External Funding for Social Work Doctoral Students

Most funding lists circulated in doctoral programs are organized by the name of the funder. That arrangement is fine for browsing and close to useless for deciding what to write this month. Two pieces of information determine whether an opportunity is worth an afternoon of your time, and neither one is usually in the list.

The first is phase. Some programs want a first-year student with a research statement. Others will not look at you until you have a defended proposal. Applying to a dissertation-completion award in your second year is not ambition, it is a rejection you paid for with two weeks of writing.

The second is immigration status. The NIH Kirschstein-NRSA F31 and the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship both require citizenship or permanent residency. For a student on an F-1 or J-1 visa, a large share of any standard funding handout is closed before the first sentence, and nobody annotates the list to say so. Students find out one application at a time.

This post starts from the list our program circulates, checks every entry against the funder’s own page in August 2026, adds those two columns, and adds what the search turned up. The last part matters more than I expected. About a quarter of the programs on the old handout no longer exist, and several are still described as open on university fellowship pages and aggregator sites.

The four columns

Phase. Any year means no proposal or candidacy requirement. Pre-dissertation means the program is built for years one through three and sometimes excludes students past that point. ABD means an approved or defended dissertation proposal is required. Completion means final-year write-up support, usually with data collection finished or nearly finished.

Status eligibility. Citizen/PR only means US citizen, non-citizen national, or lawful permanent resident. Open means the program either explicitly accepts F-1, J-1, DACA, or other statuses, or states that citizenship is not a requirement. Status-specific means the program exists because of immigration status, and US citizens are the ones who are ineligible. Not stated means the published eligibility text is silent. Treat silence as a question for the program officer. Never treat it as a yes.

Deadline. The month of the most recent cycle I could verify. Dates move by a week or two every year, so the month is the planning unit.

Amount. As published on the funder’s own page. Where two official pages disagree, I say so.

Programs that have ended are in their own section near the bottom, so everything in the main tables is something you can apply to.

Social work professional associations

These are the smallest awards on the list and the ones with the best odds, because the applicant pool is other social work doctoral students instead of every social scientist in the country. Several require membership in the sponsoring organization, which costs less than the award.

Program	Phase	Status eligibility	Deadline	Amount
Grand Challenges for Social Work Doctoral Awards	Completion	Open. “International students are eligible and must be able to complete a W-9”	April 18 in 2025. No 2026 call confirmed	$3,000, one per Grand Challenge
SSWR Doctoral Fellows Award	ABD	Not stated	August, nomination by your program	$3,000
CSWE Minority Fellowship Program	Any year	Citizen/PR only. “U.S. citizen, noncitizen national or permanent resident”	2026-27 closed, 2027-28 interest survey open	About $2,100/month
CSWE-SSWR-GADE Doctoral Student Policy Fellowship	Any year	Not stated	January for the 2025 cohort	Placement plus travel award
SSSP Racial/Ethnic Minority Graduate Fellowship	ABD	Citizen/PR, with DACA and undocumented students explicitly included	February 1	$15,000 split between two fellows
APISWEA Doctoral Fellowship	ABD	Not stated	May 14 in 2026	$1,000, two awards
AGESW Pre-Dissertation Fellows Program	Years 1-2 only	US social work PhD program, MSW required	Opens March 1, closes June 1	$1,200 plus GSA membership and registration
GADE Student Award for Teaching	Any year	Not stated	Opens March 15, closes May 15	$1,000 plus travel
GADE Student Award for Social Work Research	Any year, published or in-press work	Not stated	Opens September 15, closes October 31	Recognition, amount not published
GADE Student Award for Leadership and Service	Any year	Not stated	Opens March 15, closes May 15	Recognition, amount not published
SPSSI Grants-in-Aid	Any year, dissertation stage preferred	Not stated	May 15 and October 15	Up to $1,000 pre-doctoral
SPSSI Clara Mayo Grants	Pre-dissertation	Not stated	May 15 and October 15	Up to $1,000, six per cycle
Family Process Institute Grants Initiative	ABD	No citizenship rule, but US residence required	September 1 in 2026	Under $5,000
Melissa Institute Belfer-Aptman Award	ABD, proposal approved	Not stated	April 1	$2,500 minimum, up to three awards
SCRA Student Research Grant	Any year	Not stated	April 22 in 2026	Up to $1,000
The Melanie Foundation Scholarship	Any year, MSW or PhD	No citizenship restriction stated	March 5	$2,500, renewable by reapplying

