COA Grants to Malacology

COA Grants to Malacology

Status: ACTIVE
Funder: Conchologists of America, Inc
Amount: Up to US $2,500
Last Updated: January 14, 2026

Summary

The Conchologists of America (COA) offers grants up to $2,500 for research on recent or fossil mollusks. This funding is available for projects that explore malacological topics, ensuring that the proposed work is self-contained and capable of addressing specific research questions. While COA encourages applications for amounts less than the maximum, funding is not typically awarded to high school students or for institutional overhead. This initiative supports a wide range of malacological disciplines.

Overview

The Conchologists of America, better known as COA, is a society for shell enthusiasts from all walks of life, at all levels of interest. It is a tax-exempt educational non-profit organization under the provisions of Article 501(c) 3 of the US Internal Revenue Service Code (Tax ID 112541695). Grants of up to $2,500 each are given to qualified parties undertaking field or laboratory research on recent or fossil mollusks, and other molluscan related projects.

Eligibility

You can learn more about this opportunity by visiting the funder's website. The application must focus on a malacological topic; e.g., parasite studies should focus on the molluscan side of the interaction. All disciplines from autecology to zoogeography, including paleontological disciplines, are covered. The project of the application must be self-contained. With the funding requested it must be possible to answer the question posed. The proposal may only be a sub-component of the overall research. If some other funding has already been secured by the applicant (not applied for), this may be taken into account.Partial funding is an option and at the sole discretion of the Academic Grants Committee.

Ineligibility

Awards are not made to high school students and rarely are made to undergraduate college students. Institutional overhead is not permitted. Permanent equipment is not allowed in the application. An example of a non-compliant application would be field work and cost intensive analysis of those field-collected samples (e.g., DNA sequencing, mass spectroscopy, EM), where COA funds of $2,500 for analysis only are requested, but field work is not firmly covered.