Micro-ARPAs: Enhancing Scientific Innovation Through Small Grant Programs
The National Science Foundation (NSF) has long supported innovative scientific research through grant programs. Among these, the EAGER (Early-concept Grants for Exploratory Research) and RAPID (Rapid Response Research) grants are crucial in fostering early-stage questions and ideas. This memo proposes expanding and improving these programs by addressing their current limitations and leveraging the successful aspects of their predecessor program, the Small Grants for Exploratory Research (SGER) program, and other innovative funding models like the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).
Current Challenges and Opportunities
The landscape of scientific funding has always been a balancing act between supporting established research and nurturing new ideas. Over the years, the NSF has played a pivotal role in maintaining this balance through various grant programs. One way they support new ideas is through small, fast grants. The SGER program, active from 1990 to 2006, provided nearly 5,000 grants, with an average size of about $54,000. This program laid the groundwork for the current EAGER and RAPID grants, which took SGER’s place and were designed to support exploratory and urgent research, respectively. Using the historical data, researchers analyzed the effectiveness of the SGER program and found it wildly effective, with “transformative research results tied to more than 10% of projects.” The paper also found that the program was underutilized by NSF program officers, leaving open questions about how such an effective and relatively inexpensive mechanism was being overlooked.
Did the NSF learn anything from the paper? Probably not enough, according to the data.
In 2013, the year the SGER paper was published, roughly 2% of total NSF grant funding went towards EAGER and RAPID grants (which translated to more than 4% of the total NSF-funded projects that year). Except for a spike in RAPID grants in 2020 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been a steady decline in the volume, amount, and percentage of EAGER and RAPID grants over the ensuing decade. Over the past few years, EAGER and RAPID have barely exceeded 1% of the award budget. Despite the proven effectiveness of these funding mechanisms and their relative affordability, the rate of small, fast grantmaking has stagnated over the past decade.
There is a pressing need to support more high-risk, high-reward research through more flexible and efficient funding mechanisms. Increasing the small, fast grant capacity of the national research programs is an obvious place to improve, given the results of the SGER study and the fact that small grants are easier on the budget.
The current EAGER and RAPID grant programs, while effective, face administrative and cultural challenges that limit their scalability and impact. The reasons for their underuse remain poorly understood, but anecdotal insights from NSF program officers offer clues. The most plausible explanation is also the simplest: It’s difficult to prioritize small grants while juggling larger ones that carry higher stakes and greater visibility. While deeper, formal studies could further pinpoint the barriers, the lack of such research should not hinder the pursuit of bold, alternative strategies—especially when small grant programs offer a rare blend of impact and affordability.
Drawing inspiration from the ARPA model, which empowers program managers with funding discretion and contracting authority, there is an opportunity to revolutionize how small grants are administered. The ARPA approach, characterized by high degrees of autonomy and focus on high-risk, high-reward projects, has already inspired successful initiatives beyond its initial form in the Department of Defense (DARPA), like ARPA-E for energy and ARPA-H for health. A similar “Micro-ARPA” approach — in which dedicated, empowered personnel manage these funds — could be transformative for ensuring that small grant programs within NSF reach their full potential.
Plan of Action
To enhance the volume, impact, and efficiency of small, fast grant programs, we propose the following:
- Establish a Micro-ARPA program with dedicated funding for small, flexible grants: The NSF should allocate 50% of the typical yearly funding for EAGER/RAPID grants — roughly $50–100 million per year — to a separate dedicated fund. This fund would use the existing EAGER/RAPID mechanisms for disbursing awards but be implemented through a programmatically distinct Micro-ARPA model that empowers dedicated project managers with more discretion and reduces the inherent tension between use of these streamlined mechanisms and traditional applications.
- By allocating approximately 50% of the current spend to this fund and using the existing EAGER/RAPID mechanisms within it, this fund would be unlikely to pull resources from other programs. It would instead set a floor for the use of these flexible frameworks while continuing to allow for their use in the traditional program-level manner when desired.