Three notes on this table. The SSWR award is nomination-only, so the person who has to act first is your advisor, in August, for an award announced the following January. The Grand Challenges landing page still displays a closure notice dated October 2023, even though the program ran cohorts in 2024 and 2025, so read the call-for-applications post instead of the program page. And the GADE funding page has moved: the URL printed on most handouts, /Students/Current-Students/Funding, returns a 404. The current page is gadesocialwork.org/funding, and it does not list the Grand Challenges awards, the SSWR Doctoral Fellows Award, Fahs-Beck, SSSP, SPSSI, the Family Process Institute, or the Melissa Institute. No single list is complete, including GADE’s and including this one.

Federal agencies

The federal picture changed substantially in 2025 and 2026, and most of the change ran in one direction. NIH ended its diversity-targeted individual fellowship tracks under Executive Order 14151. The F31 to Promote Diversity was announced as ended in May 2025 and already-funded awards were cancelled starting that April. The Blueprint D-SPAN F99/K00 went with it. The NIMH and NIA R36 dissertation awards, both diversity-targeted, have been removed from the NIH site, and neither institute appears on NIH’s current list of R36 sponsors. AHRQ’s health services research dissertation program was expired by notice NOT-HS-26-004 in March 2026. SSA stopped funding the six Retirement and Disability Research Consortium centers in February 2025, which took the predoctoral slots at Boston College, NBER, Michigan, Wisconsin, UMBC, and Baruch with it.

Two of the terminated mechanisms came back in versions open to everyone. The parent F99/K00 now spans nineteen institutes with no diversity restriction, and the NIDA R36 is a general substance use dissertation award. Applying through these means writing what would have been the same application without the diversity framing.

Program	Phase	Status eligibility	Deadline	Amount
NIJ Graduate Research Fellowship	ABD in practice	Open. “The official applicant is the academic institution, not the student. Therefore, the student’s citizenship does not affect eligibility”	May in 2026	Up to $50,000/year for up to 3 years
Law and Science Dissertation Grant (NSF-funded, run by ASU)	ABD	Open. “It must be a U.S. institution, though you do not have to be an American citizen”	Check the site	Up to $20,000
NIDILRR/ACL Switzer Research Fellowship	ABD	Open with paperwork. Non-citizens “must provide documentation that they are eligible to receive research funding directly from an agency of the United States government”	Check grants.gov	$40,000 to $45,000, about 4 awards
NIH Parent F31 (PA-25-422)	ABD	Citizen/PR only. “Citizen or a non-citizen national of the United States or… lawfully admitted for permanent residence”	April 8, August 8, December 8	Stipend, tuition, institutional allowance, up to 5 years
NIH Parent F99/K00 (PA-27-037)	Late pre-dissertation into postdoc	Citizen/PR only	August 8 and December 8, then quarterly through 2029	Up to 5 years across both phases
NIDA R36 Substance Use Dissertation Award (PAR-25-347)	ABD	Citizen/PR only	February 16, June 16, October 16	Up to $50,000/year for 2 years
NSF Graduate Research Fellowship (NSF 25-547)	Years 1-2	Citizen/PR only. “U.S. citizen, national, or a permanent resident”	October into November	$37,000/year for 3 years, plus $16,000/year to the institution
ASA Dissertation Research Improvement Grants	ABD	Check the call	Opens August 1, closes November 2 in 2026	Varies
Census Bureau Dissertation Fellowship	ABD	US citizen only. The text says “be a citizen of the United States,” with no mention of nationals or permanent residents	February 28	Contract to the institution, full-time on-site work

The NIJ fellowship deserves more attention from social work students than it gets. The award goes to the university and the student is the named researcher, which is why citizenship drops out of the eligibility question. Topics have to touch crime, victimization, or the administration of justice, which covers a good deal of child welfare, intimate partner violence, reentry, and juvenile justice work.

