first-time-funder — Boyce Data Science

Stage 1

Start here

One stage shows at a time; move through them with the buttons at the bottom of each stage or the bar above, in any order. Nothing on this page leaves your browser. Fill in your organization once and every generator uses it. The save button writes a file you can reload later on any device; there is no account and nothing is stored on a server.

Your organization

Organization name

Condition or community you serve

Name of the funding program

Program contact name

Program contact email

Who signs award letters (name and title)

Readiness check

Check what is true today. Anything unchecked is a task for the board before the announcement goes out.

The shape of the whole process. You decide what you want to fund and how much you can spend. You publish an announcement. Scientists apply through their institution. You have the applications reviewed and choose. Your organization and the scientist's institution sign an agreement. The scientist gets ethics approval and does the work. The institution sends reports. The money moves at the milestones you wrote into the agreement. Every stage below is one of those steps, in order, with the tools to do it.

Stage 2

How much to give

The right amount depends on what you want to exist at the end. A pilot study that produces preliminary data for a federal application costs far less than a natural history study that has to enroll and follow people for years. Pick the kind of work first, then size the award to it.

Pick the kind of work

Size the award

Total you can commit per award ($)

Duration (years)

Indirect rate you will allow (%) your policy, the same for every applicant

Rate is a percentage of

What the direct costs have to cover

Add the lines a scientist would put in a budget. Personnel is usually the largest. Effort is the share of a full-time year; fringe is the benefits load the institution adds to salary.

Line	Amount basis	Per year

Reference points, read in September 2026. These are orientation, not rules; open the sources in Stage 11 and read the current figures before you publish a number.

Disease foundation pilot and seed awards commonly fall between $25,000 and $100,000 for one year; investigator-level awards commonly fall between $100,000 and $300,000 per year for two or three years. The norm is set locally, so read the funding pages of a few foundations in your own disease area.
A fellowship competes with what a postdoctoral researcher would otherwise earn at the host institution, plus the fringe the institution adds. Ask two or three institutions you expect to apply what a first-year postdoctoral salary looks like now, rather than setting a stipend from a national figure that moves.
Public funders publish their own budget ceilings and stipend scales, and those figures change from year to year and are in flux right now. If you want a public benchmark, read the current numbers at the source when you set your award, rather than relying on a figure quoted here.

Budget for what you will ask them to do. Two costs are easy to leave out, and applicants notice when the announcement asks for something the money does not cover.

If you expect the funded researcher to present at your conference or annual meeting, put a travel line in the budget, or offer a fixed travel stipend, and say so in the announcement. Reasonable travel to one meeting runs a few hundred to a couple of thousand dollars depending on distance, read in September 2026. Asking someone to attend on their own money is a quiet way to lose good applicants.
If you require open access (a term in Stage 5), the article processing charge for open access publishing commonly runs $2,000 to $4,000, read in September 2026, which can be more than a small pilot's entire supply budget. Either make that fee an allowable cost so the award can pay it, or state that depositing the accepted manuscript in a public repository, which is free, satisfies the requirement.

Stage 3

Indirect costs

Indirect costs, also called facilities and administrative (F&A) costs or overhead, are the institution's charge for the building, the electricity, the grants office, the compliance staff, and everything else a project uses but cannot bill line by line. The rate is set per institution, and it changes what your dollar does.

How institutions charge it

Universities and academic medical centers negotiate an indirect rate with the federal government, applied to a base called modified total direct costs (MTDC). For on-campus research those negotiated rates commonly fall in the range of roughly 50 to 70 percent of MTDC, as read in September 2026 from published rate agreements; MTDC leaves out equipment, tuition, patient care charges, rent, and the portion of each subaward above the first $50,000 under the 2024 revision of the federal Uniform Guidance. Organizations without a negotiated rate may use a de minimis rate of up to 15 percent of MTDC on federal funds.

