Skip to Main Content

Finding Funding: Tools and Sources

Here you will find information on the grant process, where to find funding and grant opportunities, and further helpful resources when searching for and writing grants.

Find Grants and Funding Opportunities

Types of Funding Opportunities

There are many types of funding and grant opportunities available depending on your research. 

  • Grant: financial assistance/funding for a specific purpose, such as research, travel, running a conference, developing curriculum, instituting a consortium, or finishing a dissertation or book. Grants typically have reporting requirements, but they do not require deliverables or prototypes.
  • Fellowship: funding for an individual (typically a postdoc, graduate student, or professor) for either a field of research or a particular project, depending on the funding agency terms and conditions.
  • Research gift: funding for a general area of research, not a specific scope of work, and can not include requirements for reports, intellectual property rights, or any other quid pro quo.
  • Cooperative agreement: similar to grants, but the agency has more input into the type and progress of the research compared to a regular grant.
  • Contract: funding for a specific project (for federal contracts, it is classified as “acquisition” funding), and the contract may specify deliverables, milestones, and go/no go decision points. Payments may be based on the submission of deliverables.

Most common sources of funding:

  • Federal funding is typically awarded as a grant, cooperative agreement, contract, or fellowship.
  • Industry funding is typically awarded as a contract, although companies award grants, gifts, and fellowships.
  • State and other governmental funding is typically funded as grants or contracts.
  • Corporate foundation and non-profit organizations typically award grants, gifts, or fellowships. 
  • Individuals typically provide funding as gifts. 

Adapted from Grant Life Cycle | Research UC Berkeley. (n.d.). Retrieved October 20, 2023, from https://vcresearch.berkeley.edu/grant-life-cycle/overview

Search Tips

Constructing Searches

  1. Consider key terms: pick out terms in your topic that you think would pull up relevant resources. Also, consider synonyms or related terms you can try as well (for example the search term "attitudes" might have related terms of 'perceptions,' 'beliefs,' 'perspectives' etc.)
  2. Use punctuation: most search engines use a similar set of punctuation to help clarify your search terms. Here are some:
    • Quotations: using quotation marks allows you to search for an exact phrase i.e. "Teachers College" instead of 'Teachers' and 'College'.
    • Asterisk: adding an asterisk at the end of a word will capture related words with the same root or base, i.e. 'philosoph*' will capture philosophy, philosophical, philosopher etc.
    • Question mark: a question mark in a search has a similar function to an asterisk, but for only one letter i.e. 'wom?n' will capture woman and women.
  3. AND, OR, & NOT: these connectors called Boolean operators give the searcher more control over the search results. when using AND both terms searched must be present in a record. For OR either term can be present, and for NOT the chosen term must not be present.
  4. Use Advanced Search and Filters: to narrow your results even further, utilize fields that let you adjust the date range, resource type, location etc. If there is an 'Advanced Search' option, use that to manipulate these fields. Also, most search engines will show a "filter" area in the left column of the page once you have already searched--use this to narrow your results list.

 

Lincoln School Of Teachers College. Summer Demonstration. Recreation Program. (1939). Historical Photographs of Teachers College. Courtesy of Gottesman Libraries.