The mystery of funding decisions

This week, the National Institute on Aging (NIA) put out a blog detailing their complex use of multiple funding lines to make funding decisions in various priority areas. The NIA does this to offer transparency and clarity to researchers. Basically the funding line identifies the minimum score that will be funded in a particular area, such as Alzheimer's and all grants scored better than the funding line are then funded.

The NIA blog joked that to understand their funding system you "need an advanced degree in mathematics," but that got me thinking about the wide range of ways that different agencies make funding decisions. These decisions are often made using some semblance of the following approaches:

Scores/Peer Review
Many agencies have a rigorous peer review process to assess the science or the approach proposed by the researcher. Some agencies, such as the NIH and NSF, recruit reviewers with the right expertise to assess the proposed science in their grant applications. However, even at these institutions, there are oftentimes grant reviewers who are not experts in your precise area reviewing your grant. This makes it important to strike a balance in your grant writing that speaks to the experts reading your grant, but also is clear and compelling to those who are not experts in your area.

Priorities
When it comes down to it, not all grants that score well in peer review are funded, and in fact some grants that receive slightly worse scores may get funded ahead of the most stellar if they are a better fit for the agency's priorities. Although PIs sometimes look at agencies as piggy banks, that is certainly not how those in an agency see themselves. Instead of seeing their responsibility as handing out money to do the best research, they see themselves as the stewards of a mission with distinct goals in which they are invested. Thus, it is essential that grant applications incorporate the mission and goals of an agency for them to realize success.

Researcher
Who you are as the researcher, or who composes your research team needs to be the right fit for the project you're proposing. As we often tell our researchers, you must show reviewers that you are the best person to conduct the research you're proposing. Unfortunately, it's not enough to come up with a truly great research project. You need to have that and you need to have the dream team or be the dream PI to carry it out.

It's also true that in the grants world, for many agencies, it's who you know. Some of our PIs who have been funded by the Department of Defense (DoD) suggest that this is a big part of the DoD's funding decisions. The DoD likes to fund researchers that they know and that they know do good work. This speaks to why it's so important to reach out to and work with Program Officers at agencies when they are available to you. Working with a PO gives you a leg up in understanding what an agency wants, but also lets the PO know you, which can also give you an advantage in some cases.

Director
At many agencies, the Director is the one who gets to make final funding decisions and is charged with making the best decision for the agency. This is true for Program Directors at the NSF and Institute and Center Directors at the NIH. Certainly, this is frustrating to PI's when a Director makes an ultimate decision that does not fund them, but the Director has a purview of all of these other mechanisms and can make the best decision for the agency to further their mission.

Not all agencies use all of these approaches to determine funding, so it's important for you to do your homework on the agency, their mission, goals, and their processes even before you sit down to write your proposal.

Resources (examples of how funding decisions are made):
Transparency and funding lines - NIA Blog
Grant Review Process - National Endowment for the Arts