Many of you are gravely concerned about the avalanche of changes being proposed for federal funding agencies. I receive a lot of questions from worried applicants and clients about how to navigate the volatile NIH funding landscape. Here are my suggestions at the moment:
1. First and foremost, keep applying for NIH grants.
Despite the long waits on funding decisions and potential budget cuts, we still feel that if your NOFO is open, it is important to write and submit your application. At some point, some version of the NIH machinery will lurch into gear, and awards will be made.
As long as there is an open NOFO, you can still submit an application. The new parent announcements to accompany FORMS-I were released before the chaos began, so you can apply for them. (For those of you awaiting the release of a specific NOFO, you cannot apply, nor do we have any idea when/if a given call will be released in the future.)
Keep in mind that even if you can submit a new application, you are likely to have a long wait to find out if it is funded. The current administration has disabled the award pipeline at NIH. Study sections (where scores are awarded) and Council meetings (where money is awarded) have been cancelled, and program staff are not permitted to announce new meetings. When they are able to reschedule these meetings, they must now provide at least 35-days’ notice in the federal register (it changed recently from 15 days.) When you upload, your application will join a growing backlog of applications awaiting review, and time to award will be long.
In addition, NIH still does not have an FY25 funding bill. They have been operating under a series of temporary funding bills, called Continuing Resolutions, since the start of FY25 on October 1, 2024. The current CR will expire on March 14, at which point we may have a government shutdown. When the HHS budget is finally passed, there will likely be a significant cut to the NIH budget. This may result in fewer awards, and potentially fewer NOFOs and smaller awards being made.
Further, there is a growing list of problematic terms that reporters have culled from various government sources and agencies that many NIH applicants are avoiding in their grant applications (for example, as reported in the New York Times on March 7). The inability to use such terms will make it difficult to propose entire categories of projects, and difficult even to communicate about fundamental aspects of non-DEI projects. We advise caution in ruthlessly eliminating every one of these terms from every page of your application; remember that this is not an NIH-issued list of banned terms.
Even with delays to Notices of Award, likely budget cuts, and limits in what one may propose, NIH will likely remain a significant funder of biomedical science research. Some applicants have even suggested that the odds of funding may increase in the short term, if fewer researchers apply right now. Get your application in the queue.
2. What about support from your institution?
Familiarize yourself with what your institution can do to support you in the current funding climate. Check back frequently, as policies may be changing as more information on the federal level becomes clear.
The question of the proposed severe cut to the federal indirect rate remains uncertain. While the 15% flat cap on F & A may not be approved, there will almost certainly be some kind of drastic cut. This cut will be felt by researchers, as these funds help pay for an array of research expenses, such as core facilities, support staff, travel, publication charges, equipment and research supplies, unexpected grant costs, start-up funds for new hires, software licenses, speaker honoraria, internal grants and fellowships, and salaries/expenses for administration. As a result, some institutions are suggesting that NIH applicants wrap some administrative costs into their grant application, as you would on an NSF application (this would be less feasible for facility costs.)
The lack of awards being made and the threat of a dramatic reduction in indirects is causing grave concern about the financial health of institutions; most are looking at tens of millions to over a hundred million in lost revenue under the proposed 15% F & A cap.
With a sizable cut to indirects, some institutions will struggle to weather the storm, for example if they rely heavily on state or federal funding, lack ties to industry or philanthropists, have a smaller endowment, or have a large percentage of their labs in DEI research. Other institutions will be more resilient, for example if they have a sizable endowment, ties to industry, potential support from clinical services, or existing relationships with philanthropists. Indeed, we have heard from some institutions that they are experiencing an uptick in philanthropy, as donors call to ask how they may help.
Many institutions have paused their internal funding amidst these concerns. Some institutions have paused acceptance to PhD programs, so researchers may have reduced access to graduate students to perform experiments (and may lack money to pay them).
While some people have suggested that institutions will need to support researchers in the current climate through strategies like bridge funding, many institutions will not be in a position to offer such funding to faculty. And while it is useful to consider relaxing tenure requirements at this time, the bigger problem is, who will pay salaries and fund research programs of those tenure-track faculty, if the institution may be looking at a gigantic and unexpected budget shortfall?
3. Consider private foundation funding.
Now is the time to familiarize yourself with support at your institution for identifying appropriate foundation calls (e.g., pre-award support specific to corporate/foundation relations; an institutional Pivot subscription.)
While you are not allowed to have the same science in review at multiple places at NIH at the same time, you certainly can have the same/similar science in review at multiple federal agencies and foundations at the same time. Traditionally, researchers nearing their tenure decision may have employed such a shotgun strategy to funding a given project, and we suggest that you consider such a strategy in the current funding climate.
This strategy is certainly not ideal. For example, you may struggle to find an appropriate foundation or NOFO outside of NIH. Foundation awards tend to be much smaller than federal awards, and the indirects may be low or zero. In addition, competition is likely to be fierce, as more NIH applicants apply for foundation funding. That said: The NIH funding pipeline is disabled, applications are piling up, time to award is growing, and budgets and indirects will certainly be cut – all while institutions are less able than ever to help a researcher. Foundation funding may provide one of the only short-term options to keep a research program going.
Keep in mind that many biomedical funding foundations pattern their application and review on NIH, so it may not be a heavy lift to retool some or all of an NIH application to submit to another funding source. There may be a role for AI in this situation: remove sensitive information from your NIH Specific Aims page before uploading to an AI tool, provide the foundation instructions, and see how the tool suggests modifying the project for the new NOFO.
4. If possible, pursue industry collaboration.
If your work might have any application to industry, make an appointment with your institution’s relevant office to discuss your options for industry-university collaboration.
If at all feasible, this is a good time to pursue any applications your work may have for industry. Most universities will have an office dedicated to helping their faculty pursue this option. Of course, this strategy won’t be feasible for many researchers. But if you have ever considered industry collaboration or a patent application, this is a good time to look into it.
In conclusion…
There’s no doubt that this is a tough time to be a biomedical researcher in an academic setting. Most institutions seem to be advising their NIH applicants to submit as usual. And you may have tools and strategies that you have not previously considered. Begin charting a path forward and tap your RD/pre-award staff for their support and guidance.
