Frequently Asked Questions about VPDoR-Managed Funding

The Office of the Vice Provost and Dean of Research (VPDoR) offers several internal awards to help Stanford researchers prepare for competitive extramural funding.

Find answers to the most common questions below. We encourage you to check the specific program page for more detailed information (for quick access, use the "Finding Funding" tab above in our website menu). Please contact us if you have additional questions.

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Jump to a program section:

• General Information on all VPDoR internal awards
• Propel Grant
• Grant Booster
• International Research Exploration Seed Grant

Tips for a Strong Application

• Write for a General Academic Audience: Reviewers may be from different fields. Use clear language and avoid jargon.
• Be Specific: Provide concrete details about your research idea, activities, and funding plan.
• Align with Review Criteria: Make sure every part of your application addresses the key review criteria as described by the program.

Need More Help?

• See the "Writing your Proposal" tab above for general grant preparation tips & resources, including guidance on What Makes a Successful Proposal.

Who is eligible to apply?

Stanford faculty who meet the university's PI eligibility requirements (i.e., members of the Academic Council and University Medical Line faculty).

Please review each program announcement and follow the instructions as detailed in the call for applications.

How do you define a team?

For our internal funding program purposes, a  team constitutes at least one Stanford PI and one or more principal investigator collaborators.

Additional collaborators from external institutions are allowed. Projects with Stanford listed as a participant or subawardee may be considered, with a strong preference given to Stanford-led teams.

How do I submit my application?

Each internal funding program has its own application process. Visit the individual program page to review eligibility, deadlines, and application instructions. If the program is currently accepting applications, you’ll find a link to the application form on the following pages.

• Grant Booster
• Propel Grants
• IRE Seed Grant

May I submit multiple applications to the same grant program?

Yes, but with some limitations:

• Principal Investigators may have only one application as lead PI under review, per VPDoR-managed internal grant program.
• Recipients of previous VPDoR awards must submit their impact survey or end-of-grant report before they can receive additional awards.

May I apply to more than one VPDoR-managed program?

Yes.

Awardees may apply for future funding; however, applications will only be considered for those teams who have proven to be good stewards of previous VPDoR-funded awards.

Recipients with active awards must wait until after their final report submission before they can receive an award to any other VPDoR-managed internal grant program.

Do applications need to be submitted to OSR/RMG for review?

No.

Proposed budgets do not need institutional representative review for these internally funded programs; however, we highly encourage applicants to work with their department administrator/financial analyst on budget development.

Is there a budget template available?

The Office of Research Administration has resources to help you build successful budgets and budget justifications at https://ora.stanford.edu/resources/proposal-preparation-resources/budgets-and-budget-justifications.

How do I know which costs are allowable for internal funds?

Please review the Stanford Purchasing Policies and Guidelines and contact your department finance, grants manager, or research administrator if you have questions regarding allowable expenses.

Projects are encouraged to utilize existing institutional resources, including but not limited to Stanford Shared Facilities or the Stanford Research Computing Center.

Can VPDoR internal awards cover costs from before the project start date?

Expenses covered by VPDoR internal awards must be for work that takes place during the award period. Costs for activities or purchases that happened before the award start date are not allowed.

Do I need IRB approval prior to submitting the grant application?

If your project involves use of human subjects and you do not have an active protocol, you will need to create a new protocol before the internal grant can be awarded. (Do I need an IRB Submission?).

The Human & Animal Research Compliance Office provides additional information regarding Human Subject Research determinations.

What should I do if my project won’t finish by the approved end date?

Internal Award recipients may request a no-cost extension if there are delays due to unusual circumstances. VPDoR reserves the right to deny a request that is not well-justified or reasonable.

Requests beyond 12 months from the original end date will not be approved.

Please use this No-Cost Extension Request form at least 30 days prior to the award closeout date.

Can expenses be posted after the project's end date?

University Research Awards allow a short trailing period for expenses that occurred during the project period to post, up to 85 days after the end date.

However, all invoice payment requests must be submitted before the project end date.

Whom do I contact if I have additional questions?

We welcome the opportunity to answer questions. Please email us at rdo-funding-programs@stanford.edu.

Who is eligible to apply?

The lead applicant must be a Stanford faculty member with PI status (Academic Council or UML faculty).

