AMS Backstop Grants

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To mitigate the impending challenges of recent federal cuts and grant cancellations, American Mathematical Society leaders have created AMS Backstop Grants.

These grants are intended to provide one-time financial relief and ensure the continuity of some essential projects, conferences, and scholarly activities that align with our mission to advance research, education, and the full participation of all individuals in the mathematical sciences.

 

Process for Requesting Funds

Requests for backstop funding should be emailed to John Meier, AMS CEO. Requests should include documentation of the originally approved federal funding, the modification of that award, and steps taken to find alternative funding. If additional information would be helpful, it will be requested by the CEO. If the number of requests makes this infeasible, we will switch to using a different system.

Criteria to be Applied

Requests for support will be reviewed in terms of how they align with the goal of backstopping gaps created by canceled federal funding and how the program or activity, in combination with other backstop awards, provides broad support for the mathematics community.

Required Elements

While requests can be made in anticipation of a federal funding gap, funding from AMS backstop grants can be distributed only if each of the following holds:

  • The activity advances mathematical research and strengthens the mathematics community.

  • The award would fill or partially fill a funding gap, such as:

    • Funding previously approved by a federal agency is withdrawn or materially altered; or

    • Funds where there is an established history of federal support, and such support is no longer available; or

    • In rare and compelling circumstances, there is an exceptional opportunity to support an activity by a financially strained mathematics organization.

  • The organization receiving the award does not have the financial ability to provide activities of the type being supported except with AMS funding.

Additional Criteria

An overarching goal is to distribute these funds as broadly as possible, meaning that the funds will go to a range of mathematics organizations and each award would support multiple mathematicians. Because of this, organizations should assume that they would receive at most one award. Providing funding to a range of organizations will increase the total number of mathematicians who are supported via this initiative. Similarly, these awards cannot be used to fund positions, as a full-time position would use a large portion of the available dollars and the AMS's goal is to support a broad range of individuals.

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