NIH Institute Funding Limitation Policies and Paylines

Please review the NIH Institute Funding Limitation Policies and Paylines for a table summarizing existing NIH Institute policies that limit the total amount of agency  funding that an individual investigator may receive. There is significant diversity in the approaches that Institutes take with their funding strategies and the table attempts to reflect this diversity.

The table also provides information on Institute and funding strategies and paylines, where available. Note that payline information is complex and varies across activity code, investigator career stage, budget size, competing versus non-competing submissions, and in some instances, specific research topics. For the sake of simplicity, the table lists paylines for R01s from established investigators, except where otherwise noted.

Paylines and funding strategies typically change every fiscal year, so it is always best to consult directly with Institute staff regarding specific paylines or funding strategies.

Reach out to your SP RA for questions about your specific circumstance.

Per NIH-wide policy, any applicant planning to submit a proposal with $500,000 or more in direct costs annually must notify their Program Officer and obtain agreement from the Institute six weeks prior to application submission. For more information, see NIH Guide Notice NOT-OD02-004 and the eRA Commons website.

On February 17, 2022 NIH updated its Special Council Review (SCR) policy for well-funded investigators. In an effort to align the SCR policy with new Other Support disclosure requirements, NIH changed the threshold used to define a well-funded investigator from $1 million in direct costs to $2 million in total costs (inclusive of direct and indirect). Applications from any well-funded investigator, as determined by the $2 million in total costs threshold, are subject to additional Institute and Advisory Council review. This policy is NIH-wide, but individual Institutes are permitted to develop variations on this policy (e.g. see NIGMS in the table).