Two cautions on the federal table. NSF’s FY2026 budget request proposed cutting the Graduate Research Fellowship Program by 55 percent against FY2024, so the next cycle may make fewer awards. That is a budget proposal and not an enacted cut. And NSF has moved dissertation improvement funding for most social science subfields out of the agency and into disciplinary associations or universities, so check your field’s association before checking nsf.gov. Sociology went to ASA, and law and social science went to Arizona State.

The ACF/OPRE dissertation scholars programs (Behavioral Interventions Scholars, Child Care Research Scholars, Family Self-Sufficiency and Stability Research Scholars) could not be confirmed for 2026. The most recent cycles I could document were 2025, 2022, and 2020 through 2025 respectively. Check grants.gov before counting on any of them.

Private foundations and national fellowships

This is where the largest awards are, and where the citizenship rules vary the most.

Program	Phase	Status eligibility	Deadline	Amount
Charlotte W. Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship	Completion	Open. “I am an international student enrolled at a U.S. institution. Am I eligible? Yes”	Opens August 1, closes November 1	$33,500
NAEd/Spencer Dissertation Fellowship	Completion	Open. “US citizenship is not required”	Opens August 1, closes October 8 in 2026	$30,000, 35 fellowships
AERA Dissertation Grants	ABD, usually final year	Open. “Non-U.S. citizens enrolled in a doctoral program at a U.S. institution”	May 20 in 2026	Up to $27,500
Harry Frank Guggenheim Emerging Scholar Awards	Completion	Open. “Applicants may be citizens of any country and studying at colleges or universities in any country”	Letter of interest February 1, full proposal March 15 if invited	$25,000
AERA Minority Dissertation Fellowship	ABD	Citizen/PR only, plus race and ethnicity criteria	November 10 in 2025	$25,000
AAUW American Doctoral Fellowship	Completion	Citizen/PR only. Women only	Opens August 17, closes September 30 in 2026	$25,000
P.E.O. Scholar Awards	Within two years of finishing	Citizen or permanent resident of the US or Canada. Women only	Chapter nomination August 20 to November 20	Up to $25,000
Russell Sage Foundation Dissertation Research Grants	ABD	Open. “Eligibility is limited to students at institutions based in the United States. There are no restrictions on nationality”	February 3 in 2026	$15,000, up to 20 grants
Washington Center for Equitable Growth	ABD	Not stated	Late January	$15,000
Horowitz Foundation for Social Policy	ABD, proposal defended	Open, reported by several university fellowship offices as any country and any university, though the foundation’s own page would not load for me to quote it	December 1	$10,000, paid $7,500 plus $2,500 on completion
APF COGDOP Graduate Student Scholarships	Any year	No citizenship requirement found. Department must nominate	June 26 in 2026	$2,000 to $5,000, nine scholarships
APA Dissertation Research Award	ABD, proposal approved	US or Canadian institution, APA student membership	March 1	Up to $5,000, up to 15 awards
Fahs-Beck Fund	ABD	No citizenship clause on the page	April 1 and November 1	Up to $5,000
Sociological Initiatives Foundation	Any, through your institution	No citizenship rule, because the grant goes to the university	August 14 in 2026	$15,000 to $30,000
Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans	Early years, age 30 or under	Status-specific. Naturalized citizens, green card holders, refugees, asylees, DACA recipients, and children of two immigrant parents	October 29 in 2026	Up to $90,000 over two years
Margaret McNamara Education Grants	Any year	Status-specific. Must “not hold US citizenship or permanent residency.” Women 25 and older	September 15 to January 15	Up to $15,000
AAUW International Fellowships	Any stage of a first graduate degree	Status-specific. “Must be non-U.S. citizens and must not hold U.S. permanent resident status.” STEM fields only	Opens August 17, closes September 17 in 2026	$25,000 doctoral
P.E.O. International Peace Scholarship	Coursework, not first-time ABD	Status-specific. “A student who is a citizen or permanent resident of the United States or Canada is not eligible.” Women only	Eligibility form September 15 to December 15, materials by February 1	Up to $12,500
Point Foundation Flagship Scholarship	Any year	Reported open regardless of citizenship, with undocumented students reviewed as international applicants	Opens September 10, closes November 20	Need-based, renewable
Josephine de Kármán Fellowship	Final year only	Open to international students, but only at eleven California universities	Late January	$28,000, four awards
Google PhD Fellowship	Varies by region	Not stated	Opened March 5, closed April 30 in 2026	Up to $85,000/year for 2 years in the US and Canada
Korea Foundation Graduate Studies Fellowship	Any year	Open to any nationality. Funds Korea-related research	Varies by world region	Tuition support, up to 3 years

Four of these have gates that matter more than the money column.

