Request for Proposals: Wildlife Fellowship Training 2025
Section
Deadline Date
August 20, 2025
Donor Agency
Morris Animal Foundation
Grant Size
$100,000 to $500,000
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The Morris Animal Foundation has launched its Wildlife Fellowship Training to bridge science and resources to advance the health of animals.
To achieve this aim, they fund hypothesis-driven, humane research projects with high scientific merit and the potential for significant impact. They are a nonprofit organization that is funded by public support from individuals, corporations, clubs and foundations, and earnings from their endowed funds.
Their donors are interested in funding research that results in impactful animal health achievements and benefits both scientific and non-scientific stakeholders including veterinarians, wildlife researchers, and communities. Fellowship Training Grants are designed to assist new investigators in launching a successful research career by providing salary support in a quality mentoring environment.
Objectives
- Proposals should advance the health and overall welfare of wildlife. While conservation is a priority, any conservation focused proposals must be through an animal health lens. Animals in managed care settings can be a valuable proxy for wild counterparts, but all submitted proposals must have direct translational value to free living wildlife populations. This must be explained in the Animal Health Impact Statement of the proposal.
- Academic and industry collaborative projects are encouraged to accelerate translation of results into practice.
Funding Information
- The maximum duration of a Fellowship Training Grant is 24 months, and the total budget cannot exceed $145,000.
Eligibility Criteria
- A Maximum of One Application as Principal Investigator (Pi) in Response to this Rfp is Permitted.
- All applicants must convince the scientific and animal welfare reviewers that they clearly understand the health problem, have sufficient expertise to conduct the study, are using a scientifically sound approach, and have appropriately considered the overall environmental and animal welfare impact of their research.
- Applicants must either hold a veterinary degree (such as DVM) or a PhD or be enrolled in a PhD program and will have completed the first two years of their program by the expected start date of their research. Awardees must devote at least 75% of their time to the research project. Clinical residents and those with clinical service requirements greater than 25% time are not eligible.
- Applicants with a PhD must have earned the PhD within 4 years of the grant application date. Candidates who have held a PhD more than 4 years and other candidates in permanent salaried positions at the time of application are not eligible for a Morris Animal Foundation Fellowship. These researchers may wish to pursue a non-Fellowship Grant under the First Award mechanism.
Review Criteria
- All proposals undergo administrative and scientific review:
- During administrative review, Foundation staff check for adherence to the proposal guidelines. Proposals adhering to the proposal guidelines move forward to scientific review.
- During scientific review, proposals are assigned two Scientific Advisory Board Reviewers to evaluate the entire proposal for scientific merit, potential impact and proposal quality using this rubric. Proposals receiving low preliminary overall scores by both reviewers may be eliminated from deliberation at the Scientific Advisory Board Meeting. All other proposals will be deliberated and ultimately scored by the Scientific Advisory Board (SAB) according to the same rubric.
- Projects recommended for funding are then screened by their Animal Welfare Advisory Board (AWAB) for adherence to the Foundation’s Health Study Policy for Animals Involved in Research. Any animal welfare questions or concerns must be addressed before a proposal is eligible for funding.
Application Requirements
- Important Submission Points:
- The user submitting the proposal should be the Applicant/PI.
- Ensure that you do not lose any information - save your work often and as many times as needed before submission.
- Give yourself time - you may need technical assistance to complete your submission.
- At this point your application still needs institutional approval. Do not leave this until the last moment as your administrator needs to sign off electronically before the deadline.
- Mistakes happen! If you discover a mistake after submitting your proposal, you can correct your work. You must “un-submit” then revalidate to finalize and resubmit.
