How are Centennial Center grants funded? – Most of our grant funds are drawn from a collection of restricted and unrestricted investment accounts dedicated to supporting APSA members. Over the years, individual members and organizations have donated funds to support specific types of research activity, to encourage research on various topics or research themes, to support scholars of specific backgrounds, or in general to support the Association’s work. The largest of these funds, the Second Century Fund, was the outcome of the development campaign that ran from 1998 to 2003 that created the Centennial Center. Finally, the Centennial Center’s Winter Grants (Growing Democracy, Research Partnerships on Critical Issues, and Pedagogical Partnerships) are funded through a generous grant we received from the Ivywood Foundation, a family philanthropy run in part by former APSA president Rodgers Smith, who chaired the task force that created the Center’s Winter Grants.
How does the Centennial Center evaluate grant applications? – Each grant cycle, Centennial Center staff create a pool of approximately 12-20 reviewers depending on the number of applications received. All completed applications are read by two external reviewers. To create this pool of judges, APSA solicits volunteers (potential judges can also volunteer here), engages with members of the Centennial Center Advisory Board, and also invites members to serve as reviewers. All reviewers are mid- to senior-level political scientists and are drawn from both inside the academy (associate or full professors) and outside (typically from the managerial and executive ranks of their organizations). Centennial Center staff take care to create a pool of judges that reflects the gender and racial diversity of APSA’s membership, as well as the methodological and topical scope of work that is undertaken by political scientists. Once the judge pool is created, judges are assigned by Centennial Center staff so that at least one of the two reviewers for each application is an expert in that research area and/or methodology. The Centennial Center also provides each judge with a guide for reviewing that includes information about recognizing implicit bias. Judges are assigned approximately 10-12 applications each and are given access to application materials through an online portal. For each application, judges answer a series of 3-4 open-ended questions and then provide an overall numerical score. Once all applications are reviewed, Centennial Center staff assess these reviews to determine awards. Centennial Center staff use the reviewers’ numerical scores as a guide, but do not base award decisions off of these numbers exclusively. Instead, staff make a holistic determination based on reviewers’ comments, an application’s fit with the purpose of different funds, and fund availability.
What does the post-award process look like? – Grant winners will receive a packet of documents once they are notified of their award. This packet includes a grant agreement and two financial forms. All these forms typically need to be signed by a university grant administrator before being returned to the Centennial Center staff. Once the award packet is returned, the Centennial Center staff will submit a payment request to APSA’s finance department, and funds should arrive within one to two weeks. Once a grantee receives their money, they are free to work on their projects as outlined in their application Of course, we understand that unpredictable things happen all the time in research, and the Centennial Center staff is very open to any requests for project extensions or modifications as needed. All the Centennial Center staff asks from its grantees once an award is made is for an annual progress report (typically a page) for multi-year projects, and a final report and budget (typically two to three pages) one month after a project is finished.
