Volume 14, Number 3: September 12, 2007
FUNDING TIPS
Rockefeller Announces Climate Change Resilience Initiative
The Rockefeller Foundation announced a $70 million commitment to the new five-year Initiative on Climate Change Resilience. The initiative seeks to build the resilience of communities likely to be hardest hit by climate change by helping the communities to manage and plan for the inevitable effects of global warming.
The initiative will involve other stakeholders, including governments, funders, donors, nonprofits, and private-sector groups. In particular, the initiative will focus on the poor, who will likely be most affected by the ramifications of climate change, including flooding, drought, severe storms, and the spread of infectious diseases. One component of the initiative will focus on raising awareness in the United States and exploring relevant solutions. This will require developing a shared agenda between the groups working on climate change mitigation and those working on building resilience to climate change. Other components will target Asia and areas of Africa.
The Rockefeller Foundation will begin making grants related to these components of the Climate Change Resilience Initiative during the next few months.
Writing a Successful Letter of Inquiry
Many sponsors require or recommend that potential applicants submit letters of intent (LOI) or letters of inquiry before submitting full proposals. Sometimes this is simply to gauge the number of proposals to be expected and to plan for the review process. More often, however, the LOI enables the sponsor to conduct an initial review and select those proposals most likely to fit their funding priorities.
As an applicant, your challenge is to write an LOI that will garner an invitation to submit a proposal to the sponsor. For some excellent tips of how to write a successful LOI from the About.com article "The Rules of Engagement: How to Make Your Letter of Inquiry a Winner" by Joanne Fritz, click here.
New to Carolina? Move Your COS Faculty Expertise Profile Too
If you are a new faculty member or researcher coming from another COS member university, you can easily transfer your existing COS expertise profile to Carolina 's COS faculty expertise database. Just log in to your COS Workbench, edit your "Current Position" to indicate your new appointment, and update your previous appointment to include its ending date. Once the changes have been saved, your profile will display your new affiliation. Welcome to Carolina! For assistance in updating your COS Faculty Expertise Profile, please contact the GrantSource Library for an individual consultation or attend one of our workshops for faculty.
Quality/Equality Program Area at RWJ Foundation
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's (RWJF) work in health disparities is an integral part of their initiative to improve the quality of health care for all Americans. Through their Quality/Equality program area, RWJF will help communities set and achieve ambitious goals to improve the quality of care in ways that matter to all patients and their families, and in particular to patients from specific racial and ethnic backgrounds who often experience lower-quality care.
To find out more about this program area, visit the RWJF web site where you will find the following:
- an overview of RWJF's strategy;
- current funding opportunities;
- information on active grants and programs;
- grantee profiles;
- research and publications resulting from the program area's work; and
- news releases, features and commentaries.
Click here to register for email alerts about news and calls for proposals from Quality/Equality and other program areas.
Identifying Funding Sources for Your Research
Faculty, staff, and postdoctoral scholars looking for funding should start with Carolina's GrantSource Library, part of the Office of Information and Communications. Electronic resources such as COS, Sponsored Programs Information Network (SPIN), and other funding opportunities databases are linked from the library's web site. CD-ROMs, print directories, and guides to proposal writing are available at the library in 307 Bynum Hall. Library staff are available for consultations and instruction in the best use of these tools.
For help on your funding search from the GrantSource Library, schedule an individual consultation in your office or a group demonstration for your department, center, or institute. To schedule an appointment, contact the GrantSource Library at 962-3463.