Digging Deeper into our Second Flexible Funding Call

Again we’re pleased to say that we received an excellent range of applications to our second funding call.

As we did with the first call we’ve dug deeper into the applications to again see how well our applicants mirror the community and to identify any areas for improvement.

We received 16 applications to this round of which 15 were funded. In our first round we received 27 applications and funded 21 of these demonstrating a high successful funding rate.

Eligible applications were submitted from 13 institutions in total (only one less than the first round), although representation was heavily skewed towards England and Russell Group universities. In fact, no applications were received from non-Russell Group universities, and we again did not receive any applications from Northern Ireland (we did however receive an application from Wales), indicating important outreach gaps for future rounds.

The applicant pool showed a 63% male/ 37% female split and was predominantly White (88%), with no Black applicants, mirroring disparities seen in related sector surveys. Career stage participation was strongest among mid-career applicants but not as strongly so compared to our first funding round.

Unlike our first round, Research Software Engineers (RSE) did not dominate amongst leads and co-leads professions as a wide range of roles was represented across 9 broad groupings. Eleven of the successful proposals were led by a non-RSE which was great to see and demonstrates the broad nature of the dRTP roles.

Overall, our second funding round was a success, and we have come away with some areas for improvement such as encouraging applications from non-Russell Group universities and a wider geographical spread of applicants. If you have any channels to help us reach these target areas, please get in touch or consider becoming one of our conduits.