Wild Animal Initiative’s Seed Grants program provides small amounts of funding to facilitate projects that will test promising new techniques or approaches, incorporate welfare assessments into ecological research and management, or adapt animal welfare science approaches for wild contexts.
Seed Grants are ideal for early-career scientists or more established principal investigators who have no previous experience with wild animal welfare research.
Each Seed Grants call solicits project proposals within one or more broad themes. We expect successful projects to be highly cost-effective, with funds primarily supporting uniquely welfare-relevant activities.
Eligibility:
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Seed Grants are available to anyone, but we are especially interested in supporting early career researchers (postdocs and PhD students) pursuing a long-term research career in wild animal welfare, or established researchers who seek to expand their research portfolio to include wild animal welfare.
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Eligible projects include those that are standalone, or those that add a wild animal welfare component to an existing non-Wild Animal Initiative funded project to broaden its scope.
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Projects must be led by a principal investigator who is affiliated with a university or other research institution (e.g. a government agency).
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Projects must be led by or include collaborators who are residents of all countries where field work will take place. If a project is managed by an NGO, that NGO must be registered in the country where field work will take place.
- We prioritize funding for direct research costs (e.g. supplies, materials), though we do fund other expense areas (e.g. stipends, salaries, capital equipment) if they are fully justified relative to the project goals. Further details on what is eligible for funding can be found in our FAQs. We will not reject a proposal based solely on budget without first asking applicants to consider modifications, but applicants should limit their requests to what is reasonably needed to complete the project.
Application :
- Applicant submits short Expression of Interest (EOI) form.
- EOI is reviewed for eligibility and relevance by the Wild Animal Initiative Grants team.
- If the EOI is shortlisted, the applicant is invited to develop a full proposal.
- The full proposal is externally reviewed by project-relevant experts.
- The proposal is externally reviewed by specialists in animal care and ethics.
- The proposal is reviewed by Wild Animal Initiative technical experts.
- The lead applicant may be asked to provide clarification or make modifications in response to reviewer feedback.
- The review team discusses shortlisted proposals and makes final selection of the most promising projects.
- Final decisions are shared with applicants and announced on our website. Decisions are generally made within 6 months of the EOI deadline
