Spring RFA
Core Facilities Advocacy Committee (CFAC) Spring 2026 RFA
General Information
CFAC Core Equipment Request Template
CFAC Method Development Template
This RFA cycle will open for submissions January 21, 2026 and close February 20, 2026 at 11:59 pm.
About the FY26 CFAC Spring RFA
This is a targeted general RFA; requests for equipment, operational needs, and methods/technological development will all be considered. Applications should request CFAC contributions of around $30,000 or less (this is NOT a hard limit. Applications of $31,000 will be considered equally. Applications requesting $50,000 or more in CFAC funds are unlikely to be funded). Requests for equipment that can be purchased and installed quickly (6 weeks or less from order date) are encouraged, as are matching fund requests for NIH S10 instrumentation grants.
Requests will be considered that add new technology or services, increases throughput and efficiency, upgrade heavily used technology, or provide new instrumentation that will serve a group of faculty. To be considered, all equipment must be housed in an open UNC core facility available to all UNC investigators.
CFAC is especially interested in new technology or methodology which will bring cutting-edge experimental capabilities to UNC that are or will be of benefit to other investigators, or that will help in obtaining external funding. Funding requests must be submitted by a core facility but are recommended to include input, matching funds or in-kind contributions for method development, and/or letters of support from any investigator(s) interested in collaborating with the core.
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Decisions regarding matching fund requests for the NIH S10 program will be made ahead of the internal submission deadline through the Office of Research Development. All other funding decisions will be made and announced mid-March
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ORT and the OVCR Research Core Development team will identify any equipment requests that may be a good fit for requesting funding through the OVCR Equipment fund. This is identified by owning School of the core and breadth and depth of user base of the core across multiple fields, Schools, and Departments. If your application is selected, further information about applying through the OVCR portal will be provided.
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If a laboratory currently obtaining services from an entity outside of a UNC Chapel Hill core facility is interested in bringing their business to an appropriate core on campus but would like to apply for funding to ensure the core facility’s protocols, equipment, and data quality meet or exceed their current vendor, the PI and the core facility can co-develop a method development application. This application can request up to 50% of the total cost of the quote from the core facility to validate the method for an appropriate number of the lab’s samples to verify data quality. For questions about eligibility please reach out to Kara Clissold at kara_clissold@med.unc.edu. Please read the CFAC Spring RFA FY26 Memo Final for additional information.
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If you request funding for equipment, please ask the vendor to indicate the lead time to delivery on the quote.
About the CFAC RFA Program
Since 2020, the average funding award was between $25,000 and $30,000. CFAC does not routinely provide funding for requests over $50,000, but well-justified applications have been considered. CFAC strongly encourages cores to seek matching funds from their center, department, or utilizing their core balance. Payment for service contracts and salary support for staff are not typically funded.
For large equipment purchases, other options may be available such as NCBC Innovation Impact Grants and the NIH S10 Shared Instrumentation Grant (SIG). You may be contacted by your CFAC representative if a better funding mechanism is more appropriate for your specific request.
For your request to be considered, a current Core Facility Annual Planning Survey must be on file (along with a history of submitted surveys) with the Office of Research Technologies.
Submissions
Click to submit a Method Development Funding Request
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Click to submit a General Funding Request