[Eds. note: This issue of Feminist Collections inaugurates our newest feature, an ongoing column suggesting and evaluating key websites on a variety of topics. Elizabeth Breed leads off with the debut column examining Internet sites on grants, scholarships, and other funding sources for women.]
This essay outlines resources on scholarships, fellowships, and grants available through the Internet specifically for women applicants. It is assumed that women use the information provided below as an additional option to a careful search for funding in other formats, both print and electronic. Also, keep in mind that funding research, like most research, requires time and some planning in order to be thorough.
Outline your funding needs before exploring the grants literature. A proposal or project outline can be the first step in creating a grants search strategy, since it will help you expand or limit your search. It will also help you in making a necessary subject list - complete with synonyms and alternate word-endings - which will save an inordinate amount of time when searching by computer. The outline or proposal can include type of support (research, travel, dissertation, performance, exhibition, seed money, equipment, etc.), geographic area impacted by the project (Wisconsin, Midwest, Mississippi River Basin, Great Lakes States), residency of applicant(s) (Kenya, Developing Country, Third World, Horn of Africa, Eastern Africa, Africa), type of funding (grant, fellowship, scholarship, loan, internship) types of funders one wants to approach (private foundation, corporate foundation, professional organization, federal agency), type of recipient (university, dance troupe, artist, museum), starting date of project, amount of funding needed, and population group (if any) served (Native American, Eskimo, Alaska Native, American Indian, Indian).
Grants generally are awarded either to individuals or to organizations. The majority of U.S. foundations give grants to organizations because their giving is restricted by the Internal Revenue Service only to organizations which have a classified status with the IRS as a 501C3 tax-exempt entity. Women should be aware that they may not be eligible for these grants unless affiliated with an organization that has this status. Be sure, then, when finding grant information, to note whether the grant is to an individual or to an organization. Non-U.S. citizens should check details of individual grants for eligibility rules.
Grants for Women
There are a number of sites that offer grants information to individuals. Women looking for grants for education might want to start with the "Financial Aid for Female Students" section (http://www.finaid.org/finaid/focus/women.html) of the Financial Aid Information Page (http://www.finaid.org/finaid.html). This is a site maintained almost daily by Mark Kantrowitz, author of The Prentice Hall Guide to Scholarships and Fellowships for Math and Science Students, now sponsored by the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators (NASFAA). This home page offers information on specific foundations such as the American Association of University Women (AAUW), the Society of University Women, Business and Professional Women's Foundation, and more. In addition, the Financial Aid Information Page (FinAid) provides a link to an annotated bibliography, "Financial Aid for Female Students" (http://www.finaid.org/finaid/bibliography/female.html), of printed materials for further research. Be sure to also check the free sholarship and fellowship databases offered through the FinAid Page, which are FastWEB, SRN Express, ExPAN Scholarship Search (College Boardžs FUND FINDER), among others.
Women looking for graduate and post-graduate or dissertation grants might be successful checking the financial aid pages of colleges and universities, such as the University of California - Santa Barbara's financial aid site, Opportunities for Women (http://www.graddiv.ucsb.edu/financial /Source/S_comp. html#women). There are similar websites throughout the U.S. - maintained by colleges and universities that have graduate programs and offer financial aid information on funding not necessarily provided by their own institutions. Another example is Yale University's Ada Project , which includes funding information for women in computing sciences (http://www.cs.yale.edu/homes/tap/fellowships.html). However, women not in the computer sciences can also find this site useful for its links to specific grant programs, such as those from the AAUW, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the Association for Women in Science, the Ford Foundation, AT & T Bell Labs, NASA, and more.
Yale's Ada site is also worth checking for its links to sites providing current grant announcements. One such site is Academe This Week, (http://chronicle.merit.edu) which contains current requests for proposals in all fields of study extracted from the Chronicle of Higher Education. Grants of interest to women applicants are generally well-labeled. Another grants announcements site, IRIS Deadlines (http://carousel.lis.uiuc.edu/~iris/deadlines/index.html), offers a well-documented, current Opportunities for Women listing maintained by the Illinois Researcher Information Service at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.
A number of major colleges and universities - especially those with graduate programs - also have offices of "sponsored research," which serve their faculty and graduate students in providing information and help with grants for which the institution (the sponsor) is the grant recipient. For a listing of sponsored research offices around the U.S., go to the Texas Research Administrator's Group (TRAM) site, University Departmental and Sponsored Research Offices (http://tram.rice.edu/TRAM/sponsored.html).
There are also searchable databases for locating grants to be found on the Web. Some are free, many are not. In addition to those mentioned above found in the Financial Aid Information Page, there are a number of other grant databases which allow for "women" as a field or limiter in the search. An easy database to try is the SFU (Simon Fraser University) Graduate and Postdoctoral Awards Database (http://fas.sfu.ca/projects/GradAwards), which retrieves numerous awards specifically for women. In addition, one can search by department (Women's Studies is WS) to retrieve graduate awards by deadline application date.
Community of Science web server (http://cos.gdb. org/), maintained by a consortium of research institutions as a repository of scientific information searchable through the Internet, offers several searchable grant databases for both private and federal funding. A recent search in its Funding Opportunities Database (http://cos.gdb.org/repos/fund/) for the term "women" appearing in either the title or descriptor fields resulted in no less than 169 grants, including numerous listings in non-science areas. A number of other searchable databases such as IRIS (Illinois Researcher Information Service) at http://carousel.lis.uiuc.edu/~iris/databases.html and SPIN (Sponsored Programs Information Network) at http://spin.infoed.org/spinwww/spinwww.htm retrieve grants for women as a recipient group in all areas of endeavor, and can be accessed through the Internet but only by subscription. However, many university libraries and similar institutionshave subscriptions for their clientele. If you are on a college campus you may be able to search one or both of these in the library. If the library has an account, you will automatically be able to search once you get to the address.
The Internet is a dynamic, constantly changing resource, and that means information can become rapidly outdated or supplemented by other, newer, material. Continually check for the date and source of the site. It may be a good idea, when in doubt as to the accuracy of the information found, to contact the funder directly, since deadlines and the funders's project interests can change. (However, keep inquiries by telephone and letter brief.) Keep in mind that other funding resources available through the Internet can include funding for women or help grant-seeking women among other population groups. For instance, the Internet can be used to find information on proposal writing, on how to approach a foundation, and on what types of foundations to approach; there are discussion lists for grantwriters and newsletters announcing grants in specific subject areas or for specific types of projects; there are scam alerts, online grant applications, websites for charity registration offices, grantmaker organizations, specific grantmakers, and more. For an overview and good starting point to assess the wealth of grant information available, try either the Nonprofit Resources Catalogue (http://www.clark.net/pub/pwalker/home.html) or the Philanthropy Journal of North Carolina's Philanthropy Links (http://www.philanthropy-journal.org/).
NOTE: Visit an updated set of women's funding links, and funding for other special populations, compiled by Elizabeth Breed.
[Elizabeth Breed is a reference librarian for Memorial Library on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus.]
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Updated February 17, 1998.