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Funding Opportunities

Capital Campaign

The first step in developing a proposal is learning about the missions of the various funding agencies and the mechanisms they use to fund research and education projects. The Office of Grants and Sponsored Programs provides the Ramapo College community with a number of resources to find and secure external sponsorship for your research, scholarship, and programmatic needs.

Public and Private Sector Funding

Public sector funding includes federal, state, and county grant making. These agencies accept investigator initiated unsolicited proposals, as well as proposals solicited through:

  • Requests For Proposal (RFP)
  • Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO)
  • Program Announcement (PA)
  • Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA)
  • Broad Agency Announcement (BAA)
  • Notice Inviting Applications (NIA)
  • Letters of Inquiry (LOI)
  • Dear Colleague Letters (DCL)

At Ramapo College, all public sector funding will generally be received through the College unless the funder requires 5013(c) status. In this case it will be received through the Ramapo College Foundation.

Private sector funding includes foundations, trusts, and corporate grant making. The funding amount is generally less than with federal and state agencies.  At Ramapo College, all private sector funding will be received through the Ramapo College Foundation. To ensure that the private funder grants awards or gifts to colleges and universities, it is best to check their recent IRS form 990, which is publicly available for non-profits.

Focused Funding Opportunity List

This spreadsheet will be updated weekly by the Office of Grants and Sponsored Programs. Please check in regularly to see if there is a funding opportunity that meets your needs.

Ramapo College Funding Opportunities

Several funding opportunities for scholarly work, professional development, and curricular activities are available at Ramapo College.

Federal Agencies

Some agencies, such as the NSF, NIH, NASA, NOAA, EPA and the USDA fund basic science and engineering research, while others, like the Department of Education,  Health & Human Services Departments of Energy, Interior, Commerce and Defense tend to fund focused, mission-oriented programs designed to solve particular social or agency needs.

There are several federal agencies that provide more than $100 million annually for mission–oriented research and development programs. Each agency has a unique mission related to its primary governmental function. Click on the links below to learn more about research opportunities with these agencies. If you don’t see the agency you believe will support your project best, you might also want to check grants.gov, which curates the funding opportunities from most federal agencies.

New Jersey

Some the State of New Jersey governmental agencies also fund mission-oriented research projects.  Click on the links below to learn more about research opportunities with these agencies.

Foundations

Like mission–oriented federal and state funding agencies, many private foundations also provide funding support.

The Foundation Center provides information about foundation funding opportunities, as well as a number of useful resources for proposal development.

Related to this is Philanthropy News Digest, which is free to sign up for and sends daily updates of RFPs that have been released.