Pivot is an online database of public and private funding opportunities that FSU subscribes to and is available to all FSU faculty, staff and students.  To access Pivot, go to their website and create an account using your FSU email address and any password you chose.

The two main functions of Pivot are Profiles and Funding (both are tabs on the website).

Profiles:

All faculty have a professional profile built into Pivot within a couple months of starting at FSU.  Students and staff can also have profiles, but they must create them.

• After going to ‘advanced search’ and inputting keywords into the ‘search term’ section, you will get a list of names of people at FSU where something in their profile has triggered their name to appear. This information can be used for three purposes:
  • Collaboration: the list of name theoretically appears in the order of relevancy which means you don’t need to look past the first couple pages. The top-listed folks are potentially people you could collaborate with on research or creative projects.
  • Niche funding: If you research something very specific, having the list of names will allow you to look up their CVs, which allows you to see where they received their funding.
  • Targeted funding: OPD sends out targeted funding for opportunities we find

**Research and creative pursuits change.  Please update your profile at least once a year to reflect these changes!**

Funding:

Most often, faculty use Pivot to search for potential funding opportunities.  OPD offers free trainings, either individually or in groups about how to best utilize Pivot. 

• Click on advanced search and put in keywords
• Next, enter parameters. Generally speaking, I only put in ‘citizenship’ and ‘activity location’ for eligibility reasons.  Occasionally I will put in other parameters, but I don’t want to make it too unnecessarily narrow down my search.
• After clicking ‘search’, a list of funding opportunities will come up, which can be further narrowed down on the left side.
• These funding opportunities will list specific contact information, eligibility, the abstract, webpage, and all upcoming deadlines.
• You can ‘share” (aka email) a specific opportunity to yourself or a colleague.
• A main attraction of Pivot is you can click ‘save search’ for your list of keywords and parameters. You can have as many saved searches as you desire and once a week Pivot will email you opportunities that meet your requirements.  **The trick is to put the work in on the front end and then let Pivot do the rest**

Questions?  Please contact Beth Hodges.