What foundations usually do

Private funders are not bound by the federal rate. Many disease foundations publish a cap, commonly between zero and 15 percent, and most institutions will accept a lower rate when the funder's written policy states it and applies to every applicant equally. Some institutions decline awards that pay no indirects at all, and some charge the shortfall to the department, which can make a scientist's chair reluctant. The safest course is to state your rate plainly in the announcement, apply it to everyone, and ask the two or three institutions you most expect to apply whether they will accept it before you publish.

Two ways to write the rate

"Indirect costs up to 10 percent of direct costs" and "indirect costs up to 10 percent of the total award" produce different numbers. The first adds 10 percent on top of the science budget; the second takes 10 percent out of a fixed total. Both are used. Say which one you mean, and use the calculator to see the difference at your rate.

What the rate changes downstream

The lower your rate, the more of each award reaches the project. The trade is that the institution's grants office is doing real work for you, including the agreement negotiation, the institutional review board (IRB) support, and the financial reporting you will ask for, and an institution that feels underpaid negotiates slowly. Budget time as well as money.

Indirect calculator

Rate (%)

Amount ($)

The amount above is

Compare rates at one total award

Total award ($)

Stage 4

The timeline

The most common surprise for a first-time funder is how much time passes between choosing a winner and the first participant being enrolled. The scientist does not sign your agreement; the institution's sponsored programs office does, and it negotiates the terms. Ethics review comes after or alongside that. Set the dates below and the page draws the calendar.

Your dates and durations

Announcement opens

Open for applications (weeks)

Review and decision (weeks)

Agreement negotiation with the institution (weeks)

Ethics review the project will need

Ethics review (weeks) prefilled from the choice above

Ethics review runs

Funded work (months)

Final report due after the end (weeks)

Milestone dates

Typical durations, read in September 2026. Exempt determinations often take two to four weeks; expedited review four to eight weeks; full board review two to four months, since the board meets on a schedule and often asks for changes; multi-site studies under a single IRB can take four to six months once reliance agreements are added. Agreement negotiation with a university sponsored programs office often takes one to three months and can stretch to six when intellectual property or data terms are unusual. None of these are promises. Ask the institution for its own figures and write them into the milestone schedule.

Stage 5

What you can decide

Money does not put you on the IRB-approved list of study personnel, in the data, or in charge of the science. What it does do is let you set terms before signing. This stage separates the two, and then turns the terms you choose into a clause list for your award agreement.

Things a funder does not get by default

A place on the IRB-approved study personnel list: When the IRB approves a protocol it approves a named list of study personnel: the people allowed to consent participants, see identifiable records, and log in to the study's data systems, usually with an institutional account after human subjects training. A funder is not on that list, and funding the study does not add you to it. Being listed means being part of the study team, with the institution's training, oversight, and accountability. If a member of your staff is to have a study role, it is written into the application and the budget as a study role, not into the award agreement.
Access to the data: The institution is the data custodian. Identifiable participant data stay with the approved study team under the consent participants signed, inside systems only that team can open. A funder sees what the consent form and the data sharing plan permit, which is usually de-identified or summary data, and only at the points the plan names.
Control of the science after the award: You chose the project by choosing the proposal. Once funded, the investigator decides the methods within the approved protocol. Changing the aims is a negotiation, not an instruction.
Approval of publications: Academic institutions will not give a sponsor veto power over findings. What you can ask for is advance notice, a courtesy review period for accuracy, and acknowledgment of the award.
Authorship: Authorship follows contribution to the work, not to the funding. If patient partners contribute to design, recruitment, or interpretation, that contribution can earn authorship; the check itself does not.
Ownership of what is invented: Inventions usually belong to the institution under its own policy and, for federally co-funded work, the Bayh-Dole rules. Foundations do negotiate license terms, revenue sharing, or a right of first negotiation, and this is a place for a lawyer who has done it before.

Terms you can write into the agreement

Check what you want. Everything checked appears in the clause list below and in the announcement in Stage 6. Terms describe roles, not people; a person is named only where the application budget names them.

Clause list for the award agreement

Stage 6

The announcement

A funding announcement, also called a request for proposals (RFP), request for applications (RFA), or call, is the contract you are offering before anyone signs. Everything the scientist and the sponsored programs office need to decide whether to apply belongs in it: the money, the rate, the eligibility, the dates, the review criteria, and the terms. The builder pulls in what you set in Stages 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, and 8, and in the letter of intent round if you run one.

