External Grants

Community of Science

You will find virtually all the funding opportunities available through private foundations and corporations listed in the Community of Science (COS) funding opportunities database (www.cos.com). Search COS Funding Opportunities to identify potential funding sources for research, collaborative activities, travel, curriculum development, conferences, fellowships, post-doctoral positions, equipment acquisition, operation and capital expenses, and more. Contrary to the site's title, the database also includes sources that provide funding in the arts, humanities and other non-scientific areas. Please view the Frequently Asked Questions for guidance in using COS.

COS offers the following informational services regarding new funding opportunities:

COS Top Ten Funding Opportunities: Of the more than 22,000 records in the global COS Funding Opportunities database, the records below were the most-viewed last week.

COS Funding News: COS Funding News is published each week and includes a sampling of new and updated award information from COS Funding Opportunities. COS Funding Opportunities is the most comprehensive source of funding information available on the Web, with more than 22,000 awards from around the world.

Health Science Funding News: COS Health Sciences Funding News is now available as an RSS feed. Scroll down on this page o learn more about RSS and instructions on adding COS Health Sciences Funding News to your RSS reader/news aggregator.

Humanities Funding News: For highlights of funding available for a variety of humanities disciplines.

Funding opportunities:

Note: Funding opportunity activity locations may be limited to the state of Illinois in certain instances above. For more information regarding setting up your own user-specific funding search, please contact either Teri Gulledge or Patience Graybill Condellone.

Frequently Asked Questions

Below are some Frequently Asked Questions about COS

How do I sign up for a COS account? Follow the instructions at http://www.cos.com. If you experience any difficulties, please contact Teri Gulledge in the Office of Research and Projects.

What is COS Expertise database? COS Expertise is a database of over 500,000 researcher profiles that contain information about all aspects of a researcher's academic career: qualifications, languages, positions held, patents, publications, honors and awards, and much more.

How do I search for former colleagues, potential collaborators, etc? Simply go to http://expertise.cos.com from any campus computer. Once you have an account, you can log in to your Workbench from off-campus.

How do I fill out an Expertise Profile? We have already created a profile in COS Expertise for you. You may view it at http://myprofile.cos.com/<<UID>>. Your profile at this stage is fairly basic, and we hope that you will take the time to fill it out more completely by logging in to your personal COS Workbench at http://www.cos.com with your username and password. Use the "Forgot Password" function in COS to retrieve your password, or contact Teri Gulledge for assistance.

Tips for improving your search results:

• Make a note of the deadline. If a submission deadline is too close it may not be worth your while to apply. This can be a helpful delimiter.
• You do not have to fill in every box. Use only the boxes that correspond to fields you want to search.
• In the most successful search, only one or two boxes will contain search information or key words. For example, if you are looking for funding opportunities in Women's History, you only have to enter the term "women's history" in the Subjects/Keywords box.
• To search by keywords, enter "Main Search" and browse the keywords under the "Keywords" section. You can browse through the hierarchy like you can through folders and documents in a personal computer file manager. The terms start with the broadest possible headings and step down to the narrowest subheadings. If you use more than one search term, separate the terms with AND, OR, or NOT.
•  Keywords: Please note the and/or functions, which can be helpful in the keyword search. If you apply an * (asterisk) in your keyword search, the whole category (with all subcategories) will be searched.