Impact of Budget Negotiations on Research Sponsor Agencies
Impact of Budget Negotiations on Research Sponsor Agencies
On Dec. 2, Congress passed a bill extending the current Continuing Resolution (CR) until Feb. 18. This delay in funding exerts considerable pressure on the Executive Branch agencies to carry out planned activities. While the agencies can still spend money, they are limited to the amount they received in the previous fiscal year and tend to spend at a conservative rate beneath that ceiling. Importantly, under a CR, Federal agencies are not allowed to start new programs, including research efforts. This puts the agencies in a difficult position as it comes at almost the midpoint of the Federal fiscal year, thus compressing the time allotted for issuing FOAs with reasonable deadlines, conducting reviews, making funding decisions and negotiating awards, all before the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30, 2022. In order to address this tight timeframe and still give applicants time to construct research plans, gather teams and finalize responsive submissions, the agencies have developed a number of mechanisms to alert their constituencies about potential* upcoming funding announcements, gather input on future funding opportunities and ensure that appropriated funds are spent before the fiscal year ends.
*Potential in the sense that they don’t yet know how much money will support the program or how many awards, hence the caveat in all announcements “contingent on NIH appropriations or subject to availability of appropriated funds.”
Finding Funding Opportunities and Policy Notices
The most obvious alerts are Notices of Intent to Publish a Funding Opportunity for NIH and Dear Colleague Letters for NSF. Search services that look for funding opportunities will not necessarily find these notices as they do not have the customary due dates and estimated award amounts. The best way to keep abreast of NIH current and future funding opportunities, as well as policy changes, is to subscribe to the Weekly E-mail Listserv:
Receive weekly emails (usually on Friday afternoon) with the Current Weekly Table of Contents (TOC) from the NIH Guide to Grants and Contracts including direct links to all funding opportunities and notices published during the week.
Also listed in the NIH weekly guide are funding opportunities that include reissuance of earlier FOAs, which are allowed under a CR; changes in NIH policy; notices of changes in funding opportunities including early expiration of existing FOAs, which have been occurring with greater frequency during the pandemic; and Notices of Special Interest. Notices of Special Interest also have been especially common during the pandemic and include availability of administrative supplements to existing awards and new areas NIH is trying to draw attention toward using the normal parent award mechanism. NIH program officers have been quite helpful in determining if an idea for an administrative supplement to an existing award would fit within the scope of an existing award or if another mechanism would be a suitable vehicle. Not surprisingly, there have been a large number of administrative supplements to projects related to SARS-CoV-2 infection including this recent announcement that included almost all 27 NIH components.
Other topics that NIH is emphasizing include research on the health of women and sexual or minority populations. See this example of availability of administrative supplements: “Research on the Health of Women of Understudied, Underrepresented and Underreported (U3) Populations.”
Getting Ahead of the Curve
There are additional routes for identifying and contributing to future funding opportunities and NIH policies; Requests for Information (RFIs) and Concept Clearances. Under usual circumstances, policy changes and funding opportunities develop through deliberative processes and consultation with the scientific community over many months. General Notices in the NIH Guide may include RFIs seeking input on policy changes under consideration such as a recent request regarding potential updates to the NIH Genomic Data Sharing Policy.
Concepts represent early planning stages for program announcements, requests for applications, notices of special interest. Concepts most often are generated within programs before being cleared via advisory councils and published 2-12 months later, depending on funding and agency priorities. Discussions of proposed concepts are public and offer an excellent path to identify future FOAs and plan research accordingly.