A federal grant application, Grants.gov, recently reached 100,000 installs from users, grant professionals and Kennesaw State faculty on both its iOS and Android platforms.
The app, which officially launched in 2018, is a large database designed to easily find federal grant and scholarship opportunities, add grant deadlines to users’ calendars and offer a subscription to be notified when changes are made to grant listings.
The app also utilizes its website and social media to post about new grant and scholarship listings, offer tutorials on how to use the app and give information on the grant process.
Natasha Williams, the assistant director of pre-award services at KSU, is responsible for assisting faculty in identifying funding opportunities for their research as well as training faculty through both general and discipline-targeted workshops. Williams said Grants.gov simplifies part of her job by finding funding opportunities through searches and having the ability to track and manage opportunities in progress.
“Funding is very competitive, and one of the challenges I think the faculty has is they don’t have a lot of time,” Williams said. “So, I think the more we can automate the funding services, tracking the applications and getting the announcements, the earlier they can get the information.”
Williams said she uses the app several times a day depending on what opportunities are available because it is efficient and it does not force users to spend a large chunk of time on computers, scanning through separate searches for funding possibilities.
The Grants.gov app allows users to search through several thousand federal funding possibilities in a centralized location. Users can access the quick search bar feature and type a desired keyword to substantially narrow the number of listings. Once the desired listing is accessed by the user, the application process can be tracked until completion.
Williams added that some of her colleagues in the Office of Research use the app regularly, and students can also use the app to find scholarship and fellowship opportunities ran by federal funding agencies. Williams suggested that students who are interested in finding federal grants should go to the Grants.gov YouTube channel and view the videos.
The Grants.gov mobile app was nominated for FedScoop’s Innovation of the Year award in 2018 after receiving a substantial amount of positive user reviews.
