Domestic Public Policy Program

Overview:

The Domestic Public Policy Program supports projects that will help the public and policy makers understand and address critical challenges facing the United States. To that end, the Foundation supports research on and evaluation of existing public policies and programs, as well as projects that inject new ideas into public debates. 

The Foundation believes that policy makers face a series of challenges that need to be met if the United States is going to continue to prosper and provide opportunity to all of its citizens. Even as public finances begin to recover in the wake of the financial crisis and recession, officials are confronting difficult choices that will have to be made in order to restore long-term fiscal balances while maintaining essential public services. These choices will include decisions regarding how best to raise revenues while also creating an environment conducive to economic growth. Policy makers are also looking for strategies that can deliver key public services, such as education and criminal justice, in an effective and efficient manner. There is also a need to develop strategies to improve the long-term growth rate of the U.S. economy and strengthen economic opportunity. Doing so will require a combination of more effective strategies to develop human capital and establishing an economic climate hospitable to entrepreneurship and growth.

To meet these broad objectives, the Foundation has developed a number of grant making portfolios. A group of grants is focused on the challenges of identifying mechanisms that can inform thinking on fiscal practices at the national, state, and municipal levels. In terms of human capital development, the Foundation has been supporting work to identify how schools can become more productive by, for example, increasing the quality of the teacher workforce or adopting more effective curricula. Because success in the contemporary economy requires individuals to acquire education and training beyond high school, the Foundation is building a portfolio of projects on post-secondary education.  Finally, the Foundation is supporting work on the criminal justice system that will examine whether costs can be lowered while still protecting public safety.

Other information:

Award(s): Requests for grants greater than $50,000 and for multi-year grant support are made at one of our regular board meetings. Requests for grants of $50,000 or less are reviewed on an ongoing basis and are handled as promptly as possible.

The Smith Richardson Foundation has a rigorous proposal review process. The first step in the process is the submission of a concept paper. Concept papers should not exceed six pages. A link to the concept paper template can be found here.

Grant Applications Guidelines

Grow Up Great Grant

Overview:

The PNC Foundation supports a variety of nonprofit organizations with a special emphasis on those that work to achieve sustainability and touch a diverse population, in particular, those that support early childhood education and/or economic development.

Education --The PNC Foundation supports educational programs for children and youth, particularly early childhood education initiatives that meet the criteria established through PNC Grow Up Great. Specifically, PNC Grow Up Great grants must:

• Support early education initiatives that benefit children from birth to age five; and
• Serve a majority of children (>51%) from low- to moderate-income families; and
• Include one or a combination of the following:
  • direct services/programs for children in their classroom or community;
  • professional development/workforce development for early childhood educators;
  • family and/or community engagement in children’s early learning

Additional considerations:

• The grant focus should include math, science, reading, vocabulary development, the arts, financial education, or social/emotional development.  
• The grant recipient, or collaborative partner, should have early childhood education as an area of focus. If the organization’s focus is beyond birth to age five, the specific grant must be earmarked for birth to age five.
• Incorporate opportunities for PNC volunteers in classroom or non-classroom-based activities.

(PDF)Download the full reference document for PNC Grow Up Great grants.

Examples of What Meets PNC Grow Up Great Grant Eligibility Standards 

• Classroom educational lesson(s) followed by a visit to a museum, science center, etc. 
• Early childhood education outreach, program development and implementation (includes reasonable administrative expenses related to a program) 
• Professional development for existing early childhood education teachers, assistants, etc.   
• Parent/community engagement activity including the Grow Up Great primary focuses referenced above 
• Development of outdoor early learning environment (e.g., classroom, play space) with educational or arts-based component     

Other information:

Eligible Counties in Arizona: Cochise, Coconino, Gila, Maricopa, Mohave, Navajo, Pima, Pinal, Yavapai

Award amounts: In 2024, along with smaller awards, multiple grants totaling over $500,000 were awarded; some large-scale grants awarded ranging from $1.4M-$10.2M.

2026 Hearst Foundations Grants

Overview:

The Hearst Foundations are national philanthropic resources for organizations working in the fields of culture, education, health and social services. In addition, the William Randolph Hearst Foundation operates two programs, the United States Senate Youth Program and the Journalism Awards Program.

Funding Priorities in Education -- The Hearst Foundations fund educational institutions demonstrating uncommon success in preparing students to thrive in a global society. The Foundations’ focus is largely on higher education, but they also fund innovative models of early childhood and K-12 education, as well as professional development.

