The Grant Opportunity Search helps you find relevant funding opportunities using natural language or structured filters. Navigate to Funding → Grants in the left sidebar to get started.
Searching with Natural Language
The fastest way to search is to describe what you're looking for in the text box. For example:
"Government data science and AI grants for University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign"
FirstIgnite will automatically extract structured filters from your query — such as research topic, institution, location, and eligibility — and apply them to your search. After searching, you'll see the extracted filters displayed as tags (e.g., "AI and machine learning research," "Higher Education," "Illinois"). You can remove any individual filter by clicking the ✕ on its tag.
Setting Your Institution
Your institution is used to match grants with faculty members at your organization. You can set or change your institution using the institution selector below the search box. This selection is saved as your default for future searches.
💡 When searching for grants, the system will look at the eligibility and location of your selected institution to find the best matches.
Using Manual Filters
For more precise control, click Select filters manually below the search box. This opens a filter panel with six dimensions:
Filter | What It Does |
Keywords | Search by research topic, grant title, or keywords |
Institution | Select the institution to match faculty against |
Location | Filter by geographic region (e.g., United States, Europe, Australia) |
Eligibility | Filter by organization type (e.g., Higher Education, Nonprofits) |
Funding Source | Filter by source type (e.g., Government, Corporate) |
Program | Filter by specific funding program (e.g., EU Funding, National Institutes of Health) |
Understanding Your Results
After running a search, results appear in two tabs:
Good Match — Shows grants where the top faculty match score is 60% or above. These are the most relevant opportunities for your institution.
All Grants — The broader set of matching grants, including opportunities that may not yet have strong faculty matches.
Each grant result displays:
Field | Description |
Grant title | Name of the funding opportunity, with the funding source shown above it when available |
Due date | Application deadline |
Grant amount | Award amount or range when available |
Location | Geographic eligibility |
Match score | A percentage indicating how well the grant aligns with faculty at your institution |
Click Match Faculty Members on any grant to see which researchers at your institution are the best fit. Click View More to see full grant details.
Refining and Restarting
After a search, you can adjust your results without starting over:
Action | How |
Edit your search query | Click Edit Input next to your query text |
Adjust filters | Click Edit Filters to open the filter panel, or click ✕ on any filter tag to remove it |
Start fresh | Click Clear All and New Search to reset everything |
Exporting Results
Click the Export button in the results bar to download your grant results as an Excel file (.xlsx). This is useful for sharing opportunities with colleagues or tracking grants outside of FirstIgnite.