- Academic Programs & Support
- Office of the Provost
- Research at WCU
- Sponsored Research
- Pre-Award Services
- Find Available Funding
Find Available Funding
Searching for Funding Opportunities
While the ORA will run individual searches for specific projects and funding opportunities by request, your best chance to find funding opportunities that match your exact wants and needs is to set up a search profile with funding databases. Once you set up your search profile, you will automatically receive email updates with funding opportunities that match your specific profile.
SPIN Database
InfoEd's SPIN Funding Opportunity Database is a robust tool available to all WCU faculty, staff and students to find relevant programs available to fund all types of research. SPIN offers researchers the ability to customize funding searches and set up email alerts for opportunities that meet your search criteria.
Profile Setup
You can create your own SPIN profile or reach out to us via email to have the ORA create your profile and assist with setting up funding alerts. Profile requests in SPIN must be approved manually. Within one business day, you will receive a confirmation email of your request, and from there you will be able to create a password and log in.
- Go to spin.infoedglobal.com and select Need to create a new profile?
- On the Create Profile page enter:
- Institution: Western Carolina University
- First Name
- Last Name
- Email Address (wcu.edu email addresses only)
- Username
- Click Save in the upper right-hand corner.
For detailed instructions, view this guide on How to Create New Profile.
Public Searches
The Office of Research Administration has curated a list of topical funding searches that is available to all WCU Faculty, Staff and Students. Users can locate these Public Searches by clicking on Public Searches within the Saved Searches menu. Please note: these searches are broad, and you may want to focus your search.
Additional Funding Databases
Below are some additional resources to assist with your search for funding opportunities. Click on each tab and follow the links to learn more.
Connect and subscribe to Grants.gov to receive daily email notificiations of new federal funding opportunities. Grants.gov allows you to subscribe to all new opportunities, saved searches or to specific opportunities that you want to track.
This website provides listings of internships, experiential learning opportunities, academic fellowships and scholarships funded by government and private sector organizations. Visitors to the site may view available opportunities by selecting the Opportunity Catalog.
The RTI University Scholars Program is designed to drive growth, foster collaboration, build scientific stature, and develop opportunities for externally funded joint projects.
The Foundation Center (Candid) is a funding resource service for U.S-based nonprofit and grantmaking organizations. Users can sign up to receive an RFP Bulletin, a weekly newsletter of recently announced Requests for Proposals from private, corporate, and government funding sources.
Internal Grants and Awards
A number of internal grants and awards sponsord by the Office of the Provost are available to WCU faculty and instructional staff. For more specific information about each of these, please click the links below and contact the Office of Research Administration for assistance with the application process.
The University Scholar Award is designed to recognize research and creative activities. This award is given to a faculty member who has achieved a position of prominence in his or her discipline through creative research activities. Examples of distinguished achievements include art exhibitions, works of art, fine arts performances, literary works, research, publications, and grant receipts.
The Hunter Scholar Award is jointly provided by Hunter Library, Graduate School and Research, Educational Outreach, and the Office of the Provost. The Hunter Scholar Award provides release time and other resources to support research primarily using library collections.
Deadline: October 1, 2023
The purpose of this award is to provide monetary support for research and scholarship development and grant recipients must articulate where and how this seed money will be directed in pursuit of external funding.
Provost Scholarship Development Grant Guidelines
Established in 2012, the Professional Development Grant supports the strategic mission of WCU by providing funds for faculty and instructional staff to pursue professional development opportunities in areas such as teaching and learning, scholarship, leadership, certification, accreditation, assessment, and other related areas.
These funds are allocated to support Intentional Learning implementation, support faculty, student, and staff activity directly related to intentional, integrative, engaged teaching/learning and cannot be used for other purposes. Please see below for opportunities to enhance the teaching/learning environment for our students/faculty.
The establishment of the Million Dollar Circile Award is to recognize the accomplishments of WCU faculty and staff that have received a cumulative total of $1 million or more in competitive grant funding and contracts through the University, as Principal Investigators.