Science communication and public engagement grants are funding awards made specifically to support activities that communicate research to non-specialist audiences or involve the public in the research process itself — rather than funding the research investigation. This is a distinct funding category from the far more common situation in which a standard research grant simply requires applicants to describe the broader impacts or public benefit of a project they are otherwise funding to do research (see public engagement with research). Research administrators and investigators frequently conflate the two, which leads to misdirected proposals: a well-written broader impacts section will not win a dedicated public engagement grant, and a public engagement grant application built like a broader impacts paragraph will usually fail on the criteria the funder actually uses.
This guide covers the real, current programs that fund science communication and public engagement as their primary activity, how that differs structurally from the broader impacts requirement built into standard research grants, and what activities are typically eligible under each type.
Dedicated Funding Line vs. Required Section: The Core Distinction
The distinction that matters for proposal strategy is where the money and the review criteria sit:
- A dedicated public engagement or science communication grant is a standalone funding opportunity. The public-facing activity is the funded project — a museum exhibit, a citizen-science partnership, a science festival, a media production (see public engagement). It is reviewed on its own merits as engagement or communication work, often by a different panel and against different criteria than a standard research proposal.
- The broader impacts requirement (the term most associated with the U.S. National Science Foundation, though comparable expectations appear at other funders under different names) is a mandatory section within a research grant proposal that is primarily funding an investigation. The research is the funded project; the broader impacts statement describes how that research will also benefit society, train people, or reach non-specialist audiences. NSF has used two merit review criteria — Intellectual Merit and Broader Impacts — to evaluate every proposal since 1997, and the broader impacts criterion is embedded in the same proposal and budget as the research itself rather than funded through a separate line or competition.
In practice this means a science-communication-heavy activity can be funded either way, and the choice of route changes what a proposal needs to demonstrate. A planetarium show built around new astrophysics findings could be a broader-impacts activity nested inside the astrophysics grant that produced the findings, or it could be proposed on its own to a program that funds public engagement directly, evaluated on audience reach and engagement quality rather than on the astrophysics itself.
NSF: Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL)
The clearest example of a dedicated federal funding line for this work is the National Science Foundation’s Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program, run out of NSF’s STEM education directorate. Per NSF’s current AISL solicitation (NSF 24-601), it is the only NSF program that invests exclusively in research and practice on how people learn STEM outside formal classroom settings, and it explicitly names science communication, public participation in scientific research (citizen science), community STEM, intergenerational STEM engagement, and STEM media as within scope.
AISL funds five distinct project types, each with its own scope and review expectations:
- Synthesis projects (aggregating and synthesizing existing research/evaluation findings)
- Conference proposals
- Partnership Development and Planning grants
- Integrating Research and Practice projects
- Research in Support of Wide-reaching Public Engagement with STEM
AISL is a genuinely separate competition from a standard NSF research award — applicants are not required to also be running an NSF-funded research project, and museums, science centers, media producers, and community organizations (not just universities) are eligible applicants alongside academic institutions. This is the structural feature that distinguishes it from the broader impacts criterion: AISL money funds the engagement activity as the primary deliverable, reviewed by its own panel against its own merit criteria, not as an add-on section inside an unrelated research budget.
UK Funders: UKRI and Constituent Research Council Public Engagement Grants
UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) and several of its constituent research councils run public engagement funding as a distinct category from standard research grants. UKRI’s public engagement pages describe grants, programmes, and pilots that support public engagement with research and innovation directly, separate from mainstream research council funding calls. Examples that have run under specific councils include the Science and Technology Facilities Council’s Spark grants, which fund public engagement programmes built around STFC-supported science (astronomy, particle physics, space science), and the Natural Environment Research Council’s public engagement grants, which have included exemplar and seed-funding strands such as Engaged Environmental Science and Growing Shoots for researchers developing engagement partnerships in environmental science.
As with NSF’s AISL program, these are separate competitions with their own applications, timelines, and assessment criteria — not a section added to a standard discovery-research proposal. A UK research administrator advising an investigator who wants funded time for public engagement should generally point them toward the relevant research council’s dedicated engagement scheme rather than assume it can be absorbed into a standard grant’s budget without a specific engagement-funding line.
