The Keys to Unlocking Federal Research Funding

• Federal research funding can be a sustainable revenue stream for business schools, but only through dedicated investment, intentional structures, and long-term commitment to the grant-seeking process.
• Cross-campus collaboration and administrative involvement are essential to writing proposals that meet the expectations of government agencies.
• Schools can seek out small grants first—modest early wins can create momentum that compounds over time, laying the foundation for winning larger, more complex awards in the future.

 
For many business schools, most of their financial support comes from tuition, state funding, and philanthropy. Unfortunately, in recent years, these traditional sources have significantly flattened out or dwindled. For example, at my own school, the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University (IU) in Bloomington, state support has leveled off, with per-student funding now lower than it was two decades ago.

In some countries, the costs of higher education are increasingly seen as a private good that benefit individuals rather than society as a whole. This shifts the revenue mix for universities and accelerates the need to develop other sources of funding.

However, there remains a source of funding that many business schools have yet to tap: federal research awards. While it is common for campus leaders at many institutions to push all academic units to attract more such awards, few schools make the up-front investment to develop and sustain the organizational capabilities required to win highly competitive solicitations from agencies such as the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF).

One way to change that reality is by engaging in a more concerted effort to identify and win federal research grants. That has been the experience at the Kelley School, as illustrated by our journey to create and grow the Data Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (DSAIL). To date, DSAIL has won more than 7 million USD in federal funding to support faculty and student research.

Years ago, under the school’s former dean, Ash Soni, Kelley established clear criteria for when a new lab can receive an official designation. Before its launch, each lab must have secured enough grant support to be completely self-funding and self-sustaining, including support for additional doctoral students in the lab who receive five-year funding commitments. In real-world terms, that means the lab must secure at least two years of grant funding and have planned a clear path to continued grant competitiveness.

Given that requirement, we had to cultivate different sources of revenue, in the form of competitive federal grants and contracts, if we were to develop a new research program in artificial intelligence (AI) and cybersecurity. We embarked on a more intentional campaign to win more research support.

And we succeeded. Since July 2024, Kelley and DSAIL have obtained four grants totaling 2.7 million USD. Most recently, we landed a 1.5 million USD grant from the NSF to develop AI-enabled cybersecurity analytics to enhance the safety and security of open-source cloud computing. Kelley is the only business school and one of just a handful of academic institutions to receive this award. Three DSAIL faculty also have won funding from multiple agencies, and DSAIL has built strong partnerships through grant-funded research conducted jointly with four other schools on campus.

Dedicating People to the Grants Process

We made the first step toward securing funding for DSAIL in 2020 when we hired Sagar Samtani, who earned his doctorate from the University of Arizona Artificial Intelligence Lab in 2018. Samtani, now associate professor of operations and decisions technologies at Kelley, has been a principal or co-principal investigator for more than a dozen sponsored research awards.

Upon his arrival, he became Kelley’s first recipient of an NSF CAREER Award in support of early-career faculty members; he has also received NSF support to help train the next generation of the nation’s cybersecurity workforce.

We also brought on board an alumna, Tisa Bowden, to serve as director of proposal development. Bowden has expertise in the application process for federal contracts and grants, as well as in dealing with the intricacies of the rules for each submission and the elements of effective proposals.

A person dedicated to the grant-seeking process can build a pipeline to a steady flow of information sources and opportunities and advise faculty on how to navigate the steps that government agencies require.

She also knows what methods work best and what mistakes to avoid. For example, first-time applicants often don’t know how to demonstrate that their solicitation relates to an agency’s program. They might write proposals as if they were appeals for a corporate, not government, grant. Or they might not understand how to navigate effectively their university’s research administration procedures or Research.gov, the NSF’s online grant management website. Bowden can make it more likely that their early efforts are successful.

Bowden is the first person at the business school whose position is exclusively dedicated to pursuing competitive grant funding. While a few faculty members had previously managed to land occasional small grants through their own connections, Bowden applies her in-depth knowledge to seek out more significant research funding opportunities.

Six Key Takeaways

Samtani and Bowden now work closely with IU’s Office of the Vice President for Research and collaborate with people in disciplines across the university to obtain major grants and contracts to support applied research at DSAIL. Along the way, they and the rest of us involved have learned six lessons about how to best approach agencies and develop successful proposals:

1. Invest in hiring or developing a person to develop proposals. It takes focus and organization to regularly pull in grants and contracts from government agencies. Therefore, it’s ideal to establish at least one position in the dean’s office for someone who is a dedicated and seasoned proposal developer.

This person can build a pipeline to a steady flow of information sources and opportunities. He or she also can advise other faculty on how to navigate what is often a complicated pathway through preliminary submissions, proposals, diligence checks, and other steps that government agencies require—often with extremely short turnaround times.