School of Medicine PIs must have at least one co-PI with a home department from another Stanford school.

The project must be targeting an external funding opportunity within 12 months.

The external funding opportunity must be significantly larger in scope, budget, or team size than typical single-investigator grants in the discipline.

What types of projects are appropriate for Propel Grants?

The Propel Grants are intended to improve competitiveness of external funding applications for projects that exceed typical scope, budget, or team size expectations. These projects should be complex and have the potential for significant, transformative societal or research impacts. The term "large-scale" is intentionally flexible to accommodate different disciplines, but the focus is on projects similar to those typically funded as major research centers or initiatives. These projects usually involve a combination of two or more of the following characteristics:

• Large budgets
• Collaboration across multiple departments or schools
• A multidisciplinary focus
• Participation from external collaborators or institutions
• A strong outreach and education component

Examples include:

• STEM: NSF Science and Technology Centers, DOE Energy Frontier Research Centers, NIH P50/U54, DARPA large-team grants.
• Arts, Humanities, Social Sciences: NEH Collaborative Research Grants, Mellon Foundation large-scale initiatives, NEA Grants for Arts Projects.
• Other Large-Scale Opportunities: Cross-sector or multi-institutional projects with substantial budgets and broad disciplinary integration.

If unsure, applicants are encouraged to consult with RDO staff before applying.

Does a project with strong social impact qualify?

Social impact alone does not meet the Propel Grant “beyond the usual” requirement. The program prioritizes projects that are complex in scale, scope, or team structure, rather than those that are primarily conceptually or socially significant. For example, large interdisciplinary center-type grants are preferred.

What kinds of projects are not appropriate for this funding?

Propel Grants support proposals that are close to submission for unusually large or complex funding opportunities. Two things most often make a project a poor fit: it is too early in development, or the target funding mechanism is too small in scale.

Projects that are too early. Propel Grants are not seed grants. Before applying, your project should be well developed, with key team members in place and a clear plan for how Propel funds will strengthen your proposal's competitiveness. We do not fund initial team formation, team building, concept development, or preliminary data collection. We expect teams to have already completed the essential preliminary work their proposal requires. Propel funds are for the final strategic push, the activities that move a solid proposal to a highly competitive one.

Funding mechanisms that are too small in scale. Mechanisms that are not within scope include standard investigator-initiated research grants, even when the proposed science is ambitious or the team is interdisciplinary. Standard investigator-initiated research grants fall outside that focus, including the NIH Research Project Grant (R01) for biomedical research, NSF single-PI research grants, and typical foundation project grants. If your target opportunity is one of these, we would still welcome a conversation, as RDO offers other forms of proposal support or we can help you identify the appropriate support team that may be a better match.

If you are unsure whether your target opportunity qualifies, contact us at rdo-funding-programs@stanford.edu before you apply.

What do you mean by "beyond the usual" in scale?

The definition of “beyond the usual” will vary considerably across disciplines and research areas. It is up to the applicant to explain how the scope of the project, budget, or team size goes “beyond the usual” in scale for their discipline.

Propel Grants support projects that exceed standard disciplinary expectations in one or more of the following ways:

• Research Scope: The project requires a broad, interdisciplinary approach, integrates novel methodologies, or addresses a complex societal or scientific challenge.
• Award Budget: The external funding request significantly surpasses routine work to advance an individual's scientific career or small-team research grants, such as complex, large-scale, or center-type grants which are often better addressed by interdisciplinary teams and may involve multiple scientific/administrative components.
• Team Composition: The proposal involves a multi-PI, multi-institutional, or cross-sector collaboration beyond routine collaborations, requiring coordination of diverse expertise.

Applicants must justify how their project meets one or more of these criteria in their application.

The 20x guideline would make my request too small to be useful. Does it still apply to my field?

Propel support is normally proportional to the size of the external opportunity: roughly 20:1, or $15,000 against a $300,000 target. This ratio is a guideline, not an eligibility threshold.

In fields where the largest available external mechanisms are modest relative to other disciplines, strict application of the ratio can reduce a request below the amount needed to accomplish anything meaningful. If your target opportunity is genuinely beyond the usual for your field but the ratio would leave your request too small to be useful, email us at rdo-funding-programs@stanford.edu before you apply and we will talk through what is workable.