Wellcome Trust: A Changed Landscape
Wellcome Trust previously ran a standalone Public Engagement Fund that supported creative approaches to engaging the public with health research; that scheme is now closed. Wellcome’s own funding pages list it among discontinued schemes rather than an active call. This followed a broader restructuring of Wellcome’s research funding portfolio into a smaller number of more flexible schemes (organized around Discovery Research and named health-challenge priority areas). Investigators should not assume Wellcome still runs a standalone public engagement competition; anyone planning engagement work with Wellcome funding should check Wellcome’s current schemes directly, since public engagement and involvement activity is now more likely to be resourced as an eligible cost within a broader award than through a dedicated fund.
AAAS: Training and Seed Funding, Not a Primary Grant Source
The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) runs a Center for Public Engagement with Science and Technology, but it functions differently from the funders above — it is primarily a training, resource, and recognition body rather than a large-scale grant maker. Its main programs include the Alan I. Leshner Leadership Institute for Public Engagement with Science, which since 2015 has provided training, peer networking, and some seed funding and staff support to small cohorts of scientists working on a shared engagement topic (for example climate change or infectious disease), and an Early Career Award for Public Engagement with Science, which is a recognition award with an accompanying prize rather than a project grant. Research administrators should treat AAAS as a source of training, frameworks, and network access for public engagement work — and occasionally modest seed funding through specific cohort programs — rather than as a primary funding line comparable to AISL or a UKRI research council scheme.
Typical Eligible Activities
Across the dedicated funding lines described above, eligible activities generally include:
- Science communication training, media production, and journalism-adjacent work explaining research to general audiences
- Museum, science center, and planetarium exhibits or programming built around current research
- Citizen science and public participation in scientific research (PPSR) projects where members of the public contribute to data collection or analysis
- Community-based STEM programming, particularly work reaching historically underrepresented groups
- Science festivals, public lectures, and other live public-facing events
- Research and evaluation into how public engagement and informal STEM learning actually work — i.e., engagement itself can be a research topic, not just an activity
What generally does not qualify under these dedicated lines: the research investigation itself (that belongs in a standard research grant), and generic outreach or recruitment materials whose real purpose is participant recruitment for a study rather than public engagement with science as an end in itself.
Practical Guidance for Research Administrators
Before advising an investigator to write a broader impacts paragraph and move on, or to chase a dedicated engagement grant instead, weigh the scale and purpose of the planned activity:
- Small-scale, project-adjacent activity (a lab open house, a short outreach video tied to a specific funded study) usually belongs inside the broader impacts section of the relevant research proposal — it is unlikely to justify a separate application and review cycle.
- Larger, freestanding engagement work — a multi-year museum partnership, a citizen-science platform, a dedicated science-communication training program — is a stronger candidate for a dedicated line such as AISL or a research council’s public engagement scheme, where it will be reviewed on engagement merit rather than competing for attention inside a research-focused proposal.
- Check eligibility carefully: several of these dedicated programs (AISL, several UKRI schemes) are open to non-academic applicants — museums, science centers, media organizations, community groups — not only university-based investigators, which changes who within an institution should be leading the application.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is a science communication grant the same as an NSF broader impacts requirement?
No. A science communication or public engagement grant is a standalone funding award where the public-facing activity is the primary funded deliverable, reviewed on its own merits. NSF’s broader impacts criterion is a required section within a standard research proposal, evaluated alongside intellectual merit as part of one combined review of a project whose primary purpose is the research itself.
Can a university apply for NSF’s AISL program without an existing NSF research grant?
Yes. AISL is a separate competition and does not require the applicant to already hold an NSF research award; museums, science centers, media producers, and community organizations are eligible alongside academic institutions.
Does Wellcome Trust still fund public engagement as a standalone grant?
Wellcome’s dedicated Public Engagement Fund is closed. Public engagement and involvement activity is now more commonly funded as an eligible cost within Wellcome’s broader research schemes rather than through a standalone competition; check Wellcome’s current funding schemes directly before assuming otherwise.
Does AAAS give out research-style grants for science communication?
Not primarily. AAAS’s Center for Public Engagement with Science and Technology is mainly a training, network, and recognition body — its Leshner Leadership Institute provides some seed funding and staff support to small cohorts, and its Early Career Award is a recognition prize — rather than a large-scale, open-competition grant program comparable to NSF’s AISL or a UKRI research council’s public engagement scheme.
