Bridge funding

Bridge funding is short-term funding, typically provided by the researcher’s own institution rather than an external sponsor, that maintains a research programme’s core activity — most often continuity of key personnel — in the gap between an expiring grant and an anticipated new award.

When bridge funding is used

Bridge funding is a response to a timing gap, not a funding shortfall in the underlying science: a renewal or new-grant application is pending, has been favourably reviewed, or is expected to succeed, but the decision or the funds will not arrive before the current award ends. Typical scenarios include retaining a postdoctoral researcher or research staff member for a few months while a competitive renewal is under review, or covering a principal investigator’s own effort between the end of one funding cycle and the start of the next. Because it addresses a timing problem, bridge funding is usually capped at a modest amount and a defined duration — a matter of months, not years.

Who provides it, and on what terms

Bridge funding is most commonly a departmental or institutional commitment (dean’s office, research office, or department discretionary funds), sometimes formalised through an institutional bridge-funding programme with its own eligibility criteria and application process. Some funders also run their own bridge or transitional award mechanisms for their own grantees — for example, when a multi-year fellowship or programme grant ends and a renewal decision is pending — but the defining feature of bridge funding as a category is that it substitutes, temporarily, for an expected but not-yet-arrived external award, rather than being a routine part of the original grant’s own budget.

How it differs from adjacent funding types

Bridge funding is distinct from a no-cost extension, which uses remaining funds from the existing award itself to extend its period of performance rather than introducing new institutional money. It is also distinct from seed funding and pump-priming funding, both of which support a new line of work before any external grant exists, rather than covering the gap between two external awards for an already-established programme. A multi-year programme grant with continuous funding is not bridge funding under any of these definitions — there is no gap for it to bridge.

References

• Institutional bridge-funding policy language and terminology as used by UK and US research-intensive universities and major funders (e.g. Wellcome Trust bridging support for Investigator Award holders).