The Hearst Foundations are only able to fund approximately 25% of all grant requests, of which about 80% is directed to prior grantees and about 20% is targeted for new grantees.

In the recent past, 30% of total funding has been allocated to Education. Organizations with budgets over $10 million have received 80% of the funding in Education.

Types of Support: Program, scholarship, capital and, on a limited basis, general and endowment support

Preference will be given to:

• Higher education programs and scholarships and, on a limited basis, scholarships for post-graduate education

• College access and college success programming

• Professional development for educators

• Science education programs that focus on developing career pathways in science, technology, engineering, environment and math

• Programs educating the next generation of health professionals, such as nursing and mental health

Funding Priorities in Culture -- The Hearst Foundations fund cultural institutions that offer meaningful programs in the arts and sciences, prioritizing those that enable engagement by young people and create a lasting and measurable impact. The Foundations also fund select programs nurturing and developing artistic talent. Supported organizations include arts schools, ballets, museums, operas, performing arts centers, symphonies and theaters.

Funding Priorities in Health -- The Hearst Foundations assist leading regional hospitals, medical centers and specialized medical institutions providing access to healthcare for high-need populations. In response to the shortage of healthcare professionals necessary to meet the country’s evolving healthcare demands, the Foundations also fund programs designed to enhance skills and increase the number of practitioners and educators across roles in healthcare. The Foundations also support public health, medical research and the development of young investigators to help create a broad and enduring impact on the nation’s health.

Funding Priorities in Social Service -- The Hearst Foundations fund direct-service organizations that tackle the roots of chronic poverty by applying effective solutions to the most challenging social and economic problems. The Foundations prioritize supporting programs that have proven successful in facilitating economic independence and in strengthening families. Preference is also given to programs with the potential to scale productive practices in order to reach more people in need.

Solicitation limitations:

ASU may submit only one (1) application to the sponsoring organization.

Notice: The Hearst Foundations have a year-round, rolling application; there are no deadlines. However, ASU received funding in June 2023 and organizations must wait a minimum of three years from their grant award date before the Foundations will consider another request.

Other information:

ASU Internal Deadline: After the posted internal deadline of June 3, 2026, this opportunity will be first come, first served.

Awards: Minimum grant size is $100,000. If a grant request is unsuccessful, an organization must wait a minimum of one year from the date of declination before reapplying. Grantees must wait a minimum of three years from their grant award date before the Foundations will consider another request. For more information on our process, please visit the Funding Limitations, Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) and the Grant Request Evaluation Process pages

Frequently Asked Questions (Sponsor FAQs)

STEM Initiative (LOI)

Overview:

The Mission of the Glenn W. Bailey Foundation is to foster pathways to success in globally competitive STEM careers for students in the United States. We support educational opportunities ranging in age from children through post-doctoral candidates and beyond to promote STEM learning and initiatives that seek to increase awareness and success in STEM careers in the United States. 

The Letter of Inquiry should be used to share an idea for any project or program that 1) falls outside of the scopes of our programs and/or 2) requires funding above the $25,000 funding cap of our Foundation's named programs. Please visit our Programs page before submitting an LOI.

Our programs were designed with you, the grantee, in mind. We want to provide the simplest and most direct route to obtain seed and continuation funding for organizations seeking programmatic funding pertaining to STEM education at all levels. 

• STEM Sprouts: An Early Education STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) program designed to introduce young children, typically between the ages of 3 and 10, to the foundational concepts and skills within these four fields. Our program aims to foster curiosity, critical thinking, problem-solving abilities, and a love for learning in children from a very early age. 
• STEM Stars: Middle and High School Advanced STEM program funding. Programming can take place before, during, or after school. We want to encourage programs that are successfully preparing interested students who wish to be fully prepared for their intended college STEM major by exposing them to advanced topics in science, engineering, computer science, and more. 
• Teen Tech Competition: As a Foundation, we are interested in supporting large STEM-related organizations that are interested in creating or continuing a tech competition for local youth. Organizations would be required to operate under certain (but flexible) parameters and are encouraged to let the participating students lead the way in building out the actual competition’s layout. We believe in the power of collaboration and competition and want to empower our future doctors, developers, and scientists to forge their own paths.
• Glenn W. Bailey Research Fellowship: Research Fellowship Grants for Doctoral Candidates and Post-Doctoral Researchers
• The STEM Scholars Grants will be made to organizations supporting post-secondary students pursuing or interested in STEM degrees or working towards a degree in a STEM-related field. Colleges and Universities that have invested in careful planning and consideration of various elements of their STEM programs that are providing students with a comprehensive and engaging educational experience should apply. Various funding opportunities include options below but are not limited to them:

