Extramural Research Overview for Fiscal Year 2020

Want the latest funding and success rate data on fiscal year (FY) 2020 NIH and NIAID awards? Use this summary of NIH’s April 21, 2021 Open Mike blog post, NIAID information, and RePORT links.

As the blog post also explains, the figures below cover grants (not contracts) funded through NIH’s regular annual budget appropriation. To find parent grants, grant revisions, and grant supplements (not contracts) funded through special Coronavirus Funding appropriations, go to the Additional Filters section of the Advanced Projects Search and navigate to the NIH COVID-19 Response field.

NIH Grants by the Numbers

NIH’s FY 2020 appropriation totaled $41.6 billion. Of that total, NIH spent $30.8 billion to award 56,169 new and renewed extramural grants to 2,650 U.S. and international organizations.

For competing research project grants (RPGs, e.g., R01, R21):

• Extramural researchers submitted 55,038 applications.
• NIH funded 11,332 grants, leading to a 20.6 percent success rate.
• Compared to FY 2019, NIH spending in this category rose by 4.9 percent to $21.636 billion.
• The average award’s total cost was $566,744, an increase of $13,065 or 2.4 percent from FY 2019.

As usual, most of those RPGs were R01-equivalents. For this subset of R01-equivalent awards:

• Extramural researchers submitted 36,250 applications.
• NIH funded 7,767 awards, leading to a 21.4 percent success rate.
• Compared to FY 2019, NIH spending in this category rose by 5.94 percent to $17.4 billion.
• The average award’s total cost was $559,680, an increase of $11,290 or 2.1 percent from FY 2019.

For more, check RePORT (Research Portfolio Online Reporting Tools), the NIH Data Book, and Budget and Spending. You could also run a RePORTER Search for NIH FY 2020 Projects.

NIAID Budget, Awards, and Success Rates

Learn about NIAID’s FY 2021 appropriations and spending plans here:

• February 3, 2021 article "Budget Updates From January 2021 NIAID Advisory Council Meeting"
• Budget Data Comparisons
• Financial Management Plan

Find NIAID funding overviews in some of the reports at Budget and Spending. Open the page’s gray section headers and choose any report that includes “Institute/Center” in the title, e.g., Grants, Contracts, and Other Mechanisms: Awards, Average Funding, and Total Funding by Institute/Center. In MS Excel, use the table filter controls to choose FY 2020 and NIAID.

For more details, try this RePORTER Search for NIAID FY 2020 Projects as a starting point. Our See Funded Projects and More Using NIH Databases and March 4, 2020 article “Generate Your Own Lists of Recently Funded Grants” offer search tips.

We covered NIAID success rates and more in our December 16, 2020 article “Checking on FY 2020 Application and Award Totals.” For success rate history, go to RPGs: Success Rates of New (Type 1) Competing Applications for Targeted and Untargeted Research and use the control on the upper left to choose NIAID.