Flexibility is intended for disciplines with a limited landscape of large-scale funding opportunities. Requests are still evaluated against the scope of the activities proposed.

What makes a project large-scale or complex enough for a Propel Grant?

Competitive applications typically involve:

• Large, interdisciplinary teams across departments, schools, or institutions.
• Multiple integrated components or research thrusts.
• Significant budgets.
• Complex project coordination needs, such as shared research infrastructure, cross-site efforts, or multi-level management plans.

These expectations stem from the external funding mechanism itself, not from the complexity of the science or project alone. They go well beyond a PI’s typical “bread and butter” grants, which are part of their regular research portfolio and follow familiar, field-standard expectations.

Propel Grants focus on opportunities where the scale, structure, and coordination needs rise to the level of center-style initiatives.

How can I make the case that the external funding mechanism is "beyond the usual"?

Ambition is a comparison, and it is the applicant's job to supply it. Because every proposal is demanding to the team writing it, describing your project as complex does not by itself show the mechanism is beyond the usual. Three pieces of evidence settle it quickly.

• The mechanism you would normally target, and its typical award size. This is the baseline. If you ordinarily apply for a $400,000 three-year grant and you are targeting a $6M center, the gap speaks for itself. If the two are close in size and structure, the target is probably routine for your field.
• Whether anyone in your department or unit has held an award of this type. This separates a mechanism that is genuinely rare in your setting from one that is simply new to you. A mechanism several colleagues hold is standard for your unit, however demanding it would be for you personally.
• What the sponsor requires that a standard grant does not. Take this from the solicitation rather than from your plans: required multiple institutions, a governance or management plan, linked projects or cores, a preliminary proposal stage, a site visit, a required outreach component. These are structural facts about the mechanism, which is what “beyond the usual” turns on.

A few sentences is enough. What matters is that the comparison is on the page rather than left for the reader to infer.

Can I use a Propel Grant to support a resubmission of a previously submitted external proposal?

Yes.

Propel Grants can support strategic activities for proposals being resubmitted to external funding agencies. Resubmissions often benefit from targeted efforts to strengthen competitiveness based on prior reviewer feedback.

Because resubmissions have unique needs, we ask that you contact the Research Development Office (RDO) before preparing your application. Email us at rdo-funding-programs@stanford.edu. RDO will provide tailored guidance and instructions that best fit your resubmission needs.

What can the Propel Grant funds be used for?

Propel funds activities that make a submittable proposal stronger, not activities that make it submittable. If you could not submit without the proposed activity, it is likely routine preparation and outside the program.

Propel funds should be used to elevate and refine an already well-developed proposal. Supported activities must go beyond standard proposal preparation and should directly strengthen the competitiveness of the external submission.

Examples include:

• Secure targeted access to archives, databases, or specialized collections to strengthen the proposal’s evidentiary foundation.
• Conduct additional confirmatory experiments or analyses that enhance competitiveness (beyond core preliminary data required for submission).
• Engage key stakeholders through structured consultations or advisory input to strengthen proposal relevance and implementation readiness.
• Bring in specialized consultants (e.g., ethics, evaluation, data analysis, project management) to elevate proposal rigor and responsiveness.
• Hire short-term personnel such as student workers or support staff, for work directly related to Propel Grant-funded activities.
• Implement methodological enhancements (e.g., triangulation or validation protocols) that strengthen rigor and credibility.
• Apply advanced statistical or computational approaches to deepen analysis of existing data and strengthen technical justification.
• Organize workshops or structured planning meetings to strengthen collaboration, integration, and project governance.
• Perform targeted secondary analyses of existing datasets to reinforce key claims and strengthen the proposal narrative.
• Deploy surveys, questionnaires, or structured data collection efforts that directly support proposal competitiveness and sponsor expectations (not broad exploratory research).

Proposal Document Development (Up to $5,000 of any award tier)

Up to $5,000 of the Propel Grant may be budgeted for proposal refinement and presentation, such as:

• Conducting an expert review of the proposal draft.
• Coordinating a proposal writing day to address feedback from mock review panels.
• Engaging professional grant writers or science communicators to ensure the proposal is persuasive, clear, and accessible to interdisciplinary or non-expert reviewers.
• Hiring a graphic designer or scientific illustrator for key proposal graphics or branding.

