Funding Databases
UCI Fundopp
RGS Fundopp is an email notification service that announces funding opportunities from Federal agencies, private foundations, UC programs, internal competitions, and others. Hosted by Zotmail, Fundopp is available only to UCI employees. To sign up, visit the Zotmail homepage and include RGS-Fundopp as one of your listserv choices. Also on this page is a link to a searchable archive of past Fundopps.
Tips on Searching the IRIS and SPIN Databases
The Research Development site includes two databases for customized funding searches: the Illinois Researcher Information Service (IRIS) and the Sponsored Projects Information Network (SPIN). We recommend that you search for funding in both databases. Since each database catalogues different funding sources and uses different keywords to identify them.
IRIS
IRIS is a searchable grants database indexing approximately 8,000 opportunities and made available by the Office of Research to UCI's campus community.
Using an intuitive interface, IRIS has clear help text to aid first-time users. You can search on sponsors, deadlines, or keywords, among other terms, and you can sort by either sponsor or deadline. A nice feature if you're in a hurry: you can search on upcoming deadlines in particular categories. And you can sign up for the IRIS alert service to have opportunities in your discipline delivered to you.
Two tips: When specifying a keyword search (as opposed to the "Search All Categories" field), the IRIS Keyword Thesaurus is your best bet. Like the Library of Congress catalogues, IRIS uses precise keywords that may not be the same ones you would choose. If you don't use their terminology, you may miss some excellent funding sources.
Second, it's usually best not to narrow your search by too many restrictors at once, which can foreclose opportunities. For instance, if you are interested only in opportunities restricted to women, you should select "women" as a restrictor (in the "restrictions" box on the search home page), but if you are looking for other opportunities that are open to both genders as well, limiting your search to women may eliminate some excellent sources. We recommend choosing only the keywords or the keywords and the applicant type for most searches. In this case, IRIS also includes "women" as a keyword, so including that in your search would add opportunities rather than eliminating them. Finally, if your search turns up too few hits, you may have to broaden it (to search on "Chemistry" rather than "Organic Chemistry," for instance).
SPIN
SPIN is a searchable database that also indexes approximately 8,000 opportunities. These two databases include some overlapping opportunities, but others that differ. We recommend searching both.
Like IRIS, SPIN is a database that includes approximately 8,000 funding opportunities. In SPIN you can specify types of awards more closely in some cases. For example, SPIN allows you to specify travel funding as either domestic or foreign.
Choose "Advanced Search" for best results and, as with IRIS, use SPIN's keyword library. Although it's more time-consuming, if you scroll through all the keywords in a category like Social Sciences, for example, you will discover new keywords.
Please be aware that a SPIN search will time out after 30 minutes, so if you leave your search and come back to it, or if it takes you more than 30 minutes to scroll through a page of search results, you may be unable to access the rest of the results. We therefore recommend leaving the "Return Results" button set at 25 at a time.
Requesting a Custom Funding Search
UCI faculty or staff can request help or a customized search of IRIS or SPIN. Please provide a brief (one-paragraph) description of your project. Your results will be most satisfactory if you provide a list of keywords relevant to your research (e.g., neutrino physics, embryology, philosophy) along with your career status (e.g., assistant professor, postdoc, graduate student or non-U.S. citizen). (Career status is necessary because it is one of the terms by which funding agencies specify their applicant pools.) Email your search request to Research Development Editor Beth Riley at briley@uci.edu.
