COVID-19 Funding Opportunities & FAQs

Ex Libris Research Professional:  The Ex Libris Research Professional together with Pivot^® funding services are providing free access to a list of select funding opportunities related to combatting the coronavirus and COVID-19. By raising awareness of these resources, which are offered from a wide range of global funders, they hope to help researchers expand their scholarly efforts to understand and contend with this global pandemic.
• Link is: https://www.researchprofessionalnews.com/covid-19-funding-opportunities/

Grant Forward: GrantForward has provided a free list of grants related to addressing COVID-19 ranging from small foundation to large-scale federal research grants in an effort to help researchers and others find science-based solutions to address this global pandemic.
• Link is:  https://www.grantforward.com/grant-covid

GrantStation: GrantStation’s list includes funding opportunities for nonprofits, small businesses, journalists, and artists.
• Link is: https://grantstation.com/covid-19-related-funding

InfoEd Global:  InfoEd Global shares this library of COVID-19 funding opportunities and resources for researchers and the broader community at large. This site is updated daily.
• Link is: https://www.infoedglobal.com/COVID19/COVID-19  

National Institutes of Health: Funding specific to COVID-19 (also in table below with more information).
Link is: https://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/COVID-Related.cfm#active 

Pivot: Pivot has given free access to a list of COVID-19 related funding sources, and they are updating the list weekly.
• Link is: https://www.researchprofessionalnews.com/covid-19-funding-opportunities/

WI Center for Technology Commercialization: The CTC has posted a list of federal agencies that are supporting research and development in response to the coronavirus.  Many of these agencies are included in the panels below on this medRAMP website, with information on specific funding announcements.
• Link is: https://wisconsinctc.org/federal-funding-and-partnership-opportunities-in-the-fight-against-coronavirus/

Stermlyne Research Software: Streamlyne’s intelligent natural language processing tool enables researchers to locate articles on SARS-CoV-2  and related viruses quickly and efficiently within the COVID-19 Open Research Dataset (CORD-19) created by the Allen Institute for AI, in partnership with several tech companies and the OSTP.  The dataset is linked to the World Health Organization (WHO) database of publications on coronavirus disease and other resources.  The website also provides a sample list of some of the most promising COVID-19 research efforts at universities and independent research institutions.
• Link is: https://c19priority.ai/

SPIN infoED Funding Database: infoEd Global is proud to be able to share this library of COVID-19 funding opportunities and resources with colleagues in the research realm and the broader community at large.
• Link is: https://www.infoedglobal.com/COVID19/COVID-19.html

InnoCentive COVID-19 Challenges: This page is exclusively for Coronavirus related challenges. InnoCentive and Wazoku are initiating the first of these challenges and are already working with organizations to design and post others. Each challenge will have a specific problem area defined for either required Solutions or Ideas to be submitted. Clients from the public and private sectors will be named in the challenges as having provided support, funding and reviewing expertise for solutions submitted.
• Link is: https://innocentive.wazoku.com/#/community/927970fbe1cb43a38b33c636dfbc2b8d/home-page

In addition to the table below, NIH COVID-19 related announcements are posted here, with COVID-19 resources found at this link. 