The de Kármán fellowship changed in 2023, when the Pasadena Community Foundation took over the trust. It now accepts applications only from final-year PhD students at Caltech, Stanford, USC, and the eight UC campuses. Several university fellowship pages outside California still list it as generally available. Berkeley, UCLA, and USC social work students are the ones for whom this is real.

Newcombe requires a dissertation that “engages significant questions of religion, ethics, morals, and values.” Moral distress in practice, the ethics of child welfare removal, and religion in immigrant mental health all fit. Most intervention trials do not.

NAEd/Spencer requires an explicit tie to education. School-based mental health, immigrant youth schooling, and the education outcomes of child welfare involvement fit. The award is $30,000 on the National Academy of Education page, which is the administering body. Spencer’s own mirrored page still shows an older $27,500 figure.

Google’s fellowship takes no direct applications and caps nominations at four per university in the US and Canada, so the real work is finding your university’s internal nominator in the fall for an April deadline. Meta’s fellowship is in an odd state: the official research page says applications are not being accepted, while the application portal shows an open window. Ask before writing anything.

Funding without a citizenship requirement

Pulling the open items into one place, because this is the part of the list that is hardest to assemble and the part most handouts skip. Everything here either explicitly accepts applicants regardless of status, or exists specifically for people who are not US citizens.

Program	Amount	Phase	The eligibility language
NIJ Graduate Research Fellowship	$50,000/year, up to 3 years	ABD	“The student’s citizenship does not affect eligibility”
NIDILRR Switzer Research Fellowship	$40,000-$45,000	ABD	Non-citizens must document eligibility to receive federal research funding
Charlotte W. Newcombe Fellowship	$33,500	Completion	“I am an international student enrolled at a U.S. institution. Am I eligible? Yes”
NAEd/Spencer Dissertation Fellowship	$30,000	Completion	“US citizenship is not required”
Josephine de Kármán Fellowship	$28,000	Final year	International students, at eleven California universities only
AERA Dissertation Grants	$27,500	ABD	“Non-U.S. citizens enrolled in a doctoral program at a U.S. institution”
Harry Frank Guggenheim Emerging Scholar	$25,000	Completion	“Citizens of any country”
Law and Science Dissertation Grant	$20,000	ABD	“You do not have to be an American citizen”
Russell Sage Foundation	$15,000	ABD	“There are no restrictions on nationality”
Margaret McNamara Education Grants	$15,000	Any year	Must not hold US citizenship or permanent residency
SSSP Racial/Ethnic Minority Fellowship	$15,000 for two	ABD	DACA and undocumented students explicitly eligible
Sociological Initiatives Foundation	$15,000-$30,000	Via institution	The grant goes to the university
P.E.O. International Peace Scholarship	$12,500	Coursework	US and Canadian citizens and permanent residents are not eligible
Horowitz Foundation	$10,000	ABD	Reported as any country, not quote-verified
APF COGDOP Scholarships	$2,000-$5,000	Any year	No citizenship requirement found
Fahs-Beck Fund	$5,000	ABD	No citizenship clause on the page
Grand Challenges for Social Work	$3,000	Completion	“International students are eligible and must be able to complete a W-9”
The Melanie Foundation	$2,500	Any year	No citizenship restriction stated
Korea Foundation	Tuition	Any year	Open to any nationality, for Korea-related research

Five programs on this theme come up in every search and none of them works the way the search result suggests.

AAUW International Fellowships are restricted to STEM. The page says the fellowships are “available for master’s and academic and professional doctoral degree programs in STEM disciplines,” and AAUW judges this against the Department of Homeland Security STEM list. Social work is not on that list. Aggregator sites still describe the fellowship as open to any field and they are out of date. AAUW’s American Doctoral Fellowship, which does cover any field, requires citizenship or permanent residency, so the two AAUW programs are exact mirror images of each other.