1. Review Sessions
2. Working Groups
3. Project Presentation Forums
4. In-House Competitions and Showcases
5. STEM Clubs
6. SIAM/AMS Reading Groups
7. Career Management Counseling Services
8. Lecture Series
9. Research Project Funding
10. Tech Talks
11. Student Clubs and Organizations
12. Summer Camps and Organizations

13. Conferences and Committees

    The program outline was created to give a wide range of funding options. Organizations can meet as little as one criteria if they are able to show a unique aptitude in the development and proven outcomes of the program for which they are requesting funding.

Solicitation limitations:

Potential Grantees can only submit one LOI and wait for a determination or one Grant Application (either program or general). Please don’t submit applications to multiple grant programs within the calendar year - they will be denied. Please do not submit an LOI and a Program Application in the same timeframe.

Other information:

Deadlines: There are no deadlines for submitting letters of inquiry or grant applications. The Foundation’s Board holds meetings at least monthly to review submitted information from the prior month. Take our Eligibility Quiz to get started.

Awards: An average grant from our Foundation typically ranges between $20,000 - $35,000. Grant awards for the STEM Scholars program are capped at $25,000 per grant. The Foundation Board will consider multi-year funding after successfully completing one grant cycle (LOI, Application, Grant Report). We do not grant multi-year awards to first-time grantees.

Sponsor FAQs

Cornerstone: Learning for Living

Overview:

The Cornerstone: Learning for Living initiative aims to reinvigorate the role of the humanities in general education, and in doing so, expose a broad array of students to the power of the humanities; help students of all backgrounds build a sense of belonging and community; strengthen the coherence and cohesiveness of general education; and increase teaching opportunities for humanities faculty.

Two curricular components of the Cornerstone program model are especially notable:  

1. Gateway courses aimed at incoming students that are anchored in a common set of transformative texts help build intellectual community among students as well as faculty through a common learning and teaching experience.
2. Thematically organized clusters of courses that bring humanistic inquiry to problems in business, health, engineering, and other technical fields help students appreciate that technical problems cannot be addressed exclusively through technical solutions. 

Criteria for Project Proposals: Institutions will be selected based on the design and scale of their proposed programs. Selection criteria for both planning and implementation requests are described in further detail below:

• A faculty-led and faculty-owned initiative
• A common intellectual experience anchored in transformative texts for incoming students
• Coherent pathways through general education
• Student reach, particularly for STEM and other pre-professional majors
• Sustainability
• Assessment
• Dissemination

Other information:

Timeline: Requests for grant support will be considered following a two-stage application process Concept papers for planning and implementation awards must be submitted by December 1, 2025 to [email protected]. Applicants will receive status notifications by February 2026. Applicants who are invited to submit proposals will be expected to finalize their applications by early April 2026. Work supported by the grant may begin as early as summer 2026.

All concept papers should list two co-PIs who are tenured or tenure-track faculty and include a provisional list of faculty members who are interested in teaching with transformative texts. 

Interested applicants may wish to refer to this toolkit that distills lessons learned in setting up a Cornerstone program. For additional details, please see this list of frequently asked questions.

Award Types: Implementation grants of varying amounts, up to $300,000 over 24 months, will be made to each funded project participating in this initiative. The size of the implementation grant award will be based on the scope of the project. Planning grants up to $25,000 over 6-12 months are strongly encouraged to lay the groundwork for successful curricular reform and faculty professional development.

Research Grants on Education: Small

Overview:

The Small Research Grants on Education Program supports education research projects that will contribute to the improvement of education, broadly conceived, with budgets up to $50,000 for projects ranging from one to five years. Eligible investigators may also request additional supplemental funds for a course release.

We accept applications two times per year.

This program is “field-initiated” in that proposal submissions are not in response to a specific request for a particular research topic, discipline, design, or method. Our goal for this program is to support rigorous, intellectually ambitious and technically sound research that is relevant to the most pressing questions and compelling opportunities in education. We seek to support scholarship that develops new foundational knowledge that may have a lasting impact on educational discourse.

