New to NIH

FY2023 Investments in Research

NIH's institutes, centers, and offices (ICOs) award 80-85% of the NIH budget to support extramural research conducted outside of NIH. About 10% of NIH’s budget supports intramural scientists in our own laboratories, most on our NIH campus in Bethesda, Maryland.

NIH is made up of 27 institutes and centers (ICs) and the Office of the Director (OD).

• Each IC has a distinct mission that focuses on a specific disease area, organ system, or stage of life.
• The OD, including the Office of Extramural Research (OER), is the central office responsible for setting NIH policy and for planning, managing, and coordinating programs and activities across NIH.
• Twenty-four of the 27 ICs and several offices within the OD post extramural funding opportunities and make awards.

Each IC has a separate appropriation from Congress. The director of each IC decides which grants it will fund, taking into consideration the results of the scientific peer review of the grant application, input from NIH staff, public health need, scientific opportunity, and the need to balance its scientific portfolio. Since awards are made through the ICOs, prospective recipients should identify the ICOs that might be interested in their area of study.

Funding is a highly competitive process.

NIH has three application, review, and award cycles per year. Unless a funding opportunity specifically indicates money has been set aside for awards, all applications compete for the same funds.

NIH receives a lot of applications and there simply aren’t enough funds to go around. The overall chance an application will be funded is around 20%. Still, NIH makes a considerable number of awards each year - over 11,000!

Be persistent and learn from each application experience. Many investigators who were not initially successful go on to secure funding on subsequent attempts.

Our institutes, centers, and offices (ICOs) issue notices of funding opportunities (NOFOs) to look for grant proposals of high scientific caliber that are within mission and relevant to public health needs.

You can find NIH funding opportunities in

• NIH Guide for Grants and Contracts (all funding opportunities offered by NIH)
• Grants.gov (funding opportunities offered across all federal agencies)

NIH offers both investigator-initiated and targeted funding opportunities.

Investigator-Initiated Research

• Much of what NIH supports are investigator-initiated or unsolicited research and training applications that originate from your research idea or training need, yet also address the scientific mission of the NIH and one or more of its ICOs.
• Investigator-initiated applications are submitted through centrally managed NIH “parent announcements” or broad ICO-issued funding opportunities.

Targeted, NIH-requested Research

• NIH ICOs regularly identify specific research areas and program priorities to carry out their scientific missions. They issue funding opportunities to encourage and stimulate research and the submission of research applications in these areas.
• These funding opportunities may be issued to support research in an understudied area of science, to take advantage of current scientific opportunities, to address a high scientific program priority, or to meet additional needs in research training and infrastructure.

Eligibility requirements vary by program and can be further restricted within individual funding opportunities but follow some general principles.

Organization Eligibility

NIH recognizes the applicant organization as the recipient for most programs. The applicant organization, represented by an authorized organization representative (AOR), has overall responsibility for compliance with all terms and conditions of award.

In general, organizations eligible to receive NIH grants can be

• Domestic or foreign
• Public or private
• Non-profit or for-profit

Foreign Eligibility

Foreign and international organizations are eligible to apply for most NIH research project grants but are not eligible to apply for institutional training, program project, center, resource, small business, or construction grants.

The Foreign Organizations eligibility section of each funding opportunity states whether the following types of organizations are or are not eligible to apply

• Non-domestic (non-U.S.) Entities (Foreign Organizations)
• Non-domestic (non-U.S.) components of U.S. Organizations
• Foreign components, as defined in the NIH Grants Policy Statement

In addition to standard review criteria, applications from foreign and international organizations are assessed on the following

• Whether the project presents special opportunities for furthering research programs through the use of unusual talent, resources, populations, or environmental conditions in other countries that are not readily available in the United States or that augment existing U.S. resources.
• Whether the proposed project has specific relevance to the mission and objectives of the ICO and has the potential for significantly advancing the health sciences in the United States.

Individual Eligibility

The applicant organization must designate one or more project director/principal investigators (PD/PIs) to direct the project or program supported by the award.

The career stage of the PD/PI varies by program. NIH supports scientists at various stages in their careers, from pre-doctoral students on research training grants to investigators with extensive experience who run large research centers.

Generally, PD/PIs and other personnel supported by NIH research grants are not required to be U.S. citizens; however, some NIH programs have a citizenship requirement.