Paul and Daisy Soros is the best-known fellowship for immigrants and children of immigrants, and it is not a dissertation award. Applicants must be 30 or younger and cannot have started the third year of the degree.

P.E.O. International Peace Scholarship excludes the students most likely to find it. “Doctoral students who have completed coursework and are working only on dissertations are not eligible as first-time applicants.” Apply during coursework or not at all.

Center for Engaged Scholarship is explicitly open to “foreign nationals and undocumented individuals,” then “generally excludes Ph.D.’s from professional schools (Public Health, Education, Social Work, Law, Medicine, Urban Planning).” Exceptions exist for work meeting arts and sciences standards, so email them before writing anything.

Wenner-Gren answers the citizenship question better than any other funder (“we welcome applications from any citizenship working anywhere in the world”), and then requires that you be enrolled in an anthropology doctoral program, advised by anthropologists, or hold a prior anthropology degree.

For an ongoing search, Immigrants Rising maintains a filterable list of opportunities that do not require proof of citizenship, and both the University of Chicago fellowships database and the Illinois Fellowship Finder let you filter by citizenship and DACA eligibility. All three are free and open to people outside those universities.

Topic-specific funders

Topic	Program	Phase	Status eligibility	Deadline	Amount
Aging	GSA / Hartford Doctoral Fellows in Geriatric Social Work	ABD	Not confirmed	Not confirmed, check geron.org	Up to $50,000
Aging	AGESW Pre-Dissertation Fellows	Years 1-2	US programs	June 1	$1,200
Substance use	NIDA R36	ABD	Citizen/PR only	February, June, October	$50,000/year
Disability	NIDILRR Switzer Research Fellowship	ABD	Open with documentation	Check grants.gov	$40,000-$45,000
Violence	Harry Frank Guggenheim Emerging Scholar	Completion	Open	February 1	$25,000
Violence	Melissa Institute Belfer-Aptman	ABD	Not stated	April 1	$2,500
Crime and justice	NIJ Graduate Research Fellowship	ABD	Open	May	$50,000/year
Immigration	Russell Sage Foundation	ABD	Open	February 3	$15,000
Economic policy	Washington Center for Equitable Growth	ABD	Not stated	Late January	$15,000
Education-linked	NAEd/Spencer Dissertation Fellowship	Completion	Open	October 8	$30,000
Education-linked	AERA Dissertation Grants	ABD	Open	May 20	$27,500
LGBTQ+	Point Foundation Flagship	Any year	Reported open	November 20	Need-based
LGBTQ+ families	APF Roy Scrivner Grant	Advanced graduate	Not stated	Next cycle	$9,000
Child and family functioning	Fahs-Beck Fund	ABD	No clause	April 1, November 1	$5,000
Mental health, broad	The Melanie Foundation	Any year	No restriction stated	March 5	$2,500

Suicide prevention is a real gap. The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention runs seven grant mechanisms and its own policy document requires a completed or nearly completed doctorate for every one of them, including the Early Career Research grant. A student who has not defended cannot be principal investigator on any AFSP mechanism.

Child welfare is a second gap, for a different reason. The Annie E. Casey Foundation and Casey Family Programs are both invitation-only and neither makes grants to individuals. The Doris Duke Fellowships for the Promotion of Child Well-Being ended after the 2020 cohort and the successor Child Well-Being Research Network is a mentoring structure with no funding call. The Foundation for Child Development paused its Young Scholars Program in 2025 for redesign, and that program required the doctorate anyway.

Discontinued programs

Everything in this table appears on funding handouts, university fellowship pages, or aggregator sites that are still live. None of it is available.