We recognize that learning occurs across the life course as well as across settings— from the classroom to the workplace, to family and community contexts and even onto the playing field—any of which may, in the right circumstance, provide the basis for rewarding study that makes significant contributions to the field. We value work that fosters creative and open-minded scholarship, engages in deep inquiry, and examines robust questions related to education. To this end, this program supports proposals from multiple disciplinary and methodological perspectives, both domestically and internationally, from scholars at various stages in their career. We anticipate that proposals will span a wide range of topics and disciplines that innovatively investigate questions central to education, including for example education, anthropology, philosophy, psychology, sociology, law, economics, history, or neuroscience, among others.

Moreover, we expect and welcome methodological diversity in answering pressing questions; thus, we are open to projects that utilize a wide array of research methods including quantitative, qualitative, mixed-methods, ethnographies, computational modeling, design-based research, participatory methods, and historical research, to name a few. We are open to projects that might incorporate data from multiple and varied sources, span a sufficient length of time as to achieve a depth of understanding, and/or work closely with practitioners or community members over the life of the project.

Solicitation limitations:

PIs and Co-PIs may not submit more than one research proposal to the Spencer Foundation at a time. This restriction applies to the Small Grants Program, Large Grants Program, Racial Equity Research Grants Program, and Research-Practice Partnership Program. If the PI or any of the Co-PIs currently have a research proposal under consideration in any of these programs, they are required to wait until a final decision has been made on the pending proposal before they can submit a new proposal.

Other information:

The Small Research Grants on Education Program supports education research projects that will contribute to the improvement of education, broadly conceived, with budgets up to $50,000 for projects ranging from one to five years. Eligible investigators may also request additional supplemental funds for a course release.

Developmental Sciences

Overview:

The Developmental Sciences program supports basic research that advances our understanding of perceptual, cognitive, linguistic, social, cultural, and biological processes related to human development across the lifespan. Research supported by this program will expand our knowledge of the underlying developmental processes that support social, cognitive, and behavioral functioning, thereby illuminating ways for individuals to live productive lives as members of society.

The Developmental Sciences program supports research that addresses developmental processes within the domains of perceptual, cognitive, social, emotional, language, and motor development across the lifespan by working with any appropriate populations for the topics of interest including infants, children, adolescents, adults (including aging populations), and non-human animals. The program also supports research investigating factors that affect developmental change, including family, peers, school, community, culture, media, physical, genetic, and epigenetic influences. The program funds research that incorporates multidisciplinary, multi-method, and/or longitudinal approaches; develops new methods, models, and theories for studying development; and integrates different processes (e.g., memory, emotion, perception, cognition), levels of analysis (e.g., behavioral, social, neural) and time scales. The program funds basic research that advances our understanding of developmental processes and mechanisms; the program does not fund clinical trials and/or research focused primarily on health outcomes.

The program seeks to support research that (1) involves diverse methodologies and theoretical perspectives; (2) includes participants from a range of communities, ethnicities, socioeconomic backgrounds, and cultures; and (3) helps diversify research project leadership (PIs and co-PIs), ideas, and approaches via equity-centered collaborative models. Proposals that include participants from historically marginalized groups and/or groups underrepresented in developmental science research should demonstrate cultural competence within the research team to conduct research with these communities. PIs should provide clear evidence of equity-centered collaborative practices with community members.

A list of recent awards made by the program demonstrates the range of sub-fields, methods, and topics typically supported by the program. If a researcher is unsure whether the Developmental Sciences Program and NSF more broadly are appropriate for a proposal topic, they are encouraged to email a one-page summary of their project to the program officer(s) before a proposal submission.

Additional Relevant Funding Opportunities
The NSF Developmental Sciences Program supports multiple types of proposals:

• Standard Research Proposals
• Conference/Workshop Proposals
• Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) Supplemental Funding Requests
• Non-Academic Research Internships for Graduate Students (INTERN) Supplemental Funding Requests
• Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program Proposals
• Mid-career Advancement (MCA) program supplemental funding
• Career-life balance supplemental funding
• Facilitating Research at Primarily Undergraduate Institutions: Research in Undergraduate Institutions (RUI) and Research Opportunity Awards (ROA) Proposals and Supplemental Funding Requests
• Research Coordination Network (RCN) Proposals
• Rapid Response Research (RAPID) Proposals
• Early-concept Grants for Exploratory Research (EAGER) Proposals
• Research Advanced by Interdisciplinary Science & Engineering (RAISE) Proposals.

