Funding Resources

Undergraduate Funding Opportunities

(Get the undergraduate research office to help with this)

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Graduate Funding Opportunities

Table of grad student grant opportunities:

Link

Guidebook for grant proposal writing:

The Grant Application Writer’s Workbook

Notes on Grant Opportunities:

National Science Foundation

Consider NSF first (separate Sociocultural anth branch)

⁃ GRFP award. Grad student research funding. First year of grad school.

⁃ 30k/year for 5 years of funding. You don’t have to teach. Gives you time to do research and not worry about extra work.

⁃ You can also extend this on top of other fellowships.

⁃ First 5 years on NSF, then two on school’s fellowship or whatever

⁃ Also, since I will only be in the MSc for 9 months, that DOES NOT COUNT as a year in grad school. That is, I can apply during PhD

⁃ Usually goes to underrepresented, play up first generation, homeless.

⁃ Might come with travel funds.

⁃ Not for research it’s for you.

-NSF Dissertation improvement Grant (DIG)

⁃ 2nd 3rd, 4th year, when you have a dissertation project in mind.

⁃ To fund the research itself, not you as a person.

⁃ 15-30k.

⁃ Describe research project, funded based on how well it fits into anth, how interesting it is.

⁃ NSF in general cares about the intellectual merit and broader impact.

⁃ How is it adding to the field

⁃ Outreach to community, minorities, etc. If you build into the project that you’re going to do outreach, dissemination of results into the community, science festivals, whatever AND that you already have done community outreach so they know you’re the type of person to do that.

Winner Gren

Anth focused foundation, supports cultural anthropologists specifically a lot.

⁃ Have lots of reservations. Originally funded with money from Nazis, arms deals from WWII.

⁃ They do a lot of work to undo disparities now, have clearly moved on.

⁃ A lot don’t apply to it (more openings!)

⁃ A lot of people get funding.

National Insititue of Health

medical and public health all of them, huge pool of applicants. Very competitive. Use anth advantage of being unique and different than typical doctors and chemists and shit.

⁃ 30k personal funding

⁃ Different funds for MDs vs PhDs, Post-docs vs Doc students.

⁃ Rare for Anth students, but eh.

⁃ There is a bible for how to write these, it’s good to look at and learn “grantsmanship”

⁃ Clever at convincing people that your work is really important, easy to pick out information that reviewers can easily pick out with bleary eyes.

⁃ There’s a database of every winner, how much they got, and their applications. You can check what kind of abstract they like, etc.

The Lewis & Clark Foundation

⁃ 5k for fieldwork, exploratory research.

⁃ Arch, anth, bio, geo, etc.

⁃ Great for a small exploratory, experimental fieldwork.

⁃ Cool, unique.

National Geographic

⁃ 30-70k depending on which one you go for

⁃ Migration specifically

⁃ Different sup topics.

⁃ Documenting human migrations with storytelling and education.

Graduate Women in Science

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General Notes

(Check out Immigrant study foundations for a niche topic)

If you go to conferences in specific fields, they might have forums or sections for grants.

Most universities have. A grant office. Should probably be able to reach out to them as a grad student. UCSD’s is good at finding private grants that fit your topic.

Might be able to hop onto the funding of your advisor.

In anth, we don’t often have big labs with lots of funding, we have lots of students doing independent things, so it’s on you to find your own grants.

⁃ Fieldwork

⁃ Translations

⁃ Samples

⁃ Housing

You can minimize this all in certain ways, but…

Internal grants within department or university that can get you pilot data in order to write BETTER data for those other applications.

NIH and NSF are government, the rest are private foundations.

⁃ Gov has most money, most prestige, hard to get, everyone knows about them.

⁃ They all have a particular agenda.

⁃ Private foundations are easier to get, don’t have as much money. Uniquely tailored topics that you can fit into.

Other tips

⁃ Expect 9 months to a year between application to actually getting the funds.

⁃ Prepare a year in advance

⁃ Most people don’t get it the first time, it’s very hard, you need to be stellar and have really cool projects.

⁃ Some agencies have limits on how many times you can try. Double check each time because they change frequently.

⁃ The sooner you can start writing grants in your grad career, the better.

⁃ Start thinking in 2nd or 3rd year of phd program. Often a grant writing course in grad programs.

⁃ Improve “grantsmanship”

⁃ Know you’ll get rejected a LOT, and often for conflicting and frustrating reasons.

⁃ Everyone has program officers that you can call up and ask questions of.

⁃ Does my project match the scope of the program, is it better fit at other institutes, what are popularly getting funded here?

⁃ Tip: You never want your aims to be dependent on each other. If the first aim fails then the second aim can’t work. Have to be independent.

⁃ If only your mentor is able to apply, you can offer to write it and then have them sign it and submit it on your behalf, and then you’ll be a co-author or co-PI.

⁃ You can hook up with a bigger team that’s working on a big project, you can find a way to help them and add your own chunk to it, then you can explore the data however you want and carve it up for yourself.