Consortium Funding Opportunity: 2025-26 Call for Small Grant Proposals

The Consortium will award grants of up to $6,000 per team to be used for research to take place in Spring 2026 (Jan. 1 – May 31, 2026). Funding may ONLY be used to:

• support stipends for graduate or undergraduate student researchers for Spring 2026
• provide honoraria for community partners
• offer direct faculty research support for Spring or May 2026*
• cover research participant and/or research-related event expenses, and/or
• purchase research-related software or hardware

Funded projects must participate in a Spring Consortium event, complete all expenditures by May 31, 2026, and submit a short grant report by June 10, 2026. The 2025-26 round of Consortium funding will be administered by the Anne Braden Institute for Social Justice Research (ABI) in the College of Arts and Sciences.

Proposal Guidelines

The deadline for submitting proposals is 5:00 PM on Friday Oct. 3, 2025. All materials must be submitted as an attachment to uoflabi@louisville.edu in the form of a single/combined PDF.

To qualify:

1. Proposals must fund a transdisciplinary research team of UofL faculty. Transdisciplinarity as defined by the Consortium consists of the participation of faculty from more than one UofL College or School, or from more than two departments from within any one College or School, as well as a community partner or the development of a community partner relationship.
2. Grant funds must be entirely expended by May 31, 2026. There will be no possibilities for extension of grant funds beyond this date.
3. PI must be a UofL tenured, tenure-track, or term faculty on a full-time appointment for the current academic year.

Priority will be given to projects that:

1. Include teams containing UofL student research assistants.
2. Have not received research support over $10,000 and/or who have limited support available for their field of work or discipline.
3. Center community engagement, especially those containing a letter of support/involvement from a community partner. If this is a new collaboration, funding will be available for early research-related work that centers relationship-building between partners and researchers.
4. Incorporate arts or humanities.

Small grant proposals must include ALL the following materials:

1. A two-page research proposal including:
   1. Research question and clear project grounding in relevant academic literature.
   2. Description of methods to be used.
   3. Description of the transdisciplinarity of the project and the names, affiliation, and project role for all participating faculty and students.
   4. Name and contact info of community partner, short description of nature of partnership, and explanation of their engagement with each stage of the project.
   5. Proposed scholarly/applied/social change outcomes.
   6. Status of project (new, in progress, completion) and brief project timeline, including work to be funded by the grant and wider project work. Include amounts for any previous or current funding for this project, including internal or external funds.
2. A proposed budget and budget explanation (2 pages max).
3. Short CV for each participating faculty (1 page max for each).
4. Optional: A short letter of support from your community partner (1 page max).

All proposals will be peer reviewed by a transdisciplinary panel and decisions should be announced in November. For questions on eligibility, fundable items, or other topics, contact uoflabi@louisville.edu 

Forms of direct faculty research support should be coordinated and confirmed with your unit and may include partial summer salary (which may only be taken for the month of May 2026).