Solicitation limitations:

Limit on Number of Proposals per PI or co-PI: 1

Other information:

In addition to consulting the NSF awards database, it is often useful for interested proposers to submit (via email) a summary of no more than one page so that a program director can advise the investigator on the fit of the project for DS before the preparation of a full proposal.

Based on a need for portfolio diversity, we encourage recent recipients to explore alternative funding opportunities rather than seek additional funding from Developmental Sciences.

Awards: While there are no specific rules about budget limitations, a typical project funded through the Developmental Sciences program is approximately three years in duration with a total cost budget, including both direct and indirect costs, between $100,000 and $200,000 per year. The Developmental Sciences program also considers proposals for workshops and small conferences on a case-by-case basis. These typically have total cost budgets, including direct and indirect costs, of approximately $35,000. Conference proposals may only be submitted following an invitation from the Program Directors.

Research on the Science and Technology Enterprise: Indicators, Statistics, and Methods

Overview:

NCSES welcomes proposals for research, conferences, and studies to advance the understanding of the S&T enterprise and encourage development of methods that will improve the quality of our data. Research could include: improved approaches to indicator construction and presentation, new S&T indicator development, strengthening of data collection methodologies and privacy protection to improve surveys that collect S&T data, investigations of alternate data sources to study S&T topics, analyses to inform STEM education and workforce policy, and innovations in the communication of S&T statistics. NCSES encourages proposals that analyze NCSES data or NCSES data in conjunction with those from other sources but does not limit the work to the analysis of the data it collects.

AREAS OF INTEREST
Potential topics for consideration include but are not limited to:

• Improving analytical techniques to produce better indicators of issues related to: (1) the characteristics of scientists and engineers, (2) the demand, supply, and career pathways of science and engineering personnel, including those without bachelor’s degrees (3) outcomes and impacts of research and development (R&D) expenditures in various sectors, countries, and fields including emerging science and technology fields, (4) estimates of current and near-term future S&T resources; and (5) measures of U.S. competitiveness in S&T.
• Developing new and/or improved methods of measuring the inputs, outputs, interactions, and social or economic impacts of S&T activities. These methods could involve the use of administrative records, social media, or novel data extraction methods.
• Developing new data, analyses, and/or indicators of the globalization of science, engineering, and technology, as well as analyses leading to a better understanding of the changing global economy. This could include: international comparisons of S&T capabilities and activities, indicators of international education and mobility of scientists and engineers, and foreign investment in S&T activities.
• Improving data collection methodologies for S&T surveys and censuses, including those conducted by NCSES. Such studies could research improvements in the target population, sample frame, and sample design, focusing on coverage and sampling error. Also included are developments of new data collection techniques and operational efficiencies such as adaptive survey design and passive data collection. Studies focused on the respondent experience and reduction in respondent burden such as modular survey design are also relevant.
• Improving analysis and data processing methodologies for NCSES data by researching topics such as imputation techniques, privacy protections, or data consistency with related surveys or administrative data. This research could also involve investigations of linkage of alternate data sources to supplement NCSES data and reporting.
• Pursuing innovations in the dissemination of S&T statistics to encourage communication of the information in a timely and user-friendly fashion. This could include interactive visualizations, studies of user needs, and new reporting formats for indicators.

NCSES' core mission areas are:

• The collection, acquisition, analysis, reporting, and dissemination of statistical data on science, engineering, technology and research and development related to the United States and other nations;
• Support of research that uses NCSES data;
• Methodological research in areas related to its work; and
• Education and training of researchers in the use of large-scale nationally representative data sets

Alignment with NCSES Mission
Proposals that do not target one or more of NCSES' core mission areas will be returned without review. The NCSES program overlaps with many other research activities and areas at NSF. Researchers with projects that do not meet specific NCSES criteria might consider other NSF programs and activities. Those programs that may be of particular interest to NCSES researchers are: Science of Science: Discovery, Communication, and Impact (SoS: DCI), Methodology, Measurement and Statistics (MMS), Science of Organizations (SoO), Science and Technology Studies (STS), SBE Science of Broadening Participation (SBE SBP), and Partnerships for Innovation (PFI).