Program	What happened
NASW Foundation Eileen Blackey and Jane B. Aron Doctoral Fellowships	Paused. “No fellowships will be awarded at this time”
Ford Foundation Predoctoral, Dissertation, and Postdoctoral Fellowships	Discontinued. Ford announced the wind-down in 2022 with a limited final round in 2024
RWJF Health Policy Research Scholars	“RWJF welcomed its ninth and final HPRS cohort in September 2025”
NIH F31 to Promote Diversity	Ended May 2025. Funded awards cancelled from April 2025
NIH Blueprint D-SPAN (F99/K00)	Terminated March 2025. The general parent F99/K00 replaces it
NIMH R36 Dissertation Grant	Removed. NIMH is no longer among the institutes running R36s
NIA R36 Aging Research Dissertation Awards	Removed, same pattern
AHRQ Health Services Research Dissertation Program (R36)	Expired by notice in March 2026. AHRQ’s own page is stale and still describes it as open
SSA Retirement and Disability Research Consortium fellowships	SSA stopped funding all six centers in February 2025
HUD Doctoral Dissertation Research Grant	Inactive for over a decade, awards through FY2010
SSRC International Dissertation Research Fellowship	Final cohort 2022
SSRC Dissertation Proposal Development Fellowship	Closed in 2020
Mathematica Summer Fellowship	Paused. “We’ve paused our Summer Fellowship Program and will not be accepting applications this year”
NASI John Heinz Dissertation Award	All program pages return 404 and the award is absent from NASI’s current student programs. Last documented cycle 2022
Doris Duke Fellowships for the Promotion of Child Well-Being	Ended after the 2020 cohort
Foundation for Child Development Young Scholars	Paused in 2025 for redesign
Doctoral Training Grants in Clinical Oncology Social Work	Absent from the American Cancer Society’s current catalog, on both the active and the inactive lists
MHFA USA Doctoral Student Grants	Last grantees announced in 2022
GADE Initiative for Cross-Institutional Student Collaboration	Page removed. Last documented cycle 2022
CSWE Scholars Program	Page removed
NSF Decision, Risk and Management Sciences DDRIG	Paused, awaiting a new solicitation

Postdoctoral and faculty programs

These come up constantly in searches for dissertation funding and all of them require the degree in hand: the Brain and Behavior Research Foundation Young Investigator Grant, the Klingenstein Third Generation Fellowship, the Alzheimer’s Association Research Fellowship for All, ABMRF, the Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship, the IRP Emerging Poverty Scholars Fellowship, the RWJF Health Policy Fellows program at the National Academy of Medicine (which also wants ten years of professional experience), and the SSRC Just Tech Fellowship (which states that “individuals currently enrolled as full-time students are not eligible to apply”). Worth knowing for the year after you defend.

Two confusions are worth naming. The Institute for Research on Poverty runs a Dissertation Research Fellowship open only to University of Wisconsin-Madison students, and an Emerging Poverty Scholars Fellowship only for tenure-track faculty. Neither is a national dissertation competition. And the William T. Grant Foundation has no mechanism where a doctoral student is the applicant, though its Mentoring Grants fund a faculty mentor up to $60,000 to work with a doctoral mentee, which is worth raising with an advisor who might apply.

Annual calendar

Deadlines for dissertation-stage money cluster hard in the first quarter, which is inconvenient if your proposal defense is in the spring.

January. Washington Center for Equitable Growth, late January. Josephine de Kármán, late January.

February. Harry Frank Guggenheim letter of interest, February 1. SSSP, February 1. P.E.O. International Peace Scholarship materials, February 1. Russell Sage Foundation, February 3. NIDA R36, February 16. Census Bureau, February 28.

March. APA Dissertation Research Award, March 1. AGESW opens March 1. The Melanie Foundation, March 5. Google PhD Fellowship opens March 5. GADE Teaching and Leadership awards open March 15. Harry Frank Guggenheim full proposal, March 15 if invited.

April. Melissa Institute, April 1. Fahs-Beck, April 1. NIH F31, April 8. Grand Challenges, mid-April in past cycles. SCRA, April 22. Google PhD Fellowship closes April 30.

May. APISWEA, May 14. GADE Teaching and Leadership close May 15. SPSSI, May 15. NIJ Graduate Research Fellowship, mid-to-late May. AERA Dissertation Grants, May 20.

June. AGESW closes June 1. NIDA R36, June 16. APF COGDOP, June 26.

