Volume 13, number 7: January 10, 2007

FUNDING TIPS

Customized Presentations on Identifying Funding Sources

One of the GrantSource Library's most useful services for faculty and staff is a customized hands-on group training session on how to identify potential funding sources for research, training, and other scholarly endeavors. As you begin planning your faculty retreats, professional development activities, or staff meetings for the new semester, we invite you to schedule a workshop for your department or research team. We will work with you to plan a session relevant to your funding needs and research interests.

In each session, a GrantSource Librarian demonstrates online resources that faculty and staff can use to identify funding opportunities in their discipline. Participants also learn how to set up a time-saving COS funding alert, conduct a personalized electronic search for targeted grant information, and find Carolina internal funding sources. Other topics include tips for conducting a funding search and an overview of resources available through the GrantSource Library.

Please contact us at gs@unc.edu or 919-962-3463 to discuss your needs and to schedule a workshop for your research team or department.

New Faculty—Update Your COS Profile to Carolina

If you are a new faculty member who had access to COS services at your previous institution, we invite you to update your COS expertise profile to indicate your new affiliation with UNC-Chapel Hill. You can easily update the “Current Positions” field of your COS profile by taking the following steps:

Login to your COS Workbench
Under “Manage Your Profile” in the left-hand column, select “Current Positions”
First, go to “Edit Current Positions” at the bottom

Hit the “Update” button
Change the status to “Previous Position” (or “Other Current Position”)
Hit “Update”

Then, complete the fields in “Add Current Position”, choosing Carolina from the picklist provided
Hit “Add”

If you have any difficulty in updating your COS expertise profile, please contact the GrantSource Library at (919) 962-3463.

Researching Awards Made

Learning about a funding agency's history of awards made offers a very good way to gain insight into its funding priorities and interests. Most federal funders, including the National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, Department of Defense, Department of Education, and Environmental Protection Agency, maintain awards made databases that are free for public use and can be accessed through the GrantSource Library website. An agency's awards made database provides information about specific research, projects, and investigators supported by that agency. This can help you to determine whether it is an appropriate sponsor for your work.

Some private funders also maintain online databases or lists of their awards made, but one of the best ways to identify foundation funding is by searching the Foundation Center 990 Finder . The 990 Finder provides links to IRS 990 tax returns, including awards made information. The Chronicle of Higher Education also provides some information about major private grants and awards to colleges and universities. The North Carolina Nonprofit Database permits searching for North Carolina state government awards made to nonprofits in the state. For access to these and other private and state awards made databases, click here.

For assistance in identifying awards made, contact the GrantSource Library at 962-3463.

Relations between Foundations and Institutions of Higher Education

Ray Bacchetti and Thomas Ehrlich, scholars at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, study the state of relations between foundations and education and how those relations can be strengthened. In their book, Reconnecting Education and Foundations: Turning Good Intentions into Educational Capital, published in October by Jossey-Bass, they offer the following advice:

“….at the center of our recommendations is the notion that foundations and colleges should reconnect, especially to improve teaching and learning, to create "educational capital." By this we mean the progressive accumulation of validated experience and knowledge about successful ideas and strategies in forms that a wide range of educators can use.

“To develop educational capital, grant proposals from colleges, as well as responses to those proposals from foundations, must:

• Build on what is known, grounding projects in previous successes.

• Identify non-negotiables, focusing on the essential elements so that adaptations to local conditions and customs do not undermine a project's logic.

• Incorporate staying power, determining any barriers to success for various types of institutions and designing ways to overcome them.

• Include assessment at every stage, rigorously using evaluative tools that are most appropriate to the project and its phases, and allowing for midcourse corrections as well as final judgments.

• Encourage interconnectedness, considering educational and administrative practices that complement the project's goals and creating links with them.”

Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Calls for Proposals

As announced in the December 2006 Research Support newsletter, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) no longer accepts unsolicited proposals on an ongoing basis for most of their interest areas. Instead, the foundation issues periodic calls for proposals soliciting ideas from the field.

To learn when RWJF releases new calls for proposals, you may:

RWJF will continue to accept unsolicited proposals for these interest areas: Building Human Capital, Pioneer, and Vulnerable Populations.

Grants for Innovative Use of Mobile Technology in Teaching

The Hewlett Packard (HP) Technology for Teaching Grant Initiative in Higher Education supports the innovative use of mobile technology in K-16 education. In 2007, HP will award approximately $10 million in cash and equipment, including reinvestment for selected projects previously funded. Based on the outcomes of the projects funded through this initiative in 2007, HP may offer some grant recipients additional, higher-value grants in 2008.

For the 2007 Grant Initiative in Higher Education, HP invites a teams consisting of at least two faculty members to propose a course redesign project for one or more undergraduate courses that are part of an accredited degree program in one or more of the following eligible disciplines:

mathematics
science (physical, environmental, computer)
engineering (electrical, computer, mechanical, environmental, materials)

For the Requests for Proposals, with specific details about the grant goals and application process, click here.

GrantSource Library Foundation Page Updated

The GrantSource Library has updated our Private, Community, and Corporate Foundations webpage. This page is designed to help Carolina researchers identify foundations that have funded UNC-Chapel Hill faculty and researchers in the past, as well as to provide information about locating private funding for your research.

Previous Funding Tips