Presenter: Karen Downing, Head, Social Sciences; Foundation Center at the University of Michigan

I had the opportunity to attend Downing’s session on grant support entitled “Where’s the Money: Best Practices for Providing Grant-Seeking Services in the Social Sciences”.

According to Downing, librarians should begin by getting an understanding of the grants scene on their campus.

First, be aware of stakeholders on campus who may become partners for resource purchases and sharing; examples include the research office, development office, and medical school administrators. Next, librarians should identify the grant-seekers on campus. If possible, get a list of grant proposals and awards (University of Michigan offers theirs as a publically available search engine). In addition, obtain usage statistics on funder databases such as COS Pivot. With these pieces of information, identify gaps in proposal success and gaps in database usage. Downing also recommends getting to know faculty that have served on grant juries.

Downing did an assessment of faculty views on grant-seeking at the University of Michigan. She made two interesting discoveries: grant-seeking support was uneven across the university and interdisciplinary projects readily received funding but were difficult to manage. These discoveries may assist librarians when they are determining a niche for their services.

During the presentation Downing showed two pie charts from the Foundation Center which showed which subjects receive the most funding from private foundations and charities. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the largest chunks of funding went to the health sciences, human services, and public affairs.

To help researchers locate funding, Downing discussed two resources she recommends: COS Pivot and the Foundation Directory Online. According to Downing, the two resources complement one another. COS Pivot’s strength is in its coverage of US federal grants and international grant resources, while the Foundation Directory has good coverage of private funding sources.

For librarians without access to these subscription-only databases, the Foundation Center’s general website (foundationcenter.org) is a useful alternative. The site features a free index of grant providers, sample grant proposals, and annual reports from various foundations.