Other information:

Estimated Number of Awards: 5 to 10
Based on the quality of proposals and the availability of funds, NSF expects to make 5 to 10 awards each year.
Anticipated Funding Amount: $1,500,000

Sponsor Deadlines: January 20, 2026 and June 16, 2026

Climate Change and Human Health Seed Grants

Overview:

The Burroughs Wellcome Fund aims to stimulate the growth of new connections between thinkers working in largely disconnected fields, who, together, may change the course of climate change’s impact on human health. Between Fall 2023 and Summer 2026, we will dedicate $1 million to supporting small, early-stage grants of $2,500–$50,000 toward achieving this goal.

We are primarily, but not exclusively, interested in activities that build connections between basic and early biomedical scientific approaches and ecological, environmental, geological, geographic, and planetary-scale thinking, as well as with population-focused fields, including epidemiology and public health, demography, economics, and urban planning. Also of interest is work piloting new approaches or interactions aimed at reducing the impact of health-centered activities, such as developing more sustainable systems for healthcare, care delivery, and biomedical research.

Another area of interest is preparation for the impacts of extreme weather and other crises that can lead to large-scale disruptions, immediately affecting human health and the delivery of healthcare. Public outreach, climate communication, and education efforts focused on the intersection of climate and health are also appropriate for this call. This program supports work conceived through many kinds of creative thinking. Successful applicants include academic scientists, physicians, and public health experts, community organizations, science outreach centers, non-biomedical academic departments, and more.

Climate Change and Human Health Seed Grants: Small grants to promote the growth of new connections between scholars, practitioners, educators, and/or communicators working to understand, spread the word about, and mitigate the impacts of climate change on human health. Review will be conducted quarterly. After each quarterly review, we will support, decline, or send proposals back to applicants for revision, but may hold some proposals over for a future review. Recommended revisions may include suggestions that separate groups of applicants submitting similar proposals work together to develop a single proposal or that applicants consider becoming involved in efforts aligned with work funded in earlier quarters.

This call focuses on developing partnerships. Proposals from single institutions must develop partnerships that do not already occur naturally: for example, proposals from departments that draw students from the same shared graduate program are not responsive to this call. Proposals from more than one institution are responsive. Academic institutions, professional societies, and advocacy organizations are only a few of the appropriate drivers of proposals. Only non-profit institutions may be supported by BWF’s award, but non-profits may involve for profit organizations in their proposals. This program does not support biomedical research projects proposed by individual investigators, but only by collaborative teams. 

Eligible proposals will include rationale/vision for the project, including who it is intended to impact. 

Solicitation limitations:

Applicant organizations may submit multiple proposals, but an individual may only serve as a principal investigator/project director on one application during each review period.

Individuals may only serve twice as directors (principal investigators/project directors) for proposals supported over time by this program. Current and past awardees from other BWF programs are eligible to apply.

Other information:

NOTE: Beginning April 30, 2025, we will no longer accept phone calls or emails regarding the Climate Change and Human Health Seed Grants program. Instead, we will hold nine Zoom sessions per quarter to address questions from potential applicants. Sign up for notification for information. Only .org, .edu, and .ca email domains are eligible for subscription.

Proposals will be accepted on a rolling basis through July 2026. A review will be conducted quarterly. Deadline dates for the upcoming cycles are:

• Oct 23, 2025
• Jan 22, 2026
• April 23, 2026
• July 23, 2026

Integrated Data Systems & Services (IDSS)

Overview:

Scope. The IDSS program supports national-scale performant operational systems and services that broadly facilitate open, data-intensive and artificial intelligence-driven science and engineering research, innovation, and education. IDSS projects should be aimed to broadly impact the science and engineering research and education community in a transdisciplinary and demonstrably multi-disciplinary way, enabling researchers and educators from diverse domains and disciplines to utilize research data, integrate data, and connect data sources with other scientific resources such as computing resources, facilities, instrumentation and repositories. Projects that aim to primarily benefit a single science discipline, domain, project, or application are not supported. 

Emphasis on integration. The IDSS program supports projects that demonstrably contribute to the vision of an integrated, federated and accessible advanced research cyberinfrastructure ecosystem that meets the Nation’s foundational needs for world-leading data, computing, and networking capabilities.  Projects are expected to leverage and interconnect with other existing operational cyberinfrastructure systems and services and other data and relevant facilities, whether supported by NSF or by other entities, as appropriate to project objectives. Inline with this emphasis, all proposed projects, including collaborative projects, must be submitted as a single proposal in which a single award is being requested (PAPPG Chapter II.E.3.a). The involvement of partner organizations should be supported through subawards administered by the submitting organization.