Once a researcher has submitted a proposal, an established professional can handle follow-up details and respond to any items still pending. He or she can deal with all the required post-grant activities, such as regular reports to the funding agencies on the progress of the grant or contract.

If a business school’s budget is tight and internal staffing is not possible, it might turn to a campus research office, which often can provide support to faculty navigating the grant proposal process.

2. Enlist faculty and administrative support. The next priority is to identify faculty members who can help pursue new research funding and encourage them to do so. At Kelley, for instance, when we seek to hire new faculty members, we hope at least a few who apply not only are strong scholars and instructors but also have some federal grant-seeking experience.

In addition, we organize seminars and tutorials for faculty who are seeking to develop their grantsmanship skills. Such personalized faculty development supplements the tutorials that we recommend that are provided by the government on obtaining government grants, as well those offered by the NSF on preparing proposals and by the National Institutes of Health on writing applications.

Schools can integrate winning grant funding into tenure and promotion assessments and reward faculty who secure grants with designated lab space and access to graduate assistants.

We also make winning grant funding part of the faculty reward structure, integrating it into annual reviews and tenure and promotion assessments. Although we don’t expect all faculty to compete for grants regularly—as is often the case in computer science, biotechnology, and many other science fields—we provide positive reinforcement when they secure grants successfully.

For example, space is one of the scarcest and most competed-for resources at many academic institutions. When faculty secure grants, schools might reward the momentum that their research might have toward future federal awards by providing them with designated lab space and access to graduate assistants. Faculty value having a place to meet and work, as well as the support of additional highly talented doctoral students who can help fuel faculty research publications and assist with future grant writing.

At the Kelley School, these labs also receive some of the financial support that the business school receives through the university’s indirect cost recovery (ICR) system. ICR refers to the percentage of federal research grants that universities retain to cover facility and administrative costs. Some schools keep the entire amount, while others retain a fixed percentage. IU returns a portion of ICR back to the business school and the researcher, which provides seed capital for future projects. Collectively, such incentives provide a boost for faculty research and student development.

3. Collaborate with others within and across departments. Even dedicated proposal developers might not bring in the revenue expected if they are not also skilled at engaging with academics across the university. In fact, Bowden has been instrumental in getting all the details right for cross-departmental grant submissions and post-awards. 

At Kelley, securing the 1.5 million USD grant required us to develop partnerships between the business school and other IU departments and units, including computer science and information technology services. Through such partnerships, Bowden is able to ensure that all the details are correct for cross-departmental grant submissions and post-award requirements.

4. Involve top administrators in the process. It’s important to keep school leadership abreast of your efforts and progress. The success of our endeavors at DSAIL has depended on receiving not only the initial go-ahead from Soni, but also the continuing support of his successor, Patrick Hopkins, and the associate deans.

5. Put the work in. Landing a government grant or contract requires time and effort, and faculty members must go above and beyond their typical job requirements to do so. Administrators will have a heavier load, as well. But we’ve found that when we work together, our grant-seeking efforts have had a compounding effect over time.

For example, when we bring in more funding, we can hire more students in DSAIL, including doctoral and master’s students who conduct data analysis and work on other aspects of the research projects. That frees up the business school’s professors to do other things, such as teaching, conducting research, or helping obtain more grants and contracts.

When faculty bring in more funding, it frees them up to do other things, such as teaching, conducting research, or helping obtain more grants.

In addition, researchers in the U.S. especially must be responsive to shifting priorities in the agencies. At the Kelley School, researchers are assessing where federal agencies are increasing or reducing their grant solicitations. We believe that business schools can benefit from a growing interest in very applied research (rather than basic research), especially related to topics currently in the national interest.

6. Begin with realistic expectations. When it comes to winning federal funding, few schools, if any, will be able to go immediately from zero to 100. You need to start small: It’s OK to focus on obtaining a single, relatively modest grant and build momentum from there.

Once you receive that grant and the project is completed successfully, build on that success to obtain additional, bigger grants. It’s not necessary to establish a fully supported lab from the start.

That last point might be the most important. In our experience, we have found that winning small awards is likely to lead to winning larger ones—which will provide greater benefits in turn. For instance, with our most recent NSF grants, we have done more than hire more graduate students to conduct timely and vital research. We also have been able to extend opportunities for exceptional undergraduate students at Kelley to work in the lab.

In this way, we have parlayed the funding into advancing our educational mission of teaching and learning. What’s more, our initial success in winning a particular grant enhanced our credibility for the next proposal to that same government agency.

Today’s financial climate for business schools has become increasingly fraught, making it especially important not to leave potential funding on the table. Seeking out federal grants is a virtuous cycle—a kind of flywheel. It might be hard to get it to start spinning. But once you get it going through initial small pushes, great things will continue to happen.