How to Seek Funding
Welcome to Grantwriting at UCI
Writing a grant proposal can be a daunting process even if you're experienced, but especially if you are a beginning grantwriter. The Office of Research Development can help you find opportunities and will review your proposal. Our partner organization, Sponsored Projects Administration, has official responsibility for processing grants and agreements and has some excellent tools this site will reference. The goal of this website is to introduce you to tools to identify funding sources, shape your idea into a competitive grant proposal, move it through UCI's internal review process, and submit it to the agency or foundation. Here's what to expect from the grant writing process and from this site.
Finding Funding
Once you develop a focus for your project, you'll need to fnd a funding source for it. Most funding comes to the University from three kinds of sources: government agencies, private foundations, or industry. The money arrives in various packages, each with different strings attached.
TYPES OF AWARD AGREEMENTS:
- Grants
An award of financial assistance to allow for the performance of certain work envisioned by the University or principal investigator. Indirect costs are assessed in accordance with University policy unless nonprofit agency policies impose a restriction. Proposal signed and award accepted by the Office of Research Administration/division of Sponsored Projects Administration (SPA). - Clinical Trials
Clinical Study Agreements; Specialized contracts for the clinical testing of biomedical drugs or devices in accordance with FDA regulations. A special indirect cost rate is available for sponsor-generated protocols provided sponsor accepted University's Standard Clinical Trial Agreement. Negotiated and executed by SPA. - Industry Research Contracts
Contracts and Agreements: Research Agreements and Contracts result in funds provided by a sponsor in exchange for the performance of a specific or detailed scope of work (often written by the sponsor); more like a purchasing activity of the sponsor. Typically incorporates terms related to expected financial and technical reports, specified financial and technical reports, specified period of performance, return of unexpended funds, ownership of intellectual property, publication rights, audit provisions. Negotiated and executed by SPA. - Federal/State Contracts
Contracts and Agreements: Federal/State research contracts provide funding in exchange for the performance of a specific or detailed scope of work (often written by the sponsor); more like a purchasing activity of the sponsor. Typically incorporates terms related to expected financial and technical reports, specified period of performance, return of unexpended funds, ownership of intellectual property, publication rights, audit provisions. Negotiated and executed by SPA. - Gifts
Gifts are an irrevocable donation of property without the intent or expectation of a material benefit accruing to the donor, such as performing services, providing goods or the transfer of information not yet shared with others. - Material Transfer Agreements
Material Transfer Agreements are contracts that provide for the transfer of research materials between two or more entities. MTAs usually address such issues as warranties related to the materials, intellectual property and liability. - Equipment Loan Agreements
Agreement providing for the loan of equipment to a University investigator without performance obligations to equipment manufacturer. Standard forms available from Storehouse are sent to Material and Risk Management for recording. If manufacturer expects the investigator to follow a protocol or other set instructions, or expects to be advised of or have access to improvements developed by University personnel, a research contract should be negotiated by SPA. - Sales and Service Agreements
Agreements providing for the performance of standard services for non-University sources by units having established recharge rates. Handled under the sales and service income guidelines at UCI PPM 703-14. - Consulting Agreements
A consultant is an indepedent contractor (i.e., not a University of California employee) hired to provide expert advice for short or intermittent time periods. Consultants do not perform a portion of the programmatic work. Material and Risk Management is responsible for negotiating and executing agreements to secure consulting services for UCI. - For tools and information on every type of award and agreement in this list visit the Sponsored Projects page.
GOVERNMENT AGENCIES
The Office of Research Development most often sees faculty clients who are preparing proposals to government agencies, such as NSF or NIH, which have very specific guidelines. For more information, see the Additional Links for funding sources.
FOUNDATIONS
In contrast, charitable foundations tend to offer guidelines that are much broader -- and briefer-- or none at all. Usually, a foundation must be approached carefully and permission sought even to submit a proposal. It is important to make contact with UCI Foundation Relations if you are considering an unsolicited proposal. For more information, see Foundation Development and Corporate Development.
INDUSTRY
The Office of Technology Alliances help faculty approach industry.
INTERNAL
UCI and the UC system offer awards for campus investigators. Here at UCI, small grants are available for conferences and workshops and faculty research for single and multi-investigator projects. For more information, see the main page for Internal Funding sources.
COLLABORATIONS
Groups of researchers can attract larger and more stable funding. See Research Units for existing units and the guidelines for forming a new one. To find shared research interests, consult the Faculty Profiles Database. For staff support for preliminary group formation, contact the Office of Research Development.
If you already have decided to apply to a particular funding agency, you're set. But if you don't know who can fund your idea, this website can give you the tools you need. We include links to two commercial funding databases, IRIS and SPIN. To help you navigate these sites, we've included Tips on Searching the Funding Databases. In addition, our office produces a Zotmail listserv of funding opportunities, Fundopp, which is available to faculty and staff on the UCI campus. To subscribe to Fundopp or to search the Fundopp archive, visit Funding Sources.