National Institutes of Health

• Special Emphasis Notice (SEN): AHRQ Announces Interest in Health Services Research to Address Substance Use Disorder Epidemic (NOT-HS-21-010): The purpose of this Special Emphasis Notice (SEN) is to inform the research community that the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality is interested in receiving health services research grant applications to advance our nation’s understanding of the substance use disorder crisis and provide solutions for addressing it. In this SEN, AHRQ is interested in health services research to prevent, identify and treat substance use disorders with a high degree of interest in applications that respond to the following three specific areas of focus: (1) Dissemination and implementation of evidence-based, non-pharmacological and behavioral interventions that can treat multiple substances or polysubstance use in ambulatory care and primary care settings, with a particular interest in substances for which pharmacological treatments are not available. (2) Development and testing of healthcare services interventions in primary care and ambulatory care settings to address substance use disorder that consider the social, environmental, economic and psychological factors that contribute to substance use disorder. Examples include care coordination, integration of substance use services in ambulatory care settings, or integration of population health approaches with primary care. Applications that take advantage of the natural experiment caused by the COVID-19 pandemic to examine how changes in service delivery (such as expanded use of telehealth) affect access to care, quality of care, and health inequities are particularly welcome. (3) Understanding and addressing the effect of substance use disorder on whole person health and the development and/or management of other chronic conditions.
  The Agency encourages research teams to submit applications in response to this emphasis using AHRQ’s standing R18, R03, and R01 funding mechanisms (PA-18-793, PA-18-794, PA-18-795). AHRQ also is interested in receiving career development awards (PA-20-067 and PA-17-232) that propose developing generalizable health service research skills through projects related to the substance use disorder crisis. Additionally, AHRQ has interest in receiving dissertation award grant proposals that relate to the substance use disorder crisis (PA-18-765).

Department of Defense

• CDC Enhancing Global Health Security: Strengthening Public Health Surveillance Systems and Preparedness Globally (CDC-RFA-GH21-2174).  Activities under this Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) should focus on protecting and improving public health globally by: 1) strengthening public health surveillance systems; 2) improving the public health surveillance workforce; 3) improving the interface between public health disease surveillance and laboratory systems; 4) reinforcing emergency surveillance preparedness; 5) enhancing electronic disease surveillance platforms and systems; and 6) enhancing the use of surveillance data for public health action. This NOFO is intended to support global health security partners to develop or continue the implementation of surveillance activities that focus on protecting and improving public health globally through strategic planning, policy, strengthening surveillance capacities and systems through partnerships. These should build and improve regional and country capacities to prevent, detect, respond and control infectious disease outbreaks, strengthen border health security and mitigate public health events of international concern (PHEICs) or other global health threats.
  Estimated Due Date: 1/29/2021; Award Ceiling $20,000,000
• Capacity Building for Global, Regional, and National Immunization Programs (CDC-RFA-GH21-2101): The purpose of this NOFO is to strengthen capacity and performance of global, regional and national immunization programs in priority countries to achieve vaccine preventable disease (VPD) control, elimination and eradication targets (i.e., polio eradication, measles and rubella elimination), reduce VPD-related morbidity and mortality, and address emerging public health threats such as coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19).
  Deadline: 4/20/2021; Award Ceiling: $13,000,000
• Community Health Workers for COVID Response and Resilient Communities (CCR) (CDC-RFA-DP21-2109):  This Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) supports this work through training and deployment of community health workers (CHWs) and by building and strengthening community resilience to fight COVID-19 through addressing existing health disparities in the population.
  Estimated Post Date: 2/23/2021; Estimated Due Date: 4/24/2021; Award Ceiling: $5,000,000
• Community Health Workers for COVID Response and Resilient Communities (CCR) -Evaluation and Technical Assistance (ETA) (CDC-RFA-DP21-2110):  This three-year opportunity provides funds to conduct a national evaluation of the Community Health Workers for COVID Response and Resilient Communities (CCR) program, DP21-2110 and provide training and technical assistance (TA) to CCR recipients. This program has two components: A) conduct a national evaluation of the CCR and B) deliver training and TA to CCR recipients.
  Estimated Post Date: 3/23/2021; Estimated Due Date: 5/22/2021; Award Ceiling: $3,000,000
• Community Health Access and Rural Transformation (CHART) (CMS-2G2-21-001): The Community Health Access and Rural Transformation (CHART) Model is a voluntary payment model designed to meet the needs of rural communities. The model will test whether aligned financial incentives, increased operational flexibility, and robust technical support promote the capacity of rural healthcare providers to implement effective healthcare delivery system redesign on a broad scale. This opportunity is for the Community Transformation Track. Under the Community Transformation Track, award recipients will receive funding and a programmatic framework to assess the needs of their Community and implement healthcare delivery system redesign.
  Due Date: 5/11/2021; Award Ceiling: $5,000,000 
• Global Healthcare Detection and Response (CDC-RFA-CK21-2104):  This NOFO will enhance detection and response to emerging infectious disease threats in healthcare facilities through a global collaborative network approach. The purpose of the network is to rapidly detect and actively contain emerging infectious disease threats in healthcare settings by setting targeted priority goals for prevention, including pathogens or conditions, and working collaboratively to achieve these goals through detection and response. These objectives will be met through implementing detection and response services at local, national, and regional levels; evaluating and continually improving implementation; monitoring and assessing impact; conducting implementation science and innovation to inform strategies; enhancing laboratory capacity at key participating labs; and actively facilitating learning to other partners in the country/region.
  Dude Date: 5/26/2021; Award Ceiling: None stated