Purpose and scope

What you want to fund, in a sentence or two

Priority topics (one per line)

Out of scope (one per line)

Eligibility and mechanics

Who may apply

Awards you expect to make

Application components (one per line)

Anything else (payment schedule, questions, webinar date)

Who you will correspond with. If an applicant is at a university or academic medical center, the application and the resulting agreement are handled by the institution's sponsored programs office, also called the office of research administration or grants and contracts, rather than the investigator alone. Expect that office to be your counterpart for the budget, the agreement, and the reporting, and to add weeks to each step. An applicant at a small nonprofit or an independent researcher may not have such an office, so keep the eligibility text to what every applicant can meet instead of naming a specific office.

Stage 7

Letters of intent

A letter of intent, sometimes called a letter of inquiry or a pre-application, is a short note an interested applicant sends before writing a full proposal. Asking for one first lets you screen for fit before anyone writes a full application and before you recruit a full review panel. It is the single change that most reduces the work of running a program, for you and for applicants who were never in scope.

What a letter of intent does

A full application takes an investigator days to write and takes your reviewers hours each to read. A letter of intent takes an hour to write and minutes to screen. When you invite full applications only from the letters that fit, three things improve at once: applicants who are out of scope, ineligible, or duplicating funded work learn so before they spend the effort; your panel reads a smaller, better-matched set, so you need fewer reviewers and less of their time; and you get an early count of who is interested, which tells you whether the announcement reached the right people.

A letter of intent is a screen, not a competition. Judge it against a short list of go or no-go questions, not the weighted rubric you will use for full applications. Invite everything that clears the bar; the ranking happens later. Say plainly in the announcement whether the letter is required before a full application or optional and non-binding, and never use it to reject on the quality of the science, only on fit.

When to skip it

For a first, small program expecting only a handful of applications, a letter of intent round can add more delay than it saves. It earns its place once you expect more applications than your panel can comfortably read, or when scope is easy to misread and you want to spare people the wasted effort of a full proposal that was never eligible.

Run a letter of intent round?

This program will

Letters due, weeks after the announcement opens

Screening and invitations, weeks after that

The letter is

What the letter must contain (one per line)

Screening questions

Each letter gets a yes or no on these. A letter that clears all of them is invited to submit a full application. Edit the list to match your announcement; keep every question about fit, not quality.

Letter of intent section for the announcement

This block is also folded into the full announcement in the previous stage. The invitation and not-invited letters are in the Correspondence stage.

Screening sheet

One row per letter for whoever runs the screen, with a column for each question above and a column to record the invite decision.

Stage 8

Reviewing applications

Review is where a first-time funder's credibility is made. Scientists will apply again if the process was fair, the criteria were published in advance, and the feedback was specific. Build the rubric here; it prints into the announcement so applicants see it before they write.

Criteria and weights

Each criterion is scored 1 to 5 by every reviewer. Weights sum to 100.

Who reviews

Scientific reviewers (number per application)

Patient or family reviewers (number per application)

What patient reviewers score

Scoring sheet and reviewer instructions

Conflict of interest statement for reviewers

Send this with the applications. A reviewer who checks any box is removed from that application and does not see the discussion of it.

How to run the review meeting

Send applications, the rubric, and the conflict statement at least three weeks before the meeting. Collect conflict declarations first and reassign before anyone reads.
Collect written scores and comments before the meeting. Compute the weighted score for each application and sort. Discuss in that order.
Start each discussion with the patient reviewers. It sets the frame the scientists then respond to, rather than the reverse.
Allow reviewers to change scores after discussion, then take the final average. Record the reason for any change.
Decide what the board sees: the ranked list with scores and a one-paragraph summary per application, not the raw reviews. The board votes on the slate; it does not re-review.
Write a feedback paragraph for every applicant, funded or not, from the reviewer comments. Specific feedback is why people apply again.

