Identify Funding Opportunities

Identifying new funding opportunities is a defining aspect of a grant facilitator’s role. This presents an ongoing challenge because funding opportunities come in all shapes and sizes (operating funds, salary awards, multi-year renewable, one-time), are announced at varying times (annually, ad hoc) and come from a variety of sources (local, provincial, national and international agencies, institutions, foundations, networks).

To do well as a grant facilitator, you must have a working knowledge of the researcher’s projects and understand what the researcher’s programs are (i.e. how all of the individual projects relate and what the bigger research picture is).

There are many ways to find out about new funding opportunities. To get started:

• ask the researcher you’re working with to provide you with a list of high priority funding agencies and opportunities to monitor
• get a sense of research priorities for each of the Tri-Council funding agencies (i.e., CIHR, NSERC, SSHRC)  by reading some guidelines on selecting the right agency
• explore the list of funding databases on the BC Environmental and Occupational Health Research Network website, for example, Community of Science

Use Technology to Save Time

Visiting the websites of relevant funding agencies and searching out new funding opportunities takes time. Many online tools have been developed to organize information and help you increase your efficiency at gathering information. Some applications even bring the funding information to you. For example, you can:

• subscribe to RSS feeds of funding organizations – see About RSS Feeds for more information
• subscribe to funding agency email lists (e.g.,  CIHR Funding News, NSERC News Releases, and NIH Subscriptions)
• use a social bookmarking manager (this site uses Delicious) to create a personalized list of funding agency websites – see About Social Bookmarking for information