Funding
Many of our volunteers went on to apply for grants which paid for their work in adding new List entries, compiling Blueprints, running events, conducting research, and so on. We would love to see you join their number!
Many funding projects are a win-win-win situation. It’s a win for the DRL, because we get to expand, put up an event, release new content. It’s a win for the funder, because very often they are actively looking to showcase their commitment to diversity and inclusion, and the DRL is tested brand and a sure way to let them do so. And naturally it’s a win for you: a grant project will look great on your CV and you get paid! So, how would you go about getting funded?
Sources of funding
It is impossible to list all the specific places where you can find funding. However, we can offer you some guidelines that will help you search. There are broadly two sources of funding available to you:
Your own institution
Students and academics can access local funding and in the past we have been quite successful in doing so. The funding can come in the form of specific grants which are advertised within the institution. They can be found within your Department, but also on School, College or University level. Your university also likely has designated offices which focus on promoting academic development, teaching innovation, and so on. Finally university libraries can also sometimes offer grants. To give you some examples, here are some of such grants we have won:
- University of Edinburgh, Principal’s Teaching Award Scheme (2015-16). This £5000 grant was awarded by the Institute for Academic Development, a university-wide body promoting teaching innovation. It allowed us to pay four PhD students and one early career researcher to add a total of 240 new list entries in the areas of metaphysics, philosophy of mind and philosophy of science.
- University of Sheffield, Petrie Watson Grant (2017). This £750 grant is offered by the Faculty of Arts and Humanities to students, to support projects developing their professional skills. It paid one volunteer to expand the List by adding 30 new entries and promoting them within the university.
The best way to access such grants, is to explore your university’s pages seeking specific grant options. Your university will likely have dedicated people which can help you in this – find them and get in touch with them to ask what funding is available to people in your position.
But even if you do not find any specific grants advertised, you can likely still get funded. This is because your Department / School / Faculty / College likely has some development money available which is typically spent on projects such as training sessions, conference travel, outreach projects, and so on. We have been quite successful in tapping into this money, too – here are some examples:
- University of Leeds. In 2015, we asked the School of Philosophy, Religion and the History of Science for some money from their Strategic Investment Funds to support the initial development of the DRL. They offered us £1200 which we used to pay for the initial website development and adding the first 100 entries.
- In 2017, we approached them again and received £1500, which paid for the creation of a short-term job advertised within the university. The job was taken by one volunteer who added 70 new entries in the field of philosophy of religion.
- The White Rose College of the Arts & Humanities (the Universities of York, Leeds and Sheffied graduate programmes). In 2018, we received some money to host a Student Led Forum for a joint MAP-DRL workshop and edit-a-thon.
- University of St Andrews. In 2021 we found out about funding made available by the EDI Committee of The School of Philosophical, Anthropological and Film Studies, to be spent on various EDI-related projects within the School. We encouraged PG students to apply, helped in writing the application, and ended up with the Sex, what is it good for? Reading Group Blueprint.
If you would like to access this sort of funding, you simply have to ask around: where are the pots of money you might be able to access? What sort of projects would they be happy to fund? This might seem a bit harder to begin with, but it comes with an additional benefit – you will have developed new professional connections which might be useful in the future!
Societies, journals, funding bodies
Many philosophy societies and journals offer large and small grants for the sort of projects you can engage with the DRL. Sometimes, the grants will have specific recommendations for the sort of projects they can fund, but often they will be relatively open. Some grants will also have a preference for specific, one-off projects with a clear deliverable such as the organisation of a specific event, creation of a Blueprint, or a clear research project. Here are some examples of the grants we received:
- Society for Applied Philosophy, Further Funding grant (2015). This grant allowed us to create a temporary job worth £1200, paying one volunteer to expand the List by adding 50 entries in the area of applied philosophy.
- American Philosophical Association, Diversity and Inclusiveness Grant (2019). This grant paid two volunteers £1000 to add clean up the DRL contribution backlog by adding them to the list as ‘stub entries’.
- Arts and Humanities Research Council, PGR Placement and Knowledge Exchange Grant (2020-22). This is a grant available to AHRC-funded PhD students in the UK, which pays for an extension to their funded PhD time, allowing them to spend several months on collaborating with businesses and NGOs. We used it to commission one volunteer to conduct a research project into topics not taught at UK universities, which informed the creation of the Reading Group Blueprints.
- British Society of Aesthetics, Small Grant (2022). This grant paid £2100 to five volunteers to develop and edit three Reading Group Blueprints in the area of aesthetics.
The best way to access those grants is to search the websites of relevant societies. Typically, the sort of project you want to develop will determine the places you will look at: if you want to develop a Blueprint in aesthetics, you will be searching the websites of various societies of aesthetics, and if you want to run an event focusing on epistemology, you will want to look at epistemology-related societies. More general societies such as the APA or Aristotelian Society can fund a wider variety of projects.
But even if you don’t find a specific grant to apply to, you might still find some funding. Many societies have additional pots of money earned through journal sales or their own funding, and might be willing to use it to support the right project. Again, we had some luck here:
- British Philosophical Association. We approached the BPT in 2015 asking whether they would be able to support the early development of the DRL. They offered £900 to cover the costs of web hosting, poster and leaflet printing, and attending events to promote the List, over 3 years.
- The Future of Work and Income Research Network. Part of the external funding the Research Network received had to be spent on outputs and outreach projects. We knew some people involved in the Network and directly approached them in 2021, suggesting that we could help them fulfil this requirement by developing the Future of Work Reading Group Blueprint. They agreed and paid a volunteer to do this work.
Once you have decided to start looking for funding, don’t hesitate to get in touch – we can certainly offer some advice and suggestions on the way, as well as help you identify the specific projects that will likely look attractive to a particular funding body.
Applying
Once you find the right funding source, you will likely have some applications to fill. We can help! We keep all of our successful past applications. If you’d like to see them, get in touch! We will be happy to walk you through them.
We also have a ready template for parts of your application. The information there is pretty much ready to be copied and pasted into your application, and includes:
- About the project
- The Team
- Current activities
- Sponsors and grants
- The website
- Project statistics
- Our contacts and social media
- Our impact and value for users, including numbers and quotes
- Our impact and value for volunteers, including numbers and quotes
Naturally, your specific application might not need all of this info and might have a much lower word count. Treat the template as a place from which to mine as much info as will be relevant in your specific case.