Scientific data lifecycle. The IDSS program aims to develop a portfolio of projects that collectively enable data utilization pathways and workflows across the end-to-end scientific data lifecycle. The IDSS program has an inclusive and flexible view of the scientific data lifecycle that may include stages and functionalities such as acquisition, transfer, management, exploration, analysis, curation, sharing, synthesis, discovery, and archiving, as may be defined by a project or community. A given IDSS project need not support all stages of a reference data lifecycle but must be clear about how the project enables one or more scientific pathways through all or few stages of a lifecycle. 

Storage and curation. The IDSS program supports integrated resources, services and environments to enable hosting, manipulation of, and workflows for research data. The IDSS program does not support costs for permanent long-term hosting, storage, archival, and curation of the research data itself. Projects that involve partnerships, fee-based models, or other such mechanisms to support these long-term data storage and curation costs are encouraged. 

Innovation and adaptability: A portion of an IDSS project is expected to be dedicated to innovation and improvement of operational services over the lifetime of the award. Proposed projects designed to enable research communities to build customized tools and capabilities upon the IDSS-supported project infrastructure are also encouraged. Projects that have the goal of cyberinfrastructure innovation without operations expectations and plans are not supported. 

Relationship to other funding programs. Proposed IDSS projects should not be appropriate for funding by any other current NSF programs or solicitations. The IDSS program is complementary to other production/operations-oriented national-scale cyberinfrastructure programs supported by the Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure (OAC) including the Advanced Systems and Services Program (ACSS) and the ACCESS coordinated services program. ACSS and ACCESS address advanced computing needs of the broad S&E community; the IDSS program focuses on data infrastructure. The IDSS program is also complementary to the OAC CSSI and CC* programs. CC* emphasizes institutional and regional capabilities and CSSI primarily supports data and software infrastructure development; IDSS supports national-scale operational projects. Prospective proposers of pilot- and prototype-stage projects should consider other OAC programs such as CSSI or other relevant NSF programs. 

Programmatic areas of interest 
Current areas of particular interest to the IDSS program include, but are not limited to and may involve a combination of:

• Projects that facilitate the connection of data sources with advanced computing resources and analytic environments in integrative ways for an appropriately broad array of use cases. 
• Projects that address the emerging data-intensive workflows and data integration needs of artificial-intelligence (AI)-driven research (including research about AI and research using AI capabilities). 
• Projects that focus on enabling one or more specific points in the data lifecycle applied at a national scale. 

Projects that enhance the ability of the research and education community to access and utilize open research data supported by other federal agencies are welcome, provided that such projects are not primarily benefitting a single science discipline, domain, project, or application, and are complementary to, not overlapping with investments being made by those other agencies for similar purposes. 

Solicitation limitations:

An organization may submit only one proposal as lead institution for each of Category I and Category II for each solicitation deadline but may be a subawardee on other Category I and II proposals responding to this solicitation. The restriction to no more than one submitted proposal as lead institution is to help ensure that there is appropriate institutional commitment necessary for responsible oversight, by the potential recipient institution, of a national data infrastructure resource. This restriction does not apply to Category III proposals. 

In the event that any organization exceeds this limit, any proposal submitted to this solicitation from an organization after the first proposal is received at NSF will be returned without review. No exceptions will be made. 

Category III. There are no restrictions or limits. 

Other information:

IDSS offers the following three categories of proposals: 

• Category I. Development, deployment, and operation of novel national-scale integrated data systems and services, which may include interfacing with or leveraging other existing capabilities, systems and services as appropriate to the project. 
  • Between $10 million to $30 million for up to 5 years. Potentially renewable.
• Category II. Transition of established smaller scale, regional, pilot, or prototype data-focused systems and services to national-scale production/operational quality/level. This may also include enhancement and expansion of existing national-scale data-focused operational systems and services. 
  • Up to $9 million for up to 3 years. Potentially renewable.
• Category III. Planning grants for future potential development/deployment or transition/enhancement IDSS projects. 
  • Up to $500,000 for up to 2 years. Not renewable. 

Letters of Intent: Not required