The Office of Government and Foundation Support offers a variety of ways to help faculty and staff search for funding opportunities. The University subscribes to several services available only to MU faculty and staff. These can be used to conduct general searches for Federal, State, and private funding, as well as to create personalized accounts that will deliver funding information to your email account daily (click here and select "Create New Profile"). Additionally, the University offers links to numerous publicly available search engines such as Grants.gov that will allow you to search the 1000’s of available Federal funding opportunities.

Millersville subscribes to two excellent grant search services, SPINPlus and IRIS. These are searchable databases of funding opportunities from Federal, state and private source. Neither are all inclusive and it is best to conduct a search both of these engines to ensure good coverage of all opportunities.

The Federal Government offers a bewildering array of funding opportunities. If you are unsure what Federal agencies might be able to fund your project or are looking to cast as wide a net as possible, Grants.gov is your best choice. For more targeted searches, try using one of the other, agency specific, searches.

The Commonwealth offers a number of sources for funding, particularly for projects aimed at partnering business and academia, and that may lead to economic development. The Foundation Directory (Subscription Service, MU Only) provides information on over 10,000 private foundations. Limiting the search can provide a list of Foundations that limit their giving to the Commonwealth or Mid-Atlantic.

There are a number of search engines that target specific areas, like the Humanities and Social Sciences, or SBIR/STTR opportunities that do not fit comfortably within the other categories.

If you are unsure where to begin or how to start, request a Customized Funding Search

• Grant Search Engines

  • SPINPlus (Subscription Service, MU Only)
    SPINPlus is a database of funding opportunities that allow searchable access to funding opportunities drawn from over 6,000 government, private, and non-profit sources from around the world. SPINPlus includes three product modules: SPIN, GENIUS, and SMARTS.

    1. SPIN - Sponsored Programs Information Network
    2. GENIUS - Global Expertise Network for Industry, University, and Scholars
    3. SMARTS - SPIN Matching And Research Transmittal Services

    Spin is the basic grants search service. Additional information on Genius and Smarts can be found by clicking here. Genius is a searchable database of investigator profiles, and SMARTS is a highly useful funding alert service.

  • IRIS (Subscription Service, MU Only)
    IRIS is a searchable database containing over 9,000 active federal and private funding opportunities in the sciences, social sciences, arts, and humanities. In addition to funding opportunities for faculty, the IRIS Database also contains fellowships and scholarships for grad students and undergrads. Users can search IRIS by sponsor, deadline date, keyword, and other criteria. Most IRIS records contain live links to sponsor Web sites, electronic forms, or Electronic Research Administration (eRA) portals. The IRIS Database is updated daily.

• Grant Search Engines

  • Guides to Federal Funding
    A central storehouse for information on over 1,000 federal grant programs and access to approximately $400 billion in annual awards.

  • National Science Foundation
  • National Science Foundation
  • National Institute of Health
  • Department of Education
  • National Trust for Historic Preservation (includes IMLS, NEA, NEH and other funding sources)
  • National Endowment for the Arts

• Guides to State and Private Funding

  • NewPA.org
    Here you can find information on variety of funding programs supported by the Commonwealth, including the Keystone Innovation Zone Seed Assistance grants,

  • Foundation Directory (Subscription Service, MU Only)
    

    Searchable database of the top 10,000 private foundations, including 990 forms detailing past grant awards. Detailed instructions are available here.

  • Private and Corporate Funding Links, posted by Cal. State at Stanislaus

• Other (including SBIR/STTR)

  • GrantsNet
    

    Online resource to find funds for the sciences and undergraduate science education. Sponsored by Science Magazine.

  • SBIR Gateway
    

    A comprehensive on-line database to SBIR and STTR opportunities

  • DoDtechMatch
    

    A searchable database providing industry and academia information on research and development opportunities for approximately 120 Department of Defense labs located across the United States.

  • Humanities & Social Sciences Online
    

    Online announcements of funding opportunities in the Humanities & Social Sciences

• Customized Funding Search

  • Customized Funding Search
    

    Use SPINplus to have custom information emailed to you daily (click on "Create a New Profile")

  • Request a custom funding search