The Research & Innovation Office (RIO) Advocacy Grant program provides funding for faculty to participate in virtual or in-person advocacy events. Examples include but are not limited to National Humanities Advocacy Day, COSSA Social Science Advocacy Day and the Coalition of National of Science Foundation activities.
In coordination with the Office of Government Relations, when appropriate, the goal is to facilitate relationships between CU faculty, sponsors, legislators, policy experts and others to advance CU Boulder’s research, creative work and scholarly enterprise.
Please review the guidelines below and email rio@colorado.edu with any questions. All requests will be reviewed by RIO and are subject to the availability of funding.
Eligibility
All CU Boulder Tenured and Tenure-Track Faculty, Senior Instructors, and Career Track Research Faculty (i.e., Research Professors Series, Senior Research Associates* (SRA), and Research Associates* (RA)) who hold an appointment of half-time or greater are eligible to apply. Other fulltime staff routinely engaged as principal investigators on scholarly or scientific research, such as librarians or curators, are also eligible.
Priority is given to those who have not received advocacy support during the past 12 months.
Grant Information
Subject to the availability of funds, this program supports up to $1,000 in registration and travel expenses (i.e., airfare, lodging (not to exceed two nights), ground transportation) to advocate for faculty and CU Boulder interests. The intent is to have CU Boulder faculty and stakeholders express priorities and interests to key representatives in humanities, social science, education, research and general higher education domains.
It does not support travel to scholarly or scientific meetings, even though useful contacts with representatives can often be made at such meetings. There may be exceptional cases where meetings with representatives can be arranged during a scholarly or scientific meeting at considerable cost savings to the university. To justify support for such travel, you must provide evidence that you have arranged formal, one-on-one meetings with representatives in advance. Any such special requests will be considered on a case-by-case basis. Travel to meetings or workshops designed for the purpose of bringing faculty together with representatives may be supported.
The program supports efforts to advance an investigator’s research or scholarly direction, and/or technical aspects of projects. If any trip is for the negotiation of an award, investigators must coordinate before travel with their Contract Officer in the Office of Contracts and Grants (OCG). Per CU Administrative Policy Statement 2005, OCG has contracting authority on behalf of CU Boulder and all award negotiations must go through OCG.
Funds are not intended to support individual donor meetings. For such trips, please contact your unit’s Advancement officer.
Application Submission Process
Applications are accepted on a rolling basis and must be submitted through this online portal, which lists the application requirements. Please log in with your CU credentials. If you have any questions, please email rio@colorado.edu.
Final Report
Once the advocacy efforts are complete, grant recipients are required to report to the Vice Chancellor for Research & Innovation. Grantees should complete this survey within 60 days after the advocacy event. For auditing purposes, grantees should retain receipts for any expenses as they may be asked to provide copies to RIO.