FAQs for Research Grant Applicants
To provide additional guidance, we have answered the most common questions we receive from applicants for research grants.If your question isn't addressed below, you may contact us at info@wtgrantfdn.org.
What is your funding focus?
The majority of our funding supports research relevant to youth ages 8 to 25 in the United States. We have two Current Research Interests. One focuses on understanding how youth settings work, how they affect youth development, and how they can be improved. The other focuses on understanding when, how, and under what conditions research evidence is used in policy and practice that affect youth and how its use can be improved. For more information, please read our Current Research Interests and Annual Report essays.
Are you most interested in the types of research described in your RFPs?
No. Our RFPs serve as ways to draw attention to research areas in which we want to solicit targeted proposals. Other types of studies that fit our Current Research Interests are of equal interest to the Foundation. All applications are welcome to submit letters of inquiry three times a year as part of our regular application process.
How do you define youth social settings?
Social settings are defined as the social environments in which youth experience daily life. These include environments with clear boundaries such as classrooms, schools, and youth–serving organizations; and those with less prescribed boundaries such as neighborhoods or other settings in which youth interact with peers, family members, and other adults.
Are there settings in which you are particularly interested?
No. We are interested in a range of settings that are important for youth development. Much of our grantmaking supports studies of youth programs, schools, neighborhoods, families, and peer groups. We also support research on other settings if an applicant can provide a strong rationale for their importance to youth development and outcomes. These might include studies of child welfare agencies or juvenile justice settings and their impact on youth.
Are there aspects of settings in which you are particularly interested?
We view settings as dynamic social systems. Within these systems, we are interested in the social processes (i.e., patterns of transactions between two or more people or groups of people), resources (i.e., human, economic, physical, temporal resources), and organization of resources (i.e., how resources are arranged and allocated). For an extended discussion on this topic, please review our 2005 Annual Report essay “Social Setting Theory and Measurement,” which is available on the website.
Are there youth outcomes in which you are particularly interested?
No. We are interested in a range of important youth development outcomes, including but not limited to those related to schooling, employment, health, social and emotional well-being, and identity.
Is your interest in the use of research evidence the same as dissemination or translational research?
It depends on how dissemination and translational research are defined. Our interests focus more on understanding research users, the contexts in which research is used, and interactions between research users and producers. For an extended discussion of our interests on this topic, please review our Annual Report essays “Studying the Use of Research Evidence in Policy and Practice” and “Focusing on Demand: Studying Research Use in Policy and Practice Affecting Youth.”
Do you fund studies that include biological measures?
Yes. The Foundation funds projects that theorize and measure the interplay between social and biological phenomena in ways that advance our primary interest in social settings. For example, we are interested in how biological phenomena condition the effects of social settings on youth development and how biological phenomena mediate the link between social settings and youth development. We are also interested in studies using measures of biological phenomena when doing so is an improvement over observation, interviews, and similar techniques for measuring how social settings influence youth development. For an extended discussion on this topic, please view the Biology Guidelines on the Current Research Interests page.
Do you fund policy studies?
Yes. We seek to understand the way public, organizational, and administrative policy affects youth settings and thereby youth. Applicants should include strong theory and measures of settings. The Foundation also supports studies that examine how policymakers acquire, interpret, and use research evidence. We are interested in how policy and practice settings, intermediary organizations, and broader social, political, and economic contexts affect research acquisition, interpretation, and use. For an extended discussion of this topic, please view the Policy and Practice Guidelines document on the Current Research Interests page.
Do you only fund experiments?
No. Most of our grants are for non-experimental work. We fund experiments when the goal is to test theoretical propositions, such as whether change in certain setting constructs creates change in other constructs or whether an intervention strategy changes the setting. For example, we fund experiments to examine whether change in peer group composition affects youth outcomes or whether a professional development intervention affects the quality of teacher-student interactions.
Do you fund international studies?
Rarely. The Foundation funds research abroad only when it addresses an issue or question that has clear, compelling policy or practice implications for youth ages 8 to 25 in the United States.
Do you support scholarships, building funds, annual campaigns and fundraising drives, or endowments?
No.
Do you fund working meetings?
Rarely. When we support working meetings, they are usually commissioned and focus on building an infrastructure for our Current Research Interests or on our current Action Topic of improving research-practice connections.
QUESTIONS ABOUT RESEARCH GRANTS
What is the typical award amount for a research grant?
Research grants usually range from $100,000 to $600,000 for the duration of the award.
How long is a typical research grant period?
Research grants usually last for two to three years.
QUESTIONS ABOUT APPLYING FOR GRANTS
How can I apply for a research grant?
The Principal Investigator must submit a letter of inquiry. See our Research Grants Application Guide for more information. To apply for other types of grants, please visit the Funding Opportunities section of the Foundation’s website which describes our different grant programs and their corresponding application procedures.
Should I submit an application myself or through my institutional office?
At the letter of inquiry stage, the Principal Investigator should submit the application. If invited to submit a full proposal, the Principal Investigator must submit their application through their institutional office.
Do I have to submit a Human Subjects Approval with my application?
No. Approval is not needed at the time of letter of inquiry or full proposal submission. However,human subject concerns should be considered when developing the proposal and IRB approval must be submitted to the Foundation before a grant can be officially awarded. (No grant money will be awarded without IRB approval if the proposal is for activities needing IRB review.)
Are there specific budget forms I need to complete when submitting a full proposal?
Yes, the Budget and Budget Justification Form is required.
How much of my grant can go toward indirect costs?
Indirect cost allowance, if applicable, cannot exceed 15 percent of total direct costs. This ceiling includes any indirect costs contained in expenses for contracted services.
GENERAL QUESTIONS ABOUT GRANTS
What distinguishes a research grant from a William T. Grant Scholars award?
Research grants fund discrete research projects. The William T. Grant Scholars program is a career-development award designed to enable promising early-career scholars to expand their expertise as part of a five-year program of research.
If I become a grantee, am I required to submit reports to the Foundation?
Yes. All grantees are required to submit annual Program and Financial Reports throughout their award period.
Is it possible to apply for more than one grant at the same time? Can you apply to more than one grant program within the same year?
Yes, it is possible to apply to more than one grant at the same time and to more than one grant program within the same year. We do, however, encourage applicants to focus their limited resources on developing a few ideas well and to avoid having concurrent or competing demands compromise the integrity of their work.