Added indicators for frozen grants

news
Author

Emma Mairson

Published

June 30, 2025

We have added frozen grants – those that are not receiving payments – to the Grant Watch database.

Why are you tracking this?

Starting in April, reports12345 began emerging that NIH funding to certain universities was fro zen. Grants at these institutions did not appear to be formally cancelled; rather, scientists could not “draw down” funds to cover the costs of their research proje cts. We wanted to understand what was going on and what grants were being affec ted.

How does NIH grant funding work?

When researchers receive a Notice of Award, they don’t get a big check to cover the cost of the whole project. Instead, they’re typically told that a certain portion of the award will be available to them over the next budget period (usually a year). Throughout the budget period, the grant recipient will use the Payment Management System (PMS) to cover expenses (e.g. salaries, supplies, participant payments). They use PMS to request only the funds they need to cover each expense, right before those funds are needed. Funds will then be deposited into the recipient’s bank account. If funds go unspent, they must be returned. When the budget period ends, the researcher must submit a Research Performance Progress Report (RPPR), where they describe the progress they’ve made, outline what they will do over the next year, and amend their budget, if needed. Only once the RPPR is approved will the recipient be eligible to receive the next year’s Notice of Award. Occasionally, payments may be made after a project has ended if the expense was incurred during the project period.

When the NIH issues a Notice of Award making a legally-binding promise that they will make funds available to a researcher, this is called an “obligation.” When the grant recipient requests funds to cover expenses, this is called a “draw down.” When the NIH deposits the money into the recipient’s bank account, this is called an “outlay.”

Funding freezes seem to affect researchers’ ability to draw down funds. If they cannot draw down funds, then there will be no associated NIH outlays—this is what we wanted to track.

Where do the outlay data come from?

Our information comes from USASpending.gov which is the official source of government spending data. Agencies are required by law to submit standardized spending data and these data must be made publicly available on the site. The data we use are updated approximately monthly and lag by about one to two months. The data for Department of Health and Human Services April spending, for example, were released on 5/29/2025.

The spending data are reported by “periods” in the fiscal year, which correspond to months (e.g. P01 is October, P02 is November, P03 is December, and so on). However, P01 and P02 spending are reported together, meaning that there are 11 reporting periods in a year.

We do not have the granularity to see individual draw downs in the payment management system; we can only see total payments (outlays) from the NIH per month. We also cannot distinguish payments for parent awards versus subawards and supplements; data are reported by Federal Award Identifier Number (FAIN).

How are you defining “frozen”?

Frozen grants are those that are not receiving payments (outlays). To be identified in our database, these projects must meet all of the following criteria:

  • The grant was active in the most recent period (currently April 2025), according to the project start and end dates in USASpending.

  • There were no payments for the grant in the most recent period.

  • There were two consecutive periods with payments prior to the start of the freeze. The freeze can be any length of time.

  • The recipient is at an institution that is known to have their funding frozen (i.e. Harvard, Weill Cornell, Cornell, Columbia, Brown, Northwestern).

  • The grant has not yet been identified as “terminated” in the Grant Watch database.

  • The grant received payments in at least 80% of its active periods before January 2025.

  • The grant has spent less than 100% of its obligated funds.

    • If the grant will end in the next three periods (currently May-July 2025), the grant has spent less than 95% of its obligated funds.

It’s important to note that some institutions opted to pause or stop drawing down funds while they assessed updated grant terms and conditions. With the data we have, there is no way for us to gauge the reason outlays have slowed or stopped, which is why we have limited our definition to institutions that were explicitly reported to have their funding frozen.

I heard some grants have been unfrozen. Why are they still listed as frozen in your data?

Given the speed at which decisions may be made and reversed, we want to be sure we have data to confirm that grants have indeed been unfrozen before listing them as such in our database. Our spending data lag 1-2 months behind and we do not expect to have June 2025 data until the end of July. We plan to continue updating grant statuses using the data we have, as we receive it.