All applicable university fees apply. Propel funds may be used to cover these costs when directly tied to Propel-supported activities (e.g., Visiting Student Researcher fees, shared facility hourly rates, dedicated computing resources on Sherlock, Oak storage).

What types of expenses are not allowed?

Expenses must be prospective; Propel Grant funds cannot be used to cover activities or costs that have already been incurred prior to the grant award period.

Propel Grants do not fund routine proposal preparation tasks, including but not limited to:

• Normal proposal writing or editing, such as drafting standard sections or revising text for clarity.
• Core administrative costs, including standard staff effort required for submission.
• Collection of baseline research data, unless the activity is clearly strategic and directly enhances the proposal’s competitiveness.
• Conference travel that is not directly tied to advancing the external proposal.

Salary and effort for the PI or co-PIs. Propel Grants do not cover faculty salary or effort. Propel funds pay for the costs of the activities themselves. Short-term student workers or support staff hired specifically for Propel-funded work are allowable.

Contingency or buffer amounts. A line item for unforeseen costs is not an allowable expense. Every cost in your budget needs an activity attached and a basis for the amount. A buffer has neither, so there is nothing for a reviewer to evaluate.

Services that duplicate what the Research Development Office (RDO) already provides. Propel funds cannot be used to pay for services that duplicate what RDO provides at no cost as part of its standard service, such as funding opportunity analysis, proposal strategy, draft feedback and editing, project management, and coordination of internal red team review, unless approved in advance. If you are considering outside support in any of these areas, please contact rdo-funding-programs@stanford.edu before you build it into your budget so we can discuss it.

Activities needed to produce a submittable, compliant application do not qualify for Propel Grant support. The test is: if you could not submit the proposal without the activity, it is routine preparation. If the proposal could go out without the proposed activities and would simply be weaker, that is what Propel funds. Propel provides the “cherry on top,” the strategic enhancements that go beyond standard preparation.

What are the two funding tiers?

	Small Propel Grant	Large Propel Grant
Award amount	$5,000 or less; up to $7,500 in some cases	$7,501 to $50,000
Maximum award period	6 months	12 months
Deadlines	Rolling	Rolling
Time to decision	~ 2 weeks	~ 6 weeks
Application length	3 pages	7 pages

What justifies a Small Propel Grant request above $5,000?

The Small Propel Grant maximum is $7,500, but most awards are $5,000 or less. Going above that requires a specific kind of case, and it is narrower than most applicants expect.

The test is the cost of one activity, not the number of activities.

A request above $5,000 is considered when a single necessary activity costs more than it usually would, and the budget identifies that cost and explains why it runs high. Adding more activities to the plan does not justify a higher request, however worthwhile those activities are.

Put plainly: the question is not what else you could do with more money. It is why this one thing costs what it costs.

What tends to qualify:

• A specialist whose rate reflects genuinely scarce expertise, where a less expensive alternative would not do the same job.

• A service priced above the usual range because of the scale of the work, such as design or illustration for a center-scale proposal with many integrated components.

• Travel or access that cannot be done remotely and cannot be split, such as a single visit to a partner institution the sponsor expects you to have engaged.

• A facilitator or consultant for a convening whose cost scales with the number of institutions involved.

What does not qualify:

• A second activity added because the ceiling allows it.

• Rounding a $5,200 need up to $7,500.

• Margin against uncertainty.

• A larger request because the external opportunity is large. The 20x guideline is an upper bound, not a floor.

Where to put it. In your list of expenses, add a short note under the line item in question. One or two sentences naming the cost and why it runs high is enough.

What happens if you request more without making the case. Requests may be partially funded. If the application asks for $7,500 but the justification supports $4,800, we will fund $4,800 and tell you why. Asking high is not penalised, but it is not rewarded either, and an unexplained maximum request makes the rest of the budget look less carefully considered.

If you are unsure, email rdo-funding-programs@stanford.edu before you apply. We would rather talk through the budget in advance than reduce it at award.

What should the list of expenses look like for a Small Propel Grant?

Small Propel Grant applications do not include the full Budget and Justification section that Large applications require. They do need a list of expenses and associated costs, and it counts within the 3-page limit.

