Our Granting Policies
What we do and do not fund
We do fund summer salaries for academics and hourly work for independent contractors, and will consider funding salaried work for researchers employed at non-profits. For academics that are funded on a project basis and independent contractors, we require the application submission include hourly rates and number of hours requested for each investigator involved in the project.
We do not fund equipment purchases such as computers, phones, etc.
We do fund purchases of necessary data sets
We can cover indirect/overhead costs if the grantee’s university requires it. If you are including indirect/overhead costs in your budget, please include supporting documentation stating any university required minimum for grants coming from non-profit organizations. If a university does not have a required minimum, we can cover up to a maximum of 10% of indirect costs. See complete indirect/overhead cost policies here.
Grant sizes we will consider
Our grants generally range from several thousand to thirty thousand USD, but we will consider any grant small or large.
We require transparency
We will only fund research whose methods and data are made publicly available for others to see, evaluate, and use for further research.
After receiving approval of funding, projects must be preregistered with a full plan on an independent public registry such as the Open Science Framework. Preregistration must include all details of the proposed study and how any analysis will be conducted. The preregistered analyses must then be referenced in the final report including if a different or additional analysis method was used, and why.
Grantees must agree to interim reporting to identify progress and any potential or actual delays in completion of the work. The nature and frequency of such reporting will be articulated on a grant by grant basis.
Grantees are required to make all research results, methods, procedures, data, computer code and other materials accessible to the public, by placing the materials and complete descriptions of methods on a public repository such as the Open Science Framework under a Creative Commons (CC0 or CC-BY) license. These materials and descriptions should include enough detail to allow replication of results.
Any significant changes in how the funded project is conducted, including changes in researchers, timeline, research focus, or budget must have prior written FSRF approval or further funding of the grant may be withheld, and granted funds may be required to be returned.
Use of granted funds
Awarded funds may only be used only for the purposes proposed in the grant application and agreed to as part of the grant.
By accepting a FSRF grant, all grantees agree to the following:
The Grantee must comply with reasonable requests for information about research activities in a timely manner.
The Grantee must comply with all FSRF policies and procedures.
The Grantee must provide the complete results (including intended and unintended learnings), and allow the FSRF to disseminate results in any way FSRF sees fit.
The Grantee must keep records and account for all use of granted funds, and submit a detailed expense report following the completion of the research.
Public dissemination of the results
FSRF strongly encourages publication of results where possible in peer-reviewed scientific or professional journals, and publication in open access journals with no paywall is ideal. If allowed by the journal, grantees must make any relevant working papers publicly available using an online repository such as SocArXiv or PsyArXiv.
FSRF rights
FSRF reserves the right to terminate any funded research project that is not progressing in the manner agreed to in the granting application and agreement.