Stage 9

Correspondence

Pick the letter, fill in the applicant, and the text assembles from your organization details and the amounts, dates, and terms set above. Edit the result before sending; the wording is a starting point, not a legal document. The award letter in particular is an offer, and the agreement the institution signs is the contract.

Letter

Type

Recipient name

Institution

Project title

Amount ($) defaults to Stage 2

Date to write

Specific points (feedback for a decline, the item to revise, the new end date, the report that is late)

Draft

Stage 10

After the award

The award agreement tells the institution what to send you and when. The most useful thing a small funder can do is ask for less, on a schedule, and read all of it. Choose what you want to receive and the page writes the reporting calendar from the timeline in Stage 4 and the payment schedule to match.

Deliverables and check-ins

Payment schedule

Reporting and payment calendar

What a good progress report contains

Ask for a report that fits on two pages and is written for your board, plus one attachment for the finance committee. The scientific report should answer: what was planned for this period, what was done, what was found so far, what changed and why, what is planned next, and what the funder can help with (recruitment, a letter to a registry, an introduction). The financial report is spent versus budget by line, with a sentence on any line off by more than 10 percent. Ask for a lay summary paragraph you can publish as written. Do not ask for participant-level data in a progress report; it is not yours to hold and the request will delay everything.

When things go wrong

Reports arrive late, the postdoc leaves, enrollment stalls, the investigator moves to another institution. Write the remedies into the agreement before any of it happens: a paused payment when a report is overdue, a written plan when a milestone slips by more than a set number of months, the funder's consent before the award transfers to a new institution, and the return of unspent funds if the project ends early. Then use the letters in Stage 9 to state the remedy calmly. The relationship with the institution's grants office is where most of these are resolved, so know the name of the person there from the start.

Stage 11

Glossary and sources

Words the institution will use

Sponsored programs office, also called the office of sponsored projects (OSP), the office of research administration (ORA), or grants and contracts: The institution's office that submits applications, negotiates agreements, and signs on the institution's behalf. Your counterpart for everything contractual.
Principal investigator (PI): The scientist responsible for the project. Applies through the institution, does not sign the award.
Direct costs: Costs that can be assigned to the project: salaries, fringe, supplies, participant payments, travel, publication.
Indirect costs, F&A, overhead: The institution's charge for shared facilities and administration, as a percentage of a base.
Modified total direct costs (MTDC): The base most negotiated rates apply to. Excludes equipment, tuition, patient care, rent, and part of each subaward.
Fringe: Benefits added to salary, expressed as a percentage. Often 25 to 40 percent for staff and lower for students and postdocs; it varies by institution and role.
Effort: The share of a person's working time charged to the project, as a percentage.
Institutional review board (IRB), research ethics board (REB), ethics committee: The board that reviews research with human participants. Exempt, expedited, and full board are levels of review keyed to risk. The approval names the study personnel allowed to work with participants and their data.
Single IRB, reliance agreement: For multi-site studies, one IRB reviews for all sites and the others agree in writing to rely on it.
Data use agreement (DUA): A contract governing how data move between parties. Needed if the study will use your registry or if you will receive de-identified data at the end.
No-cost extension (NCE): More time to finish with no additional money. Common, and usually reasonable to grant once.
Milestone: A defined, checkable event in the project. Payments tied to milestones are the funder's main lever after signing.
Subaward: A portion of an award passed from the funded institution to a second one that does part of the work.

Sources read for this page

Figures on this page are snapshots read in September 2026. Open these before you publish a number.

2 CFR 200.414, Indirect (F&A) costs, in Title 2, Part 200 of the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR), including the de minimis rate and the MTDC definition in 200.1.
45 CFR 46, the Common Rule, for what exempt, expedited, and full board review are and what an approved protocol covers.
Office for Human Research Protections (OHRP) guidance and FAQs, on study personnel, consent, and the limits of what can be shared.
Health Research Alliance, a membership organization of nonprofit research funders whose members publish their indirect cost and open access policies.
Council on Foundations, for general grantmaking practice and sample agreements.

This page is educational and is not legal, financial, or regulatory advice. Have an attorney who works with research institutions read your award agreement before you sign it.