External Grant Information
Our Grants Coordinator, Jean Borger, is available to provide direction to faculty and staff on searching for external funding, interpreting application requirements, completing the application process, and tracking and fulfilling grant requirements once funding is received. Contact Jean at jmborger@iu.edu to set up an appointment.
This page is dedicated to funding from outside the university. If you would like to learn about funding opportunities available internally through IU or IUS, visit our Internal Grant Information page.
Searching for Funders and Opportunities
Pivot (formerly Community of Science)
Pivot is a database of grants, fellowships, and other funding information from public, private, domestic, and international sources open to researchers in any discipline. Though the name refers to holdings on science funding, this service also offers information on social sciences, humanities, and community outreach funding. Pivot users can register, claim or create a profile, and establish funding alerts specific to their interests and needs. Pivot may also be used to find collaborators on campus, in the IU system, and worldwide. For assistance with Pivot, visit the IU Research Gateway, or contact Jean Borger, IUS Grants Coordinator, at jmborger@iu.edu.
The Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance (CFDA)
The CFDA is a free online database of all federal domestic assistance programs including grants, loans, and other types of assistance. The CFDA is searchable by keyword, type of assistance, and target population, among other fields.
Grants.gov
Discretionary grants offered by 26 federal grant-making agencies can be found on Grants.gov.
Foundation Directory Online (FDO)
The FDO is a database of more than 140,000 funders available through the IUS library starting Fall Semester 2016. The FDO is a service of the Foundation Center, an independent nonprofit information clearinghouse whose mission is to foster public understanding of the foundation field by collecting, organizing, analyzing, and disseminating information on foundations, corporate giving, and related subjects. The FDO is available to IUS faculty, staff, and students, as well as the general public, through our membership in the Funding Information Network. Contact Courtney Block at (812) 941-2552 to set up a time to use the database or to make an appointment for guided use.
GuideStar
GuideStar is a searchable database of more than 640,000 nonprofit organizations, including foundations.
This resource searches more than 60 databases and 2,200 selected websites from 15 federal agencies, offering 200 million pages of U.S. government science information including research and development results.
External Funding Timetable
All proposals for external funding must be routed through both the IU Southeast Dean for Research and the IU-Bloomington Office of Research Administration. The following external grant and contract timetable outlines the proposal process and minimum amount of time required to ensure that your proposal is postmarked or received on or before the due date. Please remember that at each step of the approval process the person whose signature you need must have time to read the proposal, may have limited availability, or may be unavailable. Leaving extra time for the routing process is therefore strongly recommended.
Preparing a Budget and Application
The IU Office of Research Administration (ORA) website provides extensive information on grant preparation, submission, and administration. Links to information on how to prepare a budget can be found on the Create a Budget page of the ORA website, and a Proposal Writing Short Course can be found here. You may also contact Jean Borger, Grants Coordinator, for assistance at jmborger@iu.edu.
Once you have prepared a draft budget, you will work with the Office of Research Administration to finalize it before submitting your entire grant application. To start this process, submit your budget, budget narrative, and the guidelines or RFP for the grant you seek directly to resdev@indiana.edu. Please see the External Grant and Contract Timetable for further information.Post-Award Administration
Immediately after receiving notification of a grant award, the Principal Investigator or Project Director must contact the IU Southeast Office of the Bursar and make an appointment to establish procedures for grant account management. After an award is accepted by the University, it is forwarded to Contract and Grant Administration, where an account is established and administered. General information about grant acceptance and administration can be found on the Awards and Agreements and Award Management pages of the ORA website.