What is a Seed Grant Good For
What does “seed grant” mean?
SEED GRANTS are: competitive awards that are focused on the feasibility of a concept, assembly of compelling, qualified interdisciplinary investigator teams, identification of appropriate extramural funding targets, the quality of a proposal development plan and concrete activities and milestones that have high likelihood to result in advancing research, scholarship, and creative activity*.
* we suggest using the language around research, scholarship, and creative activity in order to include disciplines that traditionally do not think of their work as “research”
Typically this means… A modest investment that is generally funded through internal sources to help develop a project to the point where external funding can be obtained.
What is a seed grant program good for?
Return On Investment
- Opportunities
- Traditional ROI: additional external funding, stimulated by seed grant activities
- Tracking, amounts, follow-through,
- There is some published and anecdotal evidence that seed grants do…
- Increase the likelihood that the grantees will submit an additional request for external sponsorship on the seed grant topic
- Increase the success rate of those application, compared to similar faculty who do not receive a seed grant
- Explanations for success
- Accountability
- Timing/preparation
- Reciprocity
- Risks/Concerns
- Self-selection bias: traditional normative approach that systemically advantages the majority
- Most analyses explicitly acknowledge that financial metrics do not fully capture the benefit of seed grants… So…
Bridge Funding
“Institutional support for a researcher or research team in between externally-funded research periods”
- Opportunities
- Retain productive researchers
- Encourage researchers to take risks
- May be paradoxically critical during times of macro-economic financial stress
- Risks/Concerns
- Unproductively extend a career, deplete internal resources
- Bridge funding programs are particularly vulnerable to reinforcing existing systems that exclude researchers
- Many use Cost-Benefit Analyses to allocate funds (Benefit side of the ledger can reinforce existing systemic bias)
- Potential Mitigation
- May include fairness, social justice and contribution or alignment with other strategic objectives of the institution
Mentored Seed Grants
- Opportunities
- Incentivize mentorship (Professors Helping Professors)
- Pre-Submission review by an external scholar (mini-version of external mentorship)
- Network extension
- Risks/Concerns
- Nested resources may be vital
- Accountability can be high or low
- Considerations about external mentoring
- May create conflict a potential outside letter writing for Promotion and Tenure
- Mitigate promotion and tenure conflict of interest
Topic Switch
- Opportunities
- Facilitate topic, focus, or funder switch
- Acknowledged by federal agencies as valuable: NSF (Mid Career Advancement https://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2021/nsf21516/nsf21516.htm) and NIH (K24)
- Responsive to trends in the field
- It can allow faculty to remain intellectually engaged
- Risks/Concerns
- Are women faculty less likely to switch topics or pursue new directions?
- How is risk aversion distributed by demographics among faculty?
- Do URM faculty join **NEW** teams?
Facilitate Leadership Training
- Opportunities
- Pre-submission training
- Team Science training prior to team Seed Grant comps (required?)
- Risks/Concerns
- Is the goal of “Leadership Training” an inclusive one?
- Potential Mitigation
- Carefully drafted solicitation to ensure inclusivity
Incentivize external research partnerships, relationships
- Opportunities
- Initiate new or strengthen existing partnerships
- Develop Community Engaged Scholarship
- Expand diverse collaborative research teams
- Risks/Concerns
- Without long term commitment, CES relationships can suffer damage
- Potential Mitigation
- Set clear expectations