August. ASA DDRIG opens August 1. Newcombe and NAEd/Spencer both open August 1. NIH F31 and F99/K00, August 8. Sociological Initiatives Foundation, August 14. AAUW opens August 17. P.E.O. Scholar Awards nominations open August 20. SSWR nominations, late August.

September. Family Process Institute, September 1. Point Foundation opens September 10. AAUW International closes September 17. GADE Research award and Margaret McNamara open September 15. AAUW American Doctoral closes September 30.

October. Meta PhD Fellowship references, October 6. NAEd/Spencer closes October 8. SPSSI, October 15. NIDA R36, October 16. Paul and Daisy Soros, October 29. GADE Research closes October 31. NSF GRFP, late October into November.

November. Newcombe closes November 1. Fahs-Beck, November 1. ASA DDRIG closes November 2. AERA Minority Dissertation Fellowship, November 10. Point Foundation and P.E.O. Scholar Awards nominations close November 20.

December. Horowitz Foundation, December 1. NIH F31 and F99/K00, December 8.

If you are ABD and want external dissertation money, the work happens in the fall for a January through March submission season. If your proposal defense lands in April, you have missed most of that year’s cycle and should be writing for the following one.

Search tools

Tool	Access
Illinois Fellowship Finder	Free, no login, 1,100+ listings, filters by field, citizenship, and career stage. The old apps.grad.illinois.edu URL redirects here
UChicago Fellowships Database	Free browsing, 1,000+ listings, filters include international applicants and DACA recipients
Immigrants Rising	Free. Opportunities that do not require proof of citizenship, filterable by status. Shows items due in the next 90 days
NIH Guide weekly index	Free, weekly, with a Friday email listserv. This is where open NIH calls appear
NIH RePORTER	Free. Already-funded projects. Use it to find which institute funds work like yours and who might mentor you
Grants.gov	Free. Warns that “few are available to individuals,” so use it for institution-administered fellowships like NIJ and Switzer
NSF funding search	Free, with a graduate student section
Philanthropy News Digest RFPs	Free, daily listings and a Friday bulletin
GADE funding page	Free, social work specific, partly stale
ProFellow	Free articles, paid database
Pivot-RP, GrantForward, SPIN, Foundation Directory Online	Institutional subscription. Many public libraries have a free FDO terminal. Candid merges FDO and GuideStar into Candid Search in April 2026

Practical notes

Verify on the funder’s page, not on a university fellowship listing and not here. AHRQ’s own website described a terminated program as open for five months after the termination notice, and the Grand Challenges page carried a 2023 closure notice through two later cohorts. University fellowship offices and aggregator sites lag further behind than either.

Watch the gap between a defended proposal and IRB approval. Most programs state ABD status as the eligibility bar and say nothing about IRB on the eligibility page, then ask for an IRB letter in the application instructions. Those two milestones are often months apart, and the requirement is buried where you will find it a week before the deadline.

Nomination programs move your timeline back by a semester. Google’s fellowship takes no direct applications and caps nominations at four per university. SSWR’s Doctoral Fellows Award needs your program to nominate you in August. P.E.O. Scholar Awards require a local chapter to nominate you between August and November. APF’s COGDOP scholarships require your department to nominate you. Ask early about who nominates and when the internal deadline falls, because internal deadlines are rarely posted anywhere.

Small awards are worth the time. A $1,000 SPSSI grant covers participant incentives for a qualitative study, and a $3,000 Grand Challenges award covers transcription. The application runs a few pages, the applicant pool is small, and a search committee asking whether you can win external funding sees the same line on your CV either way.

About this list

Every program above was checked against the funder’s own page in August 2026, and the eligibility language in quotation marks is quoted from those pages. Some items carry stated limits on what I could confirm. The Horowitz Foundation’s citizenship policy is reported consistently by several university fellowship offices, but the foundation’s own page would not load. The Hartford geriatric social work fellowship has no live application page with a date. Point Foundation’s citizenship language comes from a secondary source. The APA Dissertation Research Award’s eligibility text sits behind a bot check on apa.org. The ACF/OPRE scholars programs and the Fahs-Beck Fund could not be confirmed as running a current cycle, and no 2026 Grand Challenges call has appeared.

Deadlines and amounts change every year. Corrections are welcome.