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  

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

National Institutes of Health

Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality

Department of Defense

Health Resources and Services Administration

Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute

• CDC Global Health Security Partnerships: Expanding and Improving Public Health Laboratory Strategies and Systems – Contract Opportunities
• Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA)  Proposals for the development of novel COVID-19 diagnostics – Deadline: Extended to 10/31/20
• Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) – 2019 Novel Coronavirus Medical Countermeasure Partnership Opportunities

National Science Foundation

Department of Agriculture

Other Sponsors

The Rheumatology Research Foundation

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 frant. 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. The grants are currently supported by: John Collison, Patrick Collison, Paul Graham, Reid Hoffman, Fiona McKean and Tobias Lütke, Yuri and Julia Milner, and Chris and Crystal Sacca. These funders have committed over $10M to funding Fast Grant awardees.

If you are an interested funder, please reach out: fund@fastgrants.org.

(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.

(13) What inspired Fast Grants?
During World War II, the NDRC accomplished a lot of research very quickly. In his memoir, Vannevar Bush recounts: “Within a week NDRC could review the project. The next day the director could authorize, the business office could send out a letter of intent, and the actual work could start.” Fast Grants are an effort to unlock progress at a cadence similar to that which served us well then.