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For Project Awards
Guidelines for submitting proposals for project awards
What we support
The Foundation's awards are restricted to support for basic social science research within our announced programs. Our web site, biennial reports, and other publications provide descriptions of each of these programs and examples of the research we have supported in the past. Our major awards range between $35,000 and $500,000. We mainly provide support for analyzing data and writing up results, but we occasionally consider larger awards for data acquisition projects highly relevant to the Foundation's program goals.
Application Process
Applications for external awards should generally be preceded by a brief letter of inquiry to determine whether the Foundation's present interests and funds permit consideration of a proposal for research. Letters of inquiry concerning research projects should summarize the project's objectives, the work plan, the qualifications of persons engaged in the research, and an estimated budget. General inquiries should be addressed to the President of the Foundation; those in response to specific requests for proposals or research initiatives should be addressed to the relevant Program Officer.
Proposals approved by staff are ordinarily submitted to outside peer review, either by a standing advisory committee for the program to which the proposal is submitted, or by ad hoc reviewers, or both. The Foundation's Trustees make all final funding decisions based on both the proposal and outside reviews.
Presidential Authority Awards
A limited number of small awards are made each year by the President of the Foundation. No overhead or indirect costs will be paid on these awards. There are no formal deadlines for presidential authority awards, which are reviewed throughout the year subject to the availability of funds. The budget for these awards must be $35,000 or less.
Substance
Proposals should answer the following questions:
- What is the problem under study and why is it important?
- What are (some of) the specific hypotheses that will be examined and what approaches will be used to examine them?
- What kinds of data will be used in the study and how will the data be acquired?
- How will the data be analyzed to get at the questions under
study: what methods, analytic models or interpretive strategies will be
used?
- Finally, how will the results of the investigation be reported: articles, a book, possibly both?
Format
No fixed format is required. Proposals are ordinarily between 10 and
20 double-spaced pages and should include references, tabular material
and/or graphic displays necessary to substantiate the claims made in
the proposal. Please submit 1 single-sided proposal with CVs, budget
justification, and workplan and 10 double-sided copies of all
materials. For Presidential Authority Awards, applicants are required
to submit only 4 double-sided copies of their materials in addition to
the originals.
All proposals should also include a completed cover sheet. Please download the attached cover sheet and include it with your proposal.
Work Plan
Please indicate when the project would begin, how long it will take and what sort of work schedule you anticipate.
Data Acquisition
If the successful completion of the project depends on access to data sources that are not publicly available, the proposal should also include a time table outlining your plan to gain access to these data. If approved, the award will be contingent on written confirmation of access to these data sources.
Personnel
Please list all professional participants in a project and indicate what division of labor is anticipated. Please include current CVs for all professional participants. All principal investigators must hold a Ph.D. Awards are not made for the support of undergraduate or graduate degree work, nor for institutional support.
Supporting Materials
Although recent articles or unpublished papers can be submitted with
a proposal, the proposal should not assume knowledge of any supporting
materials since they will not be sent to reviewers. All conference
volume proposals must include a 1-2 paragraph summary of each proposed
chapter contribution.
Budget
A simplified budget is acceptable. List all participants for whom salary support is requested, the time they intend to devote to the project, their current salary level, and the fringe benefit rate of your home institution. In addition, list any anticipated expenses for research assistance, data acquisition, data processing, and necessary supplies. We ordinarily do not pay for equipment unless it is clearly required to carry out the project; and in no case can more than $10,000 be allocated to equipment. We will pay for travel to conduct the proposed research and provide limited support for travel to scholarly conferences for the presentation of research findings. RSF will consider requests for summer salary of up to 2/9 regular salary for time devoted specifically to research on the proposed project, but we sharply restrict the amounts allocated for release time during the academic year. Budget requests should be limited to funds that are absolutely essential to complete the project. Padded budgets may jeopardize acceptance of a proposal.
Overhead
Russell Sage allows overhead for indirect costs of up to 15% only on awards above $35,000.
Deadlines
All major proposals must be approved by the Foundation's Board of Trustees, which meets to consider proposals only in June and November. Unless otherwise specified in the request for proposals in a particular research competition, the deadline for submissions to the November funding round is mid-August, and to the June round is mid-March.
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
Data Release
As a condition for providing substantial support for new data collection, the Foundation requires that the investigators make their data sets publicly available to the social science research community. Before issuing the award, the Foundation will negotiate the terms for data release (e.g., timing, documentation, etc.).
Publication
We expect our grantees to publish the results of their research and as a social science publisher of longstanding, the Foundation reserves the right to consider all book length manuscripts resulting from the research it supports for publication under the Russell Sage imprint.
Intellectual Property Rights
With the exception of book-length manuscripts (covered in the preceding paragraph), the Foundation may reserve usage rights over intellectual property produced with Foundation support. The Foundation will negotiate intellectual property agreements with principal investigators (and their host institutions), when it has made a substantial investment in the research underlying the product and has a substantial interest in the widespread distribution of the product to advance the Foundation's charitable mission and/or its own future initiatives. The Foundation will not require such an agreement, if the investigators (and host institution) agree to distribute the product on principles consistent with those of the Foundation.