Funding for research has grown in leaps and bounds over the past few years, and it’s expected to keep climbing. But when you’re on the funding application side of the research lifecycle, even that good news doesn’t alleviate the burden of identifying and analyzing funding opportunities and securing the funding your organization needs.
After all, with funding growing, competition for that funding is at an all-time high.
What are some of the best strategies for finding and securing funding opportunities? Let’s take a closer look.
Finding funding opportunities
More than $35 billion in funding is submitted annually through Cayuse, with a 99% success rate for first-time submissions to Grants.gov. With the help of Cayuse Fund Finder, organizations can quickly and easily secure the funding they need.
Fund Finder provides more than 22,000 funding opportunities, with a combined worth of over $70 billion. It’s 100% paperless and integrates with ORCID, InfoReady Review, Proposals, and Sponsored Projects. Research teams can search the database and get automatic updates on funding opportunities across government, corporate, and foundation support.
As remarked by Mary Lou Marino, Development Director for the Office of Research Development at Kansas State University, “I love the functionality of Fund Finder. I have 14 different searches for funding set up within Fund Finder. On Grants.gov, I can only have one search.”
Applying for funding
Once you’ve identified potential sponsors, it’s important to set the right strategy for your applications.
Here are some of the most important strategies for applying for funding:
- Start early. Applications can be complex, requiring a variety of elements, such as signatures, reports, letters of support, registering accounts, and more. Getting started early ensures you don’t make last-minute mistakes or miss key deadlines. It also helps to ensure you have a plan and the right team in place.
- Review the criteria and plan your application before starting. Map out how you’re going to structure the application, ensure you have a guide for style and grammar, and document all the unique requirements from the specific funder. Like reading through an entire recipe before you start cooking, planning out your application minimizes errors that could get your proposal rejected.
- Familiarize your team with the application requirements. Make sure everyone involved in the proposal process is familiar with every requirement. Find a way to centralize communication, reports, and more so everyone is on the same page.
- Leverage technology to make the process easier. Innovative digital solutions help teams catch or prevent errors, speed up the process, and stay on track.
Leveraging a centralized platform
When it comes to funding, every detail matters. A centralized, automated hub for research activities can ensure your proposal has the best chance of success. Here’s how a software solution can support your team:
- A single source of truth. Your whole team is looking at the same copy of everything. No more time wasted on redundancy, errors, or needless searches for the resources you need.
- Improved collaboration. Digital, cloud-based solutions break down workflow siloes and ensure effective collaboration among your team.
- Faster workflows. With digitized records and proposals, your team can coordinate tasks in real-time and simplifies workflows. The right solution can automate repetitive tasks and eliminate redundancies slowing your proposal process.
- Increased visibility. Digital solutions not only help teams stay organized, but also improve data availability and accessibility. Team members can see the status of any proposal and track against unique requirements.
- Reduced risk. Cloud-based compliance solutions can easily share data where it’s needed and help teams manage risk related to human ethics, animal oversight, hazard safety, outside interests, and training records.
- Seamless research lifecycle. A software solution can simplify the transition across the various stages of the research lifecycle, from identification of funding to commercialization.
Katherine Lyons, Manager of Grants and Sponsored Programs at the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources at the University of Delaware, said it best: “I think my favorite thing about Cayuse is the checklist at the bottom that tells us what we need to do, what we may have done wrong, what we haven’t done, what we need to upload. It’s specific for each sponsor. It really does help us put in clean proposals.”
