Students' Corner

Funding Dissertation Research—Where to Begin?

Carol A. Kemp, BSN, RN, BC
Research Nurse Coordinator
Swedish Medical Center
Pain Research Dept
Seattle, WA

What follows are some suggestions for seeking and obtaining funding for your dissertation research. This article is not meant to be an exhaustive text on the process (and aren’t you glad for that?) nor does it contain a formula that guarantees success (okay, perhaps you were hoping for this). These 4 tips are simply things I’ve learned from my own search for funding. I am passing them along to you in hopes of saving you some time and effort in your pursuit of dissertation funding.

A mentor of mine once said to me, &ldqou;Carol, a PhD is a degree of persistence, not brilliance.” The same can be said about funding dissertation research; it is a matter of persistence, not brilliance. Persistence and a systematic search strategy are your friends in the process of funding your dissertation research, so use them! Besides, by the time you are far enough along in your PhD process to be thinking about funding your dissertation research you will (hopefully) have developed your search strategy skills. You aren’t learning a new skill; you are simply applying existing skills to a new project.

So, where to begin? As someone who prefers to avoid repeating something I've already done and whose memory capacity seems to be shrinking, I suggest creating a simple information tracking system to help you keep track of your funding search. The key is to create a tracking system that works for you. Whether your system is paper and pencil, color-coded folders, or a computer spreadsheet is not important. What matters is that the system makes sense to and works for you. This system will help you organize important information like application requirements and due dates. If you don't get your application and all other required pieces in by the deadline, you definitely won't get funded.

So you have your framework for a tracking system. Now what? Like many of us within arms reach of a computer you do an Internet search. I tried searching on “funding dissertation research” and found a few useful hits among the thousands returned. The downside of this broad approach is that you have to wade through the thousands of hits to find the few relevant ones.

A more narrow approach is to check the website of your home academic institution for dissertation funding research monies. This will most likely generate fewer, but more appropriate, responses. And while you are checking your home institution, check out other academic institutions for their funding resources. You may come across resources your school knows nothing about.

Another avenue to explore is professional nursing organizations (e.g., ANA, Sigma Theta Tau International) or nursing specialty organizations (e.g., American Holistic Nurses Association, Oncology Nurse Society). Professional organizations related to your research focus are also sources of funding. For example, the Gerontology Society of American or AARP for gerontological research or the American Pain Society or The Mayday Fund for pain research.

Develop a curriculum vitae (CV) because many scholarship applications require them. Even if you aren't asked for a CV, creating one helps you organize information that you will include in your applications. Your mentor, your academic institution's office of research, or office of grants and contracts should be able to provide you with guidelines for developing your CV. And for those of you who love to buy books, several good ones are available on the subject.

Obtain funding applications from granting agencies to see what kinds of questions they ask. Chances are good that questions are similar across applications. You can outline your responses so that you minimize the amount of rewriting you do for each application.

Make sure you talk to people you would like to list as references. First, find out if each person is willing to serve as a reference and then remember to write her or him a note of thanks. Provide them with scholarship or funding agency information, a copy of your CV, and how this scholarship/source of funding applies to your field of research; offer to draft a letter of recommendation for your reference. In other words, make it easy for your reference to do her or his job.

And, finally, draft a letter of acceptance and in it, include those magic words, “thank you.” Some folks may think this step a bit presumptuous; however, I view it as believing in yourself, because one day, you will receive an award letter that begins with “Congratulations.”

The following resources are ones I discovered in my own search for dissertation research funding.

One book that caught my eye was “The Grad School Funding Handbook” by Homel, Heiberger, and Vick (2002, University of Pennsylvania Press). For a more complete list of books see the Michigan State University website.

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