Funding Supplements for NSF-Funded and NIH-Funded Investigators

Are you an NSF- or NIH-funded investigator? Or are you planning to apply for an NSF or NIH grant? You may be eligible to apply for supplemental funding from the sponsor of your award. Read on to find out more about these great opportunities!

What is an NIH or NSF supplement?

A supplement is a non-competing award made by the sponsor to an NSF or NIH-funded principal investigator. Supplements are offered for three general purposes:

1. To allow the PI to meet costs that were unforeseen at the time of grant application but may threaten completion of the originally funded scope of research.
2. To provide research experience and research training opportunities through supplement programs for students, historically underrepresented groups, or research professionals who meet certain career eligibility criteria.
3. To promote specific research partnerships and collaborations (inter-agency or industry) that support the sponsoring agency’s mission.

Note that you do not necessarily need to have a current award to be eligible to apply for a supplement –in some cases, NIH and NSF will accept an application for a supplement as part of a new grant application.

Supplemental funding decisions are typically made by the program officer and agency staff with no external review. Not all awards are eligible for supplemental funding, and decisions are subject to available agency and program funds.

How do I apply for supplemental funding?

Step 1: Whether you have a current award or want to request a supplement as part of a new grant application, your first step is to contact the NSF or NIH program officer or grants management specialist responsible for the program to ask about supplemental funding opportunities, requirements, eligibility criteria, and application deadlines. Most will require that an application be submitted online through the sponsor’s online application portal. You’ll generally need a budget, budget narrative, and scope of work at a minimum in your application.

Step 2: Review the opportunity’s funding announcement, where available, to understand program requirements.

Step 3: Once you have decided to apply for a specific opportunity, reach out to your Research Advancement Administrator and your unit’s business manager to begin the application routing and submission process.

What else should I know?

• Submit your request well before your awarded grant’s expiration. In many cases, the project and budget period for a supplement must be within the project period of the parent award.
• As with other grant applications, supplemental funding applications must be internally routed and approved through ORSPA prior to submission to NSF or NIH.
• While you should start by reaching out to your award program officer, you may also want to search for supplemental funding opportunities on the sponsor’s website:
  • NSF: Go to https://new.nsf.gov/funding/opportunities and use the Filter by… feature to search for Award Type “Supplemental Funding"
  • NIH: Go to https://grants.nih.gov/funding/searchguide/index.html#/ and use the filters on the left menu to search for Activity Code “Admin Supp”

Some of the current NSF supplemental opportunities include:

• Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) and Research Experiences for Teachers (RET) Supplemental Funding in Computer and Information Science and Engineering. Invites supplemental funding requests from current CISE awardees to support undergraduate and teacher training.
• NSF INCLUDES Research Experience and Mentoring (REM) Supplemental Funding Opportunities. Encourages supplemental funding requests to provide research and mentoring opportunities in microelectronics-focused research to students, teachers, faculty and veterans.
• Workforce Development in Spectrum STEM. Invites supplemental funding requests from active awardees of several NSF programs to support research, training, public outreach and workshops relating to development of the spectrum workforce.
• Veterans Research Supplement (VRS) Program. Invites supplemental funding requests from awardees of specific NSF programs to provide research opportunities to veterans who are undergraduate and graduate students, K-12 teachers or community college faculty.
• Supplemental Funding for Space-Related Preparation and Awareness for Career Equity (SPACE). Invites supplemental funding requests from current NSF awardees to improve diversity in the space workforce through space-related research, R&D or educational activities.

Current NIH supplemental funding notices include:

• Research Supplements to Promote Diversity. Aimed at diversifying the biomedical research workforce via support of investigators from diverse & underrepresented groups at various career stages.
• Research Supplements to Promote Re-entry & Re-integration into Health-Related Research Careers. Re-entry Supplements provide mentored research training opportunities to scientists who’ve had at least 6 months of career interruption due to experience of critical life events. Re-integration Supplements provide an opportunity for pre/postdoc students experiencing unsafe or discriminatory environments to transition to safer, more supportive research environments and continue their graduate careers.
• Supplements to Promote Research Continuity and Retention of NIH Mentored Career Development (K) Award Recipients and Scholars. Intended to ensure continuity of research among recipients of mentored career development (K) awards by providing supplemental research support to help sustain the investigator’s research during a period in which the PD/PI experiences critical life events which have the potential to impact research progress or potential productivity.
• Supplement for Continuity of Biomedical and Behavioral Research Among First-Time Recipients of NIH Research Project Grant Awards. Aims to enhance the retention of investigators facing critical life events as they transition to the first renewal of their first independent research project grant award or to a second new NIH research project grant award.
• Parent administrative supplement funding opportunity for requests that do not fall under a specific program.

For a full list of supplement opportunities (as of April 2024), please reference this document.