Is This the Right Fit? Evaluating Funding Opportunities for Your Research

“You should just apply for every grant that’s relevant to your interests.” Well-intentioned chairs, directors, deans, and mentors have been telling first-time or early-career investigators that for decades. It might have been true in the past, but it is certainly not true now. Worse, it’s actually harmful advice. The goal of the investigator (and the research support professionals who work with them) should be to identify the sponsor or program that best fits the work they want to do right now, at their current institution, and given their background, training, and education - with a secondary goal of developing, over time, a relationship with one or more sponsors that can potentially support their work for the duration of their career or their current research arc, whichever is longer. This resource will help both investigators and the research support professionals they work with to do those things.