For many years the UCONN Health Center had a number of internal grant programs aimed at supporting various contingencies related to the support of biomedical research.  We had, at one time or another:

*	small grant program - <$10,000, to support short-term data collection projects, aimed at a specific RFA/RFP
*	faculty research grant program - $50,000/yr, to support new areas of research
*	faculty development grant program - $50,000/yr for 2 yrs, to support new, junior faculty who did not have other sources of start-up support
*	equipment grants program - variable
*	emergency grants program - $50,000*/yr for 2 yrs, to support projects experiencing extramural funding hiatus

*all the figures represent the maximum the programs supported at one point in their history, and not necessarily what then support currently.

Due to financial pressures, we have been forced to carefully evaluate these programs and found that, in general, the non-emergency grant programs (small grants, faculty research grants, faculty development) were not particularly effective in accomplishing their goals, i.e., securing extramural funding for specific projects.  The success rates (measured as securing extramural funding in the specific area, or related area of research, within 3 years of internal funding) for these programs were typically less than 20%, and the amount of extramural funding related to the "successful" internal grants was significantly less than the amount invested annually in these programs.

Our emergency grant program's success rate, on the other hand, is greater than 50% (>50% of the grantees successfully restored extramural funding within 3 years), and experienced returns of 200 -300% of the amount invested annually in the program.

Consequently, we have discontinued all but the emergency grants program.

We did look at other measures of success, such as publications, students graduated, etc., but in the end, the criteria which held the most weight were how much money was invested, what was the financial ROI on that investment, and what %-age of grantees successfully achieved extramural support.

Tough times!

Leonard P. Paplauskas
Associate Vice President for Research Administration
University of Connecticut Health Center

	-----Original Message-----
	From: Research Administration List on behalf of Baumann, John
	Sent: Sat 3/26/2005 12:13 AM
	To: xxxxxx@HRINET.ORG
	Cc:
	Subject: [RESADM-L] Internal Grant Survey

	Our institution, like many others, has an internal grant program.  While we have been providing this funding for sometime now, we have never conducted an assessment of how these small grants have been used to enhance the scholarly and research activities of the recipients – and in particular the extent to which they have been leveraged for larger external grant awards.  So, I am now beginning to conduct such an assessment – largely to hopefully show their effectiveness in order to enlarge the pot of money available for this purpose.

	I have identified the awardees for the past five years.  I will now begin to develop a questionnaire that requests information regarding publications, external grant awards, etc that emerged from these internal grants.

	My question to the group – has any one already done this and, if so, would you be willing to share your questionnaire and/or results?  Thank you.

	John

	John R. Baumann, Ph.D.

	Associate Vice Chancellor for Research

	Director, Office of Research Services

	5100 Rockhill Road  (US Postal Service)

	5211 Rockhill Road (Courier Service)

	Kansas City, MO 64110

	xxxxxx@umkc.edu <BLOCKED::mailto:xxxxxx@umkc.edu>

	816.235.1303 (v)

	816.235.6532 (f)

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