Grants are nothing but financial assistance provided by governments and other institutes to those people or organizations who are eligible to receive them. Apart from financial or monetary assistance, grants can also include access to services, resources, goods etc. that can help people in achieving certain goals, which are beneficial to the society in general. For example, governments and other institutes often offer grants to doctors are researchers trying to come up with innovative solutions in the field of medicine. The doctors are provided with access to funds, research facilities, medical equipment and a lot of other things that can assist them in their research.
Apart from governments, they are also offered by NGOs, private corporations, wealthy individuals, non-profit organizations, trusts, foundations and educational institutes. The grants are provided for free of cost and the recipients are not required to make any payments in return. The best part is that, the recipients do not have to pay any taxes for receiving any assistance in the form of grants. The amount of money which is offered through grants can be either very high or very low, based on the type of assistance provided. Many charitable organizations also offer such assistance to the people in need.
Federal Grants in the United States
The Federal Government offers a variety of grants to people from all walks of life, starting from students to scientists. Most of these grants are offered mainly to researchers, universities and other educational institutions, cities, counties, states, non-profit organizations and charitable foundations. There are only a few of them which are offered to individuals. Federal Grants come with a lot of benefits and apart from offering financial assistance they also offer access to all kinds of resources that might be needed to complete a research project. In most cases, these grants are not offered to
The most common grant offered by the US Government is known as R01, which is offered to support any research project which is specified and discreet. The best part about the R01 assistance program is that, it does not come with any money limit. It is usually awarded for a period of 3 to 5 years. Other Federal Grants include the R43/R44 - issued to those small businesses which initiate innovative research programs, R15 - issued to support academic research projects, and R03, which is issued to support certain scale research projects for a shorter duration of time.