National Science Foundation

Department of Agriculture

Other Sponsors

Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF)

UWCCC BioBank – COVID 19-Related Blood Samples for Research

Internal UW-Madison Opportunities

Note: Applications to Fast Grants is currently paused due to receipt of a very large number of qualified submissions. They may be reopened again in the future. Please go to the Fast Grants website to sign up if you’d like to be notified when they are reopened.
• Link is: https://fastgrants.org/

About Fast Grants:

Science funding mechanisms are too slow in normal times and may be much too slow during the COVID-19 pandemic. Fast Grants are an effort to correct this. If you are a scientist at an academic institution currently working on a COVID-19 related project and in need of funding, Fast Grants invites you to apply for a grant. Fast Grants are $10k to $500k and decisions are made in under 48 hours. If approved, you’ll receive payment as quickly as the University can receive it. Below are brief instructions, followed by FAQs:

(A) Instructions:

(1) Fill out the application: The application form should take less than 30 minutes.

(B) Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

(1) Who is eligible to apply for a Fast Grant?
You must be:

• A PI at an academic institution;
• Already working on a project that could help with the COVID-19 pandemic within the next six months;
• In need of additional funding to complete the project;
• Researchers outside the US are eligible for funding.

(2) Why the six month constraint?
Most existing funding bodies focus on supporting longer-term work. Given COVID-19’s human costs, speed is of paramount importance.

(4) Who will make grant decisions?
A panel of biomedical scientists will make funding recommendations to Emergent Ventures.

(5) What can a Fast Grant be used for?
Fast Grants must be used solely to expedite COVID-19-related science. Beyond that, the grant recipient has complete discretion over how it is spent.

(6) What criteria will panelists use?
Fast Grants prefers projects that are cheap (so that funding dollars go further) and that will yield results quickly (during COVID-19, days matter).

(7) Does the grant go to the PI or to the university?
This is at the discretion of the applicant.

(8) When can I apply?
Fast Grants opened at 12:00 Pacific Time on Tuesday, April 7, 2020.  The first round of awards was announced starting on April 12.

(9) What conditions apply?

• You must use the grant to work on COVID-19-related science.
• You must send monthly updates, summarizing your progress, for 6 months (can be as simple as a single-paragraph email).
• You must upload all manuscripts reporting work supported by the grant to a preprint server such as bioRxiv or arXiv upon submission to a peer-reviewed journal.
• In line with Gates Foundation policy, will pay at most 10% in overhead costs to the university.

(10) How do IP rights work?
Apart from the open science publication requirement above, there are no IP restrictions associated with Fast Grants.

(11) Who administers Fast Grants?
Fast Grants is a part of Emergent Ventures, a project at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. For Canadian recipients, Fast Grants makes funding recommendations to the Thistledown Foundation.

(12) Will the identities of grant recipients be made public?
This shall be at the recipient’s discretion. Fast Grants will list those who agree to be named and provide regular updates on the total dollars that have been allocated.