LIMITED SUBMISSIONS
If you subscribe to Fundopp, you'll discover that a growing number of proposals are for limited submissions, competitions for which the campus may submit only a determinate number of proposals. For limited competitions, the Vice Chancellor for Research, or, in some cases, a School or Department, will hold an internal competition to determine which proposal will go forth from the campus.
For more information about searching for funding, visit Research Development.
CONTACT THE PROGRAM OFFICER
Once you have identified a likely funding target, make every effort to contact the program officer. Do not call up with the idea of picking the program officer's brain. Have a prioritized list of specific questions designed to discover if your basic idea is "responsive" to the program. If you write a proposal that is "unresponsive," you will not get the money and you will have wasted time writing a proposal. If your proposal doesn't fit the agency's priorities, you can either work on adapting your idea to them, or search for a better funding source. If the program officer indicates your idea might be consistent with his or her program, then its time to start writing. Start early.
Writing the Proposal
If you are unsure what belongs in a proposal, start with the funding agency's guidelines. Follow them to the letter: agencies are becoming more and more particular about seeing that all their guidelines are strictly observed, not only for the big issues, like making sure that human and animal research subjects are protected, but also for formatting and characters per inch. Agency guidelines are organized according to topics that need to be addressed, and since reviewers must make sure that each proposal addresses each of these topics, it is usually helpful to organize the proposal around them.
More detailed information is available online to help you flesh out the project narrative. This site includes several excellent Guides to Proposal Writing, which cover the general areas you'll need to address in any proposal, such as federal agency and foundation proposals. In addition, the Office of Research Development offers grant proposal editing and writing services. For an overview of the application process and a checklist that you can print out for each proposal, see the Proposal Planning Outline.
Budgeting
Preparing a budget is integral to the process of developing a proposal and generally should be one of your first steps. After all, a grant proposal is really a description of how you plan to spend money. The total will determine the scope of work, and the breakdown of budget items will define how you plan specifically to invest the money. Make sure the budget items are allowable under the guidelines.
Keep in mind that many grants require cost sharing. Your chair and dean should be informed about the required cost share and often sign a letter of commitment, which is attached to the application. Most grant awards include a percentage for what is called "overhead" in industry, but in academia is called indirect costs, or facilities and administrative (F&A) costs. Whereas "direct costs" pay for project-specific expenses, indirect or F&A costs are in the budget to reimburse the university for maintaining laboratories, libraries, administrative staff, paying the electric bill, etc. The University has negotiated a standard F&A cost rate, currently hovering at roughly 50 percent -- which means that if you write a grant requesting $750,000, roughly $250,000 of that will go to F&A costs -- but many funding organizations will only pay up to a predetermined lesser rate. If all this sounds like a labyrinth, you will not be alone in developing a budget. Each School or Department has a Department Administrator or Management Service Officer (MSO) who has expertise in preparing budgets. This person can help you figure out such cost items as annual salary increases, fringe benefits, travel costs, and cost sharing, and will also know the latest information about special budgeting requirements that a School or Department may have.
Processing the Proposal
Before you can submit your proposal to a funding agency or organization, it must be processed by UCI's Sponsored Projects Administration (SPA), and, in many cases, by the Research Conduct Administration (RCA). Here's how the process works. SPA assigns each Department (or in some cases, an entire School) a contracts officer and a grants officer. This person reviews the proposal before it is sent to the agency and makes sure that the proposal conforms to the funding agency's guidelines, the project narrative and the budget say the same thing, the budget is accurate, and the project meets requirements for protection of research subjects and conflict of interest. Contact your contracts or grants officer early and let him/her know that you're working on the proposal. This person will help you to locate the appropriate UCI processing forms, including the Administrative Approval Form, which must accompany every application, and will alert you to potential stumbling blocks in the application process. As always, allow several days before the funding agency's deadline to get the proposal to the contracts or grants officer. These people are often working on a number of proposals for a given deadline, and won't have time to drop their other projects to work on a late proposal. In addition, proposals often need additional work -- say, to fine-tune the budget -- after the contracts or grants officer looks at them, so it is important to give yourself extra time for their review. In contrast, RCA is responsible for making sure that the proposal adheres to accepted scientific practice and applicable federal, state, UC, and UCI regulations for the responsible conduct of research. These regulations govern the protection of human subjects and animal subjects, the safe use of recombinant DNA, and conflict of interest. The links above provide comprehensive information about the definitions and University procedures in each of these divisions. In addition, RCA has developed online tutorials to inform researchers about these requirements and to enable them to certify their knowledge in these areas. Any combination of these four RCA divisions may be required to review the proposal for conformity to the regulations. If so, the proposal will be reviewed by a committee, such as one of the Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) for human subjects. Generally, these reviews may be performed after the proposal is submitted, so as to avoid an expenditure of time and effort for a proposal that isn't funded, but must be performed before the funding is awarded. For more information, visit the division web pages linked above.
