Pivot-RP - Funding Search Tips

This page provides some tips to perform searches for funding opportunities in Pivot-RP. For the most precise searching uses the Advanced Search options.  For more details, see Searching for Funding Opportunities.

• Entering terms in the Quick Search search box, searches across all fields in Pivot-RP including Title, abstract, sponsor name, deadline notes, eligibility information, keyword fields and more. This will search for the terms you enter across all text fields in each record.

• Many grant sponsors do not mention specific kinds of research they will fund. Instead they state broader disciplines within which they will consider applications. Some research topics may not get any results in searching, but that does not necessarily mean there are no grants for which the project may be eligible. If this happens, try searching for grants in the broader field(s) within which your project falls. For example, a project to study zebra mussels may be eligible under a grant looking to fund projects in the broader fields of Biological Sciences, Marine Biology, or Environmental Biology, and so forth.

• Use Truncation (Asterisk), Proximity Operators (pre/#, w/#), Exact Phrase Searching (Double Quotes), and Precedence (Parentheses) to give your search more flexibility. For example:

  • bas* returns items with words that start with bas, such as basic, basketball, baseball and basket.

  • Lead* returns items such as leader or leadership.

  • (gene w/2 mouse) or "mouse genome" – returns items that have the word gene within two words of mouse or that contain the exact phrase mouse genome.

• Searches are case insensitive. Using either upper or lower case letters will yield the same result set.

• With the exception of the hyphen, do not use punctuation marks (slashes, commas, etc.). Punctuation marks in most cases will retrieve erroneous results. This also applies to the Amount Field on the advanced search form. For monetary amounts, leave out any commas or periods. E.g.: $10,000 = 10000.  However, hyphens are important in Pivot-RP: searching Covid-19 will return different results than search Covid 19.

• Do not use the articles a, an, or the. The search engine does not search for these.

• You can search by the funder's opportunity ID (or Reference ID).  Just enter the Opp ID in the All Fields box (advanced search) or the Quick Search box.   However, do NOT use hyphens.  Example the ID  PAR-18-953 should be searched as just PAR18953.   Note that CFDA numbers can also be searched directly by using the advanced search form and selecting CFDA from the field pull down menu.

  • You can also search for the unique Pivot-RP assigned ID for every opportunity but that number should be in quotes. Example " 66962713-c3cd-44f2-be49-bbfc71465d6d"

• Searching using the Keyword wheel or Keyword Search will find opportunities in Pivot-RP that have specifically been designated by Pivot-RP editors as being relevant to any terms selected.  Keyword searches will provide highly relevant results.

• Using the Search by Funder feature will allow you to search for opportunities from a specific funder or sponsor.  Selecting the All Funders option will bring up an AtoZ directory of all funders/sponsors with current opportunities in Pivot-RP.  The AtoZ funder directory can be browsed or searched.  If a funder in the directory is displayed as a highlighted link, selecting the funder name will return a search result showing all funding opportunities for that funder.

Advanced Search Form Features:

• Use the Advanced Search Form to create more granular searches by included any parameter(s) and/or excluding parameters

• Keywords 'Explode' function: Use this to expand your Keyword search. For example, if you are searching on the Keyword 'Education' and Explode it, the system will automatically search for all the more specific 'educational' terms under it in the Keyword hierarchy, such as 'Higher Education', 'Literacy', and so forth. For more details, see the Keyword section.

• To select multiple terms from any pick list (for example: Sponsor Type, Citizenship, and so forth), select the check box to the left of each term.

Additional Notes about Proximity and Truncation:

• The proximity operator is not guaranteed to return similar results when the order of terms are swapped. So  (lung w/4 cancer) is not guaranteed to return the same results as (cancer w/4 lung). In addition, stop words can also cause different results when the terms are swapped.

• We do not support the use of truncation in combination with a proximity operator, so  (child* w/5 obes*) will not work.

Excluded Terms and Parameters:

• At the bottom of the Advanced Search form you can exclude terms or parameters you do not want to see included in your results.  Use "Match Any Fields" to exclude records matching ANY of your selected criteria. This is similar to the Boolean operator OR (OR NOT). This is the default option and is used unless another option is selected.  If you want to exclude only results that match a combined set of filters, select 'Match all.'

  • Example: Selecting Cybersecurity as a KEYWORD, selecting Private Foundation as the SPONSOR TYPE, and using 'Match any' will exclude all funding opportunities that have the keyword Cybersecurity, as well as all funding opportunities that are from private foundations (whether or not they have the keyword Cybersecurity or not).

• Article last edited: 1-Jun-2021
• Old Article Number: 9989