- Establish a Micro-ARPA program manager (PM) role: As compared to the current model, in which the allocation of EAGER/RAPID grants is a small subset of broader NSF program director responsibilities, Micro-ARPA PMs (who could be lovingly nicknamed “Micro-Managers”) should be hired or assigned within each directorate to manage the dedicated Micro-ARPA budgets. Allocating these small, fast grants should be their only job in the directorate, though it can and should be a part-time position per the needs of the directorate.
- Given the diversity of awards and domains that this officer may consider, they should be empowered to seek the advice of program-specific staff within their directorate as well as external reviewers when they see fit, but should not be required to make funding decisions in alignment with programmatic feedback.
- Applications to the Micro-ARPA PM role should be competitive and open to scientists and researchers at all career levels. Based on our experience managing these programs at the Experiment Foundation, there is every reason to suspect that early-career researchers, community-based researchers, or other innovators from nontraditional backgrounds could be as good or better than experienced program officers. Given the relatively low cost of the program, the NSF should open this role to a wide variety of participants to learn and study the outcomes.
- Evaluate: The agency should work with academic partners to design and implement clear metrics—similar to those used in the paper that evaluated the SGER program—to assess the programs’ decision-making and impacts. Findings should be regularly compiled and circulated to PMs to facilitate rapid learning and improvement. Based on evaluation of this program, and comparison to the existing approach to allocating EAGER/RAPID grants, relative funding quantities between the two can be reallocated to maximize scientific and social impact.
Benefits
The proposed enhancements to the small grant programs will yield several key benefits:
- Increased innovation: By funding more early-stage, high-risk projects, we can accelerate scientific breakthroughs and technological advancements, addressing global challenges more effectively.
- Support for early-career scientists: Expanded grant opportunities will empower more early-career researchers to pursue innovative ideas, fostering a new generation of scientific leaders.
- Experience opportunity for program managers: Running Micro-ARPAs will provide an opportunity for new and emerging program manager talent to train and develop their skills with relatively smaller amounts of money.
- Platform for metascience research: The high volume of new Micro-ARPA PMs will create an opportunity to study the effective characteristics of program managers and translate them into insights for larger ARPA programs.
- Administrative efficiency: A streamlined, decentralized approach will reduce the administrative burden on both applicants and program officers, making the grant process more agile and responsive. Speedier grants could also help the NSF achieve its stated dwell time goal of 75% (response rate within six months), which they have failed to do consistently in recent years.
Conclusion
Small, fast grant programs are vital to supporting transformative research. By adopting a more flexible, decentralized model, we can significantly enhance their impact. The proposed changes will foster a more dynamic and innovative scientific ecosystem, ultimately driving progress and addressing urgent global challenges.
This action-ready policy memo is part of Day One 2025 — our effort to bring forward bold policy ideas, grounded in science and evidence, that can tackle the country’s biggest challenges and bring us closer to the prosperous, equitable and safe future that we all hope for whoever takes office in 2025 and beyond.
Absolutely. The research supports it, but the stories bring it to life. Ask any scientist about the first grant they received for their own work, and you’ll often hear about a small, pivotal award that changed everything. These grants may not make headlines, but they ignite careers, foster innovation, and open doors to discovery.
Almost certainly within the existing budget. As for authority, it’s theoretically possible but politically fraught. NSF program officers already have the discretion to use RAPID and EAGER grants as they see fit, so in principle, a program officer could be directed to use only those mechanisms. That mandate would essentially transform their role into a Micro-ARPA program manager. The real challenge lies in the culture and practice of grant-making. There’s a reason that DARPA operates independently from the rest of the military branches’ research and development infrastructure.
In a word: focus. Program officers juggle large, complex grants that demand significant time and resources. Small grants, though impactful, can get lost in the shuffle. By dedicating staff to exclusively manage these smaller, fast grants, we create the conditions to test an important hypothesis: that administrative burden and competing priorities, not lack of interest, are the primary barriers to scaling small grant programs. It’s about clearing the runway so these grants can truly take off.
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Small, fast grant programs are vital to supporting transformative research. By adopting a more flexible, decentralized model, we can significantly enhance their impact.
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