NCATS Funding Policies and Considerations

Visit NIH Fiscal Policies for NIH-wide information on appropriations and other budgetary information (salary limits, stipends, tuition/fees) and Funding Decisions to learn about NIH's consistent and unified approach for making funding decisions. The NCATS-specific information on this page builds on that general information.

On this page:

Fiscal Year 2026

Final award decisions are based on a variety of criteria, including program relevance to NIH priorities, responsiveness to the NCATS mission and Strategic Plan, scientific merit, allowability of costs, and availability of funds. NCATS is strongly committed to supporting early career investigators and providing special consideration to applications that fill a significant gap in the research portfolio or propose a new or promising scientific approach.

  • Competing grants – NCATS will fund competing grants at levels and duration based on programmatic and grants management (within the NCATS Division of Extramural Activities) funding recommendations. 
  • Non-Competing Grants – NCATS will generally award non-competing grants at the committed level except during a continuing resolution.  NCATS will usually fund non-competing grants at 90% of the committed level while operating under a continuing resolution.  This reduction applies to most grants except NRSA, Career Development, Conference, Research Education and SBIR/STTR awards.  Once an appropriation has been enacted and/or full year policies established, non-competing grants that were awarded under this policy may be revised accordingly. 

 

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