Keep it simple. One line per expense, with the cost and enough description that a reviewer can see what the money buys. For example:

Expense	Calculation	Amount
Honorarium, red team review	four peers at $450 each	$1,800
Travel, partner site visit	$700 flight x two people	$1,400
Student hourly, secondary data analysis	80 hours at $22/hour	$1,760
	Total requested:	$4,960

Show how each amount was determined. A rate and a quantity, a vendor quote, or a published facility rate is what makes a cost checkable. “Consultant: $1,800” leaves a reviewer guessing; “12 hours at $150/hour” does not.
 

When does my award period start and end?

It starts when you are notified of the funding decision.

It ends at your sponsor's deadline or at the end of your tier's maximum period, whichever comes first. Propel supports pre-submission work, so the funding is not intended to continue past the external proposal submission.

May I apply to both the small and large funding tiers?

Yes.

Principal Investigators may be the lead on consecutive grants for the same project, as long as the combined total requested across all applications does not exceed $50,000. However, applications will only be considered from teams who have proven to be good stewards of previous VPDoR-funded awards and completed the end-of-grant survey/report.

Outstanding reports will prevent all team members from participating in future funding opportunities.

May I submit multiple applications for Propel Grants?

Yes, with an expectation about how those requests are spaced.

Teams may submit more than one Propel Grant application for the same project over time, as long as each request supports a distinct, clearly defined stage of proposal development and the combined total across all awards does not exceed $50,000. This flexibility exists so support can follow the real shape of a large proposal effort. A team might request Propel funds to strengthen a preliminary proposal and then, if invited to submit a full proposal or host a site visit, request additional support for that next stage.

Expect one award per stage. Most teams receive a single award for a given stage, and applications should be built on that assumption.

A second award within the same stage may be considered when the need was not reasonably foreseeable at the time of the first request. In practice that means something changed after you applied: the sponsor issued feedback, revised the solicitation, added a site visit, or a partner withdrew.

Underestimating the cost of work you already proposed is not a basis for a second award within the same stage, because that need was foreseeable. If your first request was too small, tell us at the time rather than returning for a supplement.

Note: Awardees are not eligible to apply for additional Propel Grants until they have submitted the impact survey or end-of-grant report from any previous Propel Grant.

What if the external funding deadline is more than 12 months away?

Wait and apply closer to your sponsor's deadline. Propel is a pre-submission award, and the activities it funds are meant to feed directly into a proposal you are about to submit. The eligibility requirement is that your external proposal has a planned submission date within 12 months of the Propel award.

Rolling deadlines make this straightforward. Because both tiers now accept applications year-round, there is no cycle to catch. Apply when the work you want Propel to fund is the next thing your team needs to do.

There is a limit on the other side as well. Applying too close to your sponsor's deadline leaves too little time to complete meaningful work. If you are unsure how to sequence a request, email us at rdo-funding-programs@stanford.edu before you apply.

How close to my sponsor's deadline can I apply?

Apply while there is still time to do the work. Rolling deadlines mean you can apply whenever you are ready, but Feasibility is a scored criterion and it explicitly includes whether enough time remains before your sponsor's deadline. A strong plan that arrives with a few weeks of working time is difficult to fund.

What is realistic depends on the activity. Some work compresses and some does not. A targeted secondary analysis or a consultant review can often be done in a few weeks. A mock review panel, an external convening, or a stakeholder workshop needs scheduling lead time from people who do not work for you, and those are the activities most likely to slip. If your plan depends on other people's calendars, add more runway than you think you need.

A useful self-check. Write your milestones with dates rather than durations and put your sponsor's deadline at the end. If the last milestone lands within two weeks of the deadline, the plan is probably too tight, because you will also be writing the proposal itself during that period.

If the solicitation posted on short notice. That happens and it is not your fault. Contact us. Lead time is scored rather than an eligibility requirement, so a compressed but genuinely achievable plan can still be funded. Tell us what you would cut if time ran short.

If you are already too close. Email us anyway. We may be able to suggest a smaller, faster version of what you had in mind, and because applications are accepted year-round, a later cycle of the same opportunity remains open to you.

When are the application deadlines?

There are none. Beginning in FY2027 both tiers accept applications on a rolling basis, so you can request funds as needs arise.

