Open Call – Environmental Research Foundation – Research Grants

The Office of Foundations Relations is pleased to share this open call for funding from the Environmental Research and Education Foundation.

UCSC Contact: Caroline Rodriguez, caroline@ucsc.edu
Funder: Environmental Research and Education Foundation
Opportunity: Research Grants
Preproposal Deadline: May 1, 2023 5pm EST
Funding: average of $160,000 over 2 years

Overview

The EREF Board of Directors has set an initiative to ensure research funding reflects EREF’s long-term strategic plan to address all areas of integrated solid waste management, with a strong focus towards research that increases sustainable solid waste management practices.

Definition of Solid Waste Used in this RFP

• Municipal solid waste (e.g., residential, commercial, institutional)
• Construction & demolition debris
• Certain industrial wastes (e.g., exploration & production waste, coal ash) and
• Other wastes typically managed by the solid waste industry or generated by the public not included in the above items (e.g., electronic waste, disaster debris, etc.).

Agricultural wastes (that aren’t handled by the waste industry), nuclear waste, and land-applied wastewater treatment sludge are generally not included in this definition. 

Research Topic Areas
Pre-proposal topics must relate to sustainable solid waste management practices and pertain to the following topic areas:

1. Climate change impacts on and from solid waste management
2. Quantifying circularity of materials
3. Quantifying environmental burden of plastic wastes
4. Environmental Justice relating to solid waste
5. Waste minimization
6. Recycling
7. Waste conversion to energy, biofuels, chemicals or other useful products.  This includes, but is not limited to, the following technologies:
   1. Waste-to-energy
   2. Anaerobic digestion
   3. Composting
   4. Other thermal or biological conversion technologies
8. Strategies to promote diversion to higher and better uses (e.g. organics diversion, market analysis, optimized material management, logistics, etc.)
9. Landfilling

Submission

• Click here to download the Pre-Proposal Template. All pre-proposals must adhere to the criteria noted and be submitted by the established deadlines.
• Pre-proposals submitted in response to this RFP that do not fit within the topic areas noted will not be reviewed.
• If you are interested in reaching out to the foundation with a Topics Requiring Approval Prior to Pre-Proposal Submission please reach out to Foundation Relations (caroline@ucsc.edu) to discuss.
• All pre-proposals shall be submitted through an online application found HERE.
• NOTE: You are being directed to a 3rd party platform called InfoReady. Pre-proposals are REQUIRED prior to submitting a full proposal.

Award Amount & Terms

• EREF will not pay indirect or overhead costs in excess of 25% of direct costs.
• This also includes any overhead associated with subcontractors.
• Cost sharing is encouraged but is not required.
• Previously awarded grants have ranged from $15,000 to over $500,000 with the average grant amount in recent years being $160,000.  Typical project durations are about 2 years.  It should be noted that proposed research in excess of $300,000 or longer than 3 years should contain detailed justification.

Eligibility

There are no restrictions in regard to geographic location.  Any U.S. or non-U.S. institutions are eligible to apply.

• Principal investigators (PI) must be qualified to do the work proposed and should be experts in the subject matter referenced in the pre-proposal/proposal.
• Typically this would include full-time faculty at academic institutions, post-doctoral employees, and principals or senior personnel at non-academic institutions.
• Graduate students are not eligible to be principal investigators.

Timeline

Pre-proposals will be accepted starting 15 days prior to the deadline date and up to the close of business (5:00 p.m. eastern time) on the deadline date.  Proposals must be received during this window to be considered.

Special Requirements:

Please let Foundation Relations (caroline@ucsc.edu) know if you are interested in applying. For support developing your proposal, please contact the Research Development Specialist assigned to your unit or send a request to resdev@ucsc.edu. Within the Division of Social Sciences, please contact Ashlee Tews (ashleeac@ucsc.edu) to initiate notification and proposal support.

Call sent: March 2, 2023

The Office Foundation Relations is a unit of University Relations. The FR team creates and maintains mutually beneficial, long-term relationships with private organizations, matching grant initiatives with educational and research programs and centers. FR supports faculty and staff to identify and approach these and other private foundations and corporations for funding, to assist in strategic positioning of the grant application, and to facilitate funder campus visits.

For a list of recent funding opportunities, please visit the FR website.  Calls for Funding