New Initiatives Grant

The New Initiatives Grant, funded by the Western Washington University Foundation, offers up to $10,000 to support the pursuit of external funding for innovative cross-cutting initiatives. This program aids individuals and teams in overcoming significant workloads and fosters collaboration to enhance the university's mission. Eligible participants include non-student employees, and proposals can involve multiple institutions. The grant focuses on initiatives that promise widespread benefits, thus advancing the university's research and funding capabilities.

Note: Prospective applicants are encouraged but not required to submit a brief pre-proposal for initial feedback. Pre-proposals should succinctly summarize the opportunity, plan of action, anticipated outcomes, and participants.
The New Initiatives Fund (NIF) provides up to $10,000 to support efforts at securing external funding for new cross-cutting initiatives. The program provides teaching release, salary, and other support to help individuals and small teams pursue major opportunities where the effort is concentrated but the benefits would be widespread.
Activities Supported
NIF awards help stimulate cross-cutting initiatives with the potential to advance the mission of the University by attracting significant new extramural funding. In particular, the program provides support in situations where a significant workload would be concentrated on an individual or small team to prepare an external proposal but the future benefits are shared by a wider stakeholder group. NIF funds may be used for teaching release or salary (including staff and student salaries), project-related travel, training, and other necessary expenses associated with pursuing the identified opportunity.
Examples of the kinds of opportunities supported by the program include but are not limited to:
Grants to establish fellowship, traineeship, or summer research programs (e.g. NSF-NRT, -S/STEM, -IUSE, -IGE, NIH-RISE, Murdock-Partners-in-Science, Department of Education TRiO)
Programmatic or infrastructure grants toward seeding new cross-cutting research centers or institutes (e.g. NSF-GC, -CREST, -PFC)
Large-scale (>$1M) research or programmatic initiatives involving multiple faculty, partners, or organizations
Grants to fund major infrastructure or infrastructure improvements supporting the university’s research and creative mission (e.g. NSF-ART)
For projects involving multiple institutions, Western need not necessarily serve as the lead institution, but the project should significantly advance Western’s mission.

Eligibility

All teaching releases require prior chair and dean approval.Applications to the NIF program must be received at least three months prior to the extramural funding opportunity due date and applications are not reviewed during summer. The program is open to all non-student employees with formal appointments to the university. This includes staff, research associates, tenured, tenure-track, and non-tenure-track faculty.Proposals are accepted from individuals and teams; for team proposals, one member serves as the PI, and the eligibility criteria are applied only to that individual. Where justified, teams may request more than $10,000 when required for major opportunities; please contact RSP for guidance.

Ineligibility

NIF awards cannot be used for “overload pay” exceeding full-time when all sources are combined.NIF awards are unable to support efforts to obtain conventional single- or few-investigator grants (e.g. NSF-RUI, -CAREER, -REU, NIH-R15, and similar programs), ordinary equipment grants (e.g. NSF-MRI), or other small- to mid-scale opportunities under $250k.Recipients may not currently hold or have held a NIF award in the previous 12-month period.