Should I include the university infrastructure charge in the budget?

No.

Because of the source of these internal funds, the university infrastructure charge will not be assessed. No indirect charges need to be included in your budget.

How are Propel Grant applications evaluated?

All applications undergo a programmatic review by RDO staff for fit and compliance.

An application in either tier may also receive peer review, a more rigorous evaluation that takes longer. Peer review looks at the significance, feasibility, and overall potential for funding success of the proposed work.

All applications will be screened based on the following criteria:

Ambition of the Targeted Opportunity

• The proposed project goes "beyond the usual" for the discipline in terms of scope, budget, or team size.
• Ambition is judged against disciplinary norms, not against the complexity of the project on its own.

Readiness to Submit

• The proposed project for external funding has an established foundation with existing preliminary work.
• The team demonstrates a collaborative partnership.

Proposed Activities

• The proposed Propel Grant activities will enable a competitive proposal to an external funding agency and increase the likelihood of success in securing external funding. Learn more about what makes a successful grant application on the RDO website.

Appropriate Budget

• The budget is reasonable (realistic and conservative) and reflects essential activities that directly address the stated needs.
• The requested amount justifies the Propel Grant investment and aligns proportionally with the scale of the external funding opportunity.

Feasibility

• The application conveys an achievable research design/approach for the Propel Grant activities.
• The Propel Grant activities can be implemented within the proposed timeline and budget.
• The team is cohesive and possesses sufficient expertise to conduct the research successfully.
• Enough time remains before the sponsor's deadline to complete the proposed activities well.

Potential for External Funding

• The team will be ready to submit a well-aligned proposal to an external funding agency by the end of the Propel Grant period.
• The team has a backup plan for other external funding opportunities if necessary.

How do you suggest the application address the review criteria?

Application Section	Review Criteria	Key Elements to Address
Research Idea for the External Proposal	Ambition of the Targeted Opportunity	Describe the problem or need and the proposed solution. Explain how the project aligns with the Propel Grants' purpose and goes "beyond the usual" for the discipline.
	Potential for External Funding	Clarify how the project will be compelling to external sponsors and aligned with their funding priorities.
	Readiness to Submit	Demonstrate that the research idea is based on an established foundation with existing preliminary work.
Propel Grant Activities	Feasibility	Detail activities supported by the Propel Grant funds, including timelines, milestones, and intended outcomes. Show how these activities can be realistically completed within the grant period.
	Proposed Activities	Explain how the proposed activities will increase the competitiveness of the external funding proposal.
	Appropriate Budget	Outline the budget to demonstrate that it is reasonable, reflects essential activities, and aligns with the project's scale and needs
Team Composition	Feasibility	Demonstrate that the team has the necessary expertise to carry out the Propel Grant activities successfully.
	Readiness to Submit (Large Grants only)	Show the team's collaborative partnership, including readiness and past work. Highlight complementary expertise among team members.
External Funding Plan	Potential for External Funding	Provide a clear plan to apply for external funding, including details on targeted grants, timelines, and backup plans. Justify how the Propel Grant activities will enhance funding success.
Budget and Justification	Budget Appropriateness	Request only what is necessary for the proposed activities. Small Propel Grants: Provide a brief budget table listing each expense and its cost, within the 3-page limit. Requests above $5,000 should make clear what the additional amount makes possible. Large Propel Grants: Provide a detailed breakdown of estimated expenses and justify the requested funds, including any overlap with existing support.
Appendices	Readiness, Feasibility, Potential for External Funding	Include any references or documents (e.g., PDF of targeted external funding opportunities) that support the application and demonstrate preparedness.

Final Tips for Applicants

• Use clear, direct language – Reviewers may not be from your specific field, so avoid jargon and assume a broad academic audience.
• Make a strong case for Propel funding – Clearly articulate why these funds will provide a competitive edge, directly linking activities to funding success.
• Show alignment with the Propel Grant mission – Demonstrate how your project is large-scale, strategic, and ready for the next step.

How do I receive my award funds?

Small Propel Grants are administered as reimbursements. Awarded teams incur eligible expenses and submit documentation to RDO for reimbursement; funds are not transferred to a departmental account in advance. Work with your department administrator or financial analyst on the process before incurring costs.

