportunities, and previously-funded projects.
- For sponsor profiles and other tools to find the right sponsor for your project, explore Sponsor Types in the Find Funding section of the UNH Research web page.
- To find other sponsors’ web sites, search with Google or other search engine.
Sign up for the sponsors’ email lists to be notified when the sponsor issues announcements of funding opportunities (e.g., NSF Update, NIH Funding Opportunities and Notices, USDA Updates, Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research Newsletter, etc.). Look for a link to register on the sponsors’ web sites (often at the bottom of the homepage).
Sign up for Candid's Philanthropy News Digest RFP Bulletin or Funding Watch newsletters - a free, weekly e-mail service that presents upcoming opportunities from grant-making foundations: https://candid.org/stay-up-to-date/newsletters.
Use grants.gov
Use SEARCH GRANTS to search for competitive grant opportunities from all the Federal grant- making agencies by keyword, category (area of interest), agency, and other identifying parameters.
Sign-up for custom email notifications to receive listings of funding opportunities by agency or category (area of interest): https://www.grants.gov/web/grants/manage-subscriptions.html.
GRANTS 101 provides an overview of the federal grants lifecyle as well as definitions of terms and policies.
Develop personal contacts
Faculty and other research personnel are great sources of information.
Find them in your own department, in your college, across the university, at professional meetings, and at other institutions.
Participate in professional meetings, consensus conferences, planning groups, and sponsor-hosted meetings.
Program officers and scientific staff from federal agencies and other sponsors often attend scientific meetings to keep up with the field and to meet researchers. If there’s an informal social gathering, attend it and mingle!
Other researchers’ web sites and c.v.'s also can yield interesting information.
Who has funded them in the past? Where do they have proposals pending now?
Check professional societies and look in professional journals
Many societies have grant programs, particularly for young investigators/early career scholars and to fund dissertation research for Ph.D. students.
Financial support for the research reported in journal articles usually is noted as a footnote to the title or in the “Acknowledgements” section just before the “References Cited” section.
Use on-line bulletin boards, university web sites, other grants-related search engines
Some particularly good ones can be found on the Free Search Tools & Bulletin Boards page of the UNH Research web site.
Use general-purpose web search engines
This type of search casts a broad net, with lots of incidental information to sort through, but often can be useful when other searches aren’t fruitful or to confirm that you’ve found most, if not all, of the viable sponsors for a given topic area.
- To search for all sponsors, enter a topic keyword, then semicolon, then “grants.”
- To find local/regional foundation sponsors, try using the keywords “Philanthropy + State” where “State” is the location of the organization for which you are seeking funding.
Caitlin Aspinall
Email: caitlin.aspinall@unh.edu
Phone: (603) 862-2497
Lynnette Hentges
Email: lynnette.hentges@unh.edu
Phone: (603) 862-2002
Michael Thompson
Email: michael.thompson@unh.edu
Phone: (603) 862-5255
Mark Milutinovich
Email: mark.milutinovich@unh.edu
Phone: (603) 862-5338