Carefully read the Eligible Individuals (Program Director/Principal Investigator) section of your funding opportunity for any citizenship requirement or other individual eligibility restrictions.

Are you an early stage investigator?

NIH is committed to supporting ESIs.

• Reviewers give early stage investigators special consideration
• Applications with meritorious scores may be prioritized for funding
• NIH has programs targeted specifically for this population (e.g., Stephen I. Katz Early Stage Investigator Research Project Grant)

Your success with NIH funding requires an understanding of who your contacts are here at NIH.

Since awards are made through NIH institutes, centers, and offices (ICOs), most of your interactions with NIH will be with extramural staff from those ICOs, including program officials, scientific review officers, and grants management officers or specialists.

Key Systems

Throughout your journey with NIH you will be interacting with a variety of systems that require registrations, some at the level of the institution, and others require registrations or permissions for institutional officials or individual investigators.

• System for Award Management (SAM)
  • A federal-wide (non-NIH) system. All organizations (referred to as “entities” in SAM) must register in SAM and establish a unique entity identifier (UEI) prior to doing business with the U.S. federal government.
  • The UEI serves as a common identifier across federal systems. Be sure to use the same UEI within all organization registrations and grant applications.
  • SAM is also the central location to search for contract opportunities from federal agencies.
• Grants.gov
  • Another federal-wide (non-NIH) system. Grants.gov is a central portal used by all federal grant-making agencies and their applicants to find and apply for federal grant funding.
  • Agencies post funding opportunities on Grants.gov. (NIH also posts all our funding opportunities on the NIH Guide for Grants and Contracts.) Grants.gov receives application submissions on behalf of NIH and other agencies, and forwards those applications to the agency for processing.
• eRA Commons The eRA Commons is an NIH system that allows applicants, recipients, and federal staff to securely share, manage and process grant-related information. It allows principal investigators and institutional officials to track submission status, application assignment and review information, award information, and it supports post award reporting, amongst other things.

• ASSIST
  • NIH's Application Submission System & Interface for Submission Tracking (ASSIST) is one of several submission options available to prepare and submit grant applications electronically to NIH and other Public Health Service agencies.

Key Roles

There may be quite a few people involved in the preparation, submission, and administration of your grant application.

Grants.gov and eRA Commons use roles to determine which tasks each user is authorized to perform. At the time of organization registration, your organization designates one or more people with the authority to legally bind your organization in grants administration matters. Those designated individuals (Signing Officials in eRA Commons or E-Business Points of Contact in Grants.gov) can assign roles to other user accounts to define the functions they are authorized to perform.

Most electronic interactions with NIH are done through eRA Commons.

• Signing Official (SO)
  • Holds authority to legally bind your institution and assume responsibility for adhering to all federal grant administration requirements referenced in the NIH Grants Policy Statement
  • Registers the institution and maintains institutional profile data
  • Accesses information for all applications and grants within your institution, including status and award information
  • Creates and administers user accounts including additional SO and account administrator (AA) accounts
• Project Director/Principal Investigator (PD/PI)
  • Holds eRA Commons PI role as the designated project director/principal investigator (PD/PI) of an application or grant
  • Directs the project or activity being supported by the grant and is accountable to the recipient organization for the proper conduct of the project or activity
  • Performs or delegates tasks such as maintaining person profile information, checking application status, checking assembled application image used for review and performing post-submission administrative functions
  • Accesses information for their own grants and applications, including summary statements, scores, and notices of award

Organizations

If your organization is new to working with NIH, multiple organization registrations are required including eRA Commons, System for Award Management (SAM), Grants.gov, and Small Business Administration (if applicable).

The full registration process in each system is typically completed once and then maintained as organization information changes.

The person who registers your organization must be authorized to act for the applicant organization and to assume the obligations imposed by the Federal laws, regulations, requirements, and conditions that apply to grant applications or grant awards.

This individual may be referred to as an entity administrator, signing official (SO), or authorized organization representative (AOR) depending on the system. They are responsible for initial registration, maintaining organization information, and authorizing other individuals to serve similar functions on behalf of their organization.

System Accounts for Investigators and Other Individuals

Once organization registrations are complete, the individuals responsible for maintaining your organization's information can assist in creating any additional individual user accounts needed to perform specific tasks. For example, creating or affiliating principal investigator accounts with the PI role in eRA Commons.