Grant Funding

Working with administration, faculty, and volunteers, Hampden-Sydney College's Office of Corporate & Foundation Relations helps to secure external support from companies, private and public organizations, and charitable foundations for academic programs, construction and renovation, professorships, scholarships, and other College-wide initiatives.

In brief
The following guidelines describe the process for securing external funding (i.e., outside of the College's budget) for a project or program. Here, though, in brief, is the procedure you should generally follow:

1. Define the program or project for which funding is needed.
2. Get in touch with the office of Corporate & Foundation Relations, whose director will discuss the project with you and the Dean, President, Vice President, or other administrative officer in whose area the project belongs.
3. Secure authorization from the College to seek external funding.  This process can be coordinated through the C&F Office; authorization must come from an administrative officer, and budget approval must come from the Business Office.
4. Working with the Office of Corporate & Foundation Relations, find possible funding sources, and develop and submit a proposal.
5. Follow up and report on the use of grant funds (this process also to be coordinated through the Office of C&F Relations).

The details: the remainder of this guide describes the grantseeking process in more detail.

Two kinds
For the purposes of this guide, there are two types of grants: those for individual research and those for institutional needs.

            An individual research grant supports just the work an individual faculty member or department is doing. In contrast, an institutional grant provides funding for buildings or physical improvements (or any renovation of space); programs or projects that involve a department or the whole College; cooperative programs with outside agencies. In addition, institutional grants usually require matching funds or cost-sharing from the College.  Examples of institutional grants here are the position of the Director of Intercultural Affairs, supported by the duPont Fund in 1999, support of the civil rights symposium in October 1999, funded in part by the Virginia Foundation for Humanities, and the Hearst Scholarship for Minority Students, funded in 2000.

Authorization
Institutional grant requests require the endorsement of the President, Vice President, Dean, or other high-ranking administrator before submission.  The College also requires that the budgets for grant requests be approved by the Business Office two weeks in advance of final proposal submission.

The Process

Because the Office of Corporate & Foundation Relations is responsible for the administration of institutional grant requests, this guide deals with institutional grants.  However, the College seeks to make both individual and institutional grant requests consistent with the Long-Range Plan and the Master Campus Facilities Plan, as approved by the Board of Trustees. 

Getting a grant is a process that includes a number of steps: program development; searching for potential sources of funding; making an initial approach; submitting a proposal; following up with program officers; and, if the attempt is successful, reporting on the use of funds.