As federal funding priorities shift, researchers may need to pivot to maintain career momentum. Foundation grants can be a key resource, but navigating the process can be tricky. The Foundation Relations team at VUMC—Sue Reeves, Executive Director of Foundation Relations, and her teammates, Adele White, Senior Director, and Bethany Copeland, Program Manager, who are led by Zeena Abdulahad, Executive Vice President and Chief Development Officer—are here to help faculty navigate unfamiliar territory.
Before you contact a foundation directly or respond to one of their Requests for Applications, check in with the Foundation Relations team to improve your chances for success. Here are some reasons why.
1. The ‘foundation,’ pun intended, has already been established.
The team has spent countless hours building relationships and gathering data. Existing relationships with foundations, members of scientific advisory committees and boards of trustees have been carefully cultivated over the years. They’ve also fostered strong relationships with faculty leadership who can help identify researchers within the VUMC enterprise who are suitable for specific opportunities. They have access to a database containing information on thousands of foundations that include insights not easily found elsewhere.
Q: How much time does your team spend gathering foundation information?
Sue Reeves (SR): A lot. We hold short meetings to understand researchers’ work to become more efficient in connecting them with foundation funders. Bethany does most of our prospecting and does deep dives into funding opportunities tailored to specific research areas to help match them with faculty research interests.
Q: Can faculty access the foundation database themselves?
SR: Yes, but it’s best for Bethany to assist. She’s more familiar with the system and can quickly locate relevant information.
2. The team excels at building bridges— “connecting faculty and foundations” is their motto.
If anyone has the right to name-drop, it’s the Foundation Relations team because of all the people they meet and know. Consider yourself a fortunate ‘plus one’ if you decide to partner with them. It’s like getting a concert ticket upgraded to an all-access pass when they leverage their extensive network to help open doors for you.
Q: How do you connect faculty to opportunities?
SR: Sometimes faculty contact us directly after identifying grants they’re interested in. Other times, department chairs or division heads will invite our team to a department meeting to give a 15-minute overview of what we do. We also collaborate with individual gift officers who serve as liaisons to departments. They involve our team when faculty are interested in exploring foundation opportunities. Adele and I have worked in the foundation relations space for many years and have developed relationships with most of the major funders in health, science, and medicine. We work with institutional and departmental leadership at VUMC to leverage these relationships for the benefit of faculty.
Q: What’s the process for partnering with you?
SR: It starts with our team’s intake survey, in which faculty outline their research scope and funding needs, target population, and familiarity with foundation funding. After we review the surveys, we reach out via email or meet one-on-one with faculty to discuss specific funding opportunities that Bethany compiles. If there’s an opportunity that aligns well with their research, we guide them through the application process and help them submit a competitive proposal.
If there’s not an obvious match at first, Bethany continues her research. Bethany is a wiz at finding great opportunities that others may not be aware of. For example, she recently found an international grant focused on microbiota and women’s health research that perfectly matched a faculty member’s project scope, which led to a submitted proposal. When the researcher saw the opportunity, she exclaimed, “Thank you, this is a perfect fit!”
Q: What advice would you give to faculty on how to build and maintain long-term relationships with foundations?
SR: There is the building part, and the sustaining part of developing a successful relationship. The stewardship part sits in our court as the relationship builders, but recipients of foundation grants shoulder the responsibility of being good stewards of the money they receive to support their research. This includes submitting timely reports. Then they’re more likely to get additional funding from that foundation in the future.
3. Working with the Foundation Relations team saves faculty time.
Searching for grants and preparing applications is time-consuming and a distraction from doing actual research. The Foundation Relations team can help facilitate the grant seeking process for faculty to make it more efficient and effective.
Q: How do you assist with specific grant opportunities?
SR: Once we confirm alignment between the research and the grant opportunity, we often share information about past successful grantees or leverage our relationships with foundation contacts to gain better insights into funding opportunities. We also make sure researchers work closely with their grants managers and the Office of Sponsored Programs (OSP) to ensure their proposals are vetted and recorded in our institutional grants system appropriately.
Q. Do you work with postdocs too, or just faculty?
SR. We mostly work with faculty but occasionally work with postdocs on foundation opportunities. It’s a little harder for us to identify postdocs to match with foundation opportunities.
4. Networking in Action
The team’s efforts often lead to significant opportunities.
Q. Can you share examples of how Foundation Relations partners with faculty
SR. I recently worked with a VUMC leader to develop a relationship with a foundation that funds medical research. The foundation doesn’t accept unsolicited proposals. They’ve been on my radar for several years. In doing some research, I found a connection between one of our VUMC leaders and a senior leader at the foundation—a relationship that dates back to their medical training days. Identifying that connection set in motion a series of meetings, project pitches, and a visit to our campus, that subsequently led to multiple proposal invitations for very large research awards.
Sometimes we get connected to foundations through grateful patients. A good example of that is the Gladiator Project (GP), co-founded by the late Eric South and his wife (now GP President), Leslie South. I was looped in because the couple was interested in supporting Dr. Ryan Merrell’s vision of expanding brain cancer clinical trials and eventually establishing a comprehensive brain tumor center at VUMC. The Gladiator Project provided a gift of $500,000 to establish the Gladiator Project Brain Tumor Research Fund at VUMC. I stay in touch with Leslie and other Gladiator Project board members to report on our progress and help support their annual fundraising events.
If you are a VUMC faculty researcher interested in learning more about foundation funding, or getting ready to submit a foundation grant application, contact Sue Reeves and her team for support at foundationrelations@vumc.org. They’re ready to help you optimize your chances for obtaining the foundation funding you need to support your research.