Large Propel Grants are set up as a University Research Award. Your research administrator should initiate, complete and route a SeRA University Research Award (URA) PDRF to OSR for the project. 

What reporting will I be asked to complete?

Small Propel Grant recipients complete two brief surveys: one a month after the award period ends, describing what the activities accomplished, and one two years later, describing sustained outcomes.

Large Propel Grant recipients submit a short report at the end of the grant period describing what was accomplished or learned, and complete a survey two years after the award period.
The surveys are short and we send them to you. There is nothing to prepare in advance.

One practical consequence. Outstanding reports block future VPDoR funding. Awardees are not eligible for additional Propel Grants, or for other VPDoR-managed internal awards, until the survey or report from a previous award has been submitted. This applies to all team members, not only the PI.

I am ready to submit my project for external sponsored research funding. Is there someone to help me with my proposal?

The Stanford Research Development Office (RDO) aims to strengthen external funding applications for research, scholarship, and creative activities, with deeper support for complex and strategic proposals. Please visit researchdevelopment.stanford.edu for more information about how RDO can help you.

Must the project team consist of all Stanford faculty?

Research teams can include external collaborators but must meet the requirement of multiple Stanford PIs from two or more schools at Stanford.

Requests from teams in different departments within the same school will also be considered; however, the team must demonstrate significant interdisciplinarity between departments.

When will VPDoR consider applications from teams with multi-investigator partnerships from one Stanford school?

Interdisciplinary teams must include partnerships across different departments with substantially distinctive scholarly perspectives and methodologies. Teams will be asked to explain for a lay audience how the collaboration demonstrates significant interdisciplinarity across academic fields.

Can Stanford participate as a subawardee on the proposal and still qualify?

Projects with Stanford listed as the lead applicant or as a substantially funded subawardee are both suitable, as long as the proposal budget to Stanford meets the budget threshold. (i.e., total budget request if Stanford is lead, or Stanford subaward budget request if Stanford is not lead).

What types of projects are appropriate?

Grant Booster aims to support qualifying research projects and expects the pool to include large-scale, center-grant-type funding opportunities from federal agencies, such as NSF Materials Research Science and Engineering Centers, NSF Science and Technology Centers, DOE Energy Frontier Research Centers, DoD Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative, and NEH Collaborative Research and Humanities Research Centers on Artificial Intelligence. This list is not exhaustive.

What if the external agency requires my project to be classified as Other Sponsored Activities?

Exceptions may be requested if the external sponsor requires a different classification for research activities, so long as the full, federally negotiated F&A rate is charged. Teams will be asked for clarification and/or justification.

What projects qualify under the humanities, arts, and interpretive social sciences track?

Projects must be rooted in artistic practice and/or humanistic/interpretive inquiry. Quantitative methods are permitted in this track (e.g. digital humanities), but only insofar as they support the creation and/or interpretation of artistic and/or cultural phenomena.

Are training grants eligible?

Grant Booster aims to support collaborative research projects. Training grants such as NIH T32s are not eligible. Other types of grants with a research training component, such as the NSF NRT program, could be considered for support.

Note that, while NRC-FLAS grants fulfill this requirement, they are likely to be ineligible for the Grant Booster due to their restricted F&A rate.

My project is not eligible. How can I get support?

Other or additional support requests from VPDoR (e.g., for mandatory cost sharing if required by a given funding opportunity) can still be made outside of this initiative and VPDoR will take the contributions through this program into account, if applicable.

What is the purpose of the IRE Seed Grant?

The International Research Exploration (IRE) Seed Grant was created to help faculty expand their international network of researchers through early-stage research projects, made possible by the Steven and Roberta Denning International Research Fund.

How do I know which costs are allowable?

In addition to reviewing the Stanford Purchasing Policies and Guidelines and consulting with your department finance, grants manager, or research administrator please consider contacting Global Business Services if international payments are intended.

PIs should review the Fingate topics on Inviting and Paying Foreign Visitors and Proper Use of Funds.

Please note that any travel-related costs, including transportation and lodging, must follow Stanford's travel guidelines and be booked through Stanford's Travel Booking Channels.

Should I include the university infrastructure charge in the IRE budget?

No.

VPDoR will cover the university infrastructure charge if it is assessed. No indirect charges need to be included in your budget.