Select a grant. Remember, you can always adapt it later if you switch to another funder. We've organized this in three areas, but check all three sections for relevant sources.

Tips: Dissertation and research funding for graduate students in the humanities usually take the form of fellowships and vary by discipline. Discover which sources your departments and graduate groups commonly draw upon. While personal and collegial networks will provide some information, it is useful to check with your department chair as well as disciplinary or area newsletters that publish calls for application. 

Look for fellowship and grant announcements under the general "humanities"; however, most are discipline- specific with an annual application cycle. The job search process in the humanities also involves applications to postdoctoral fellowships, administered on similar tracks. Check the following websites for more information.

The American Association of University Women provides funding for scholarship, for community action as well as career development.  http://www.aauw.org/home.html

A major funding source in the humanities is the American Council of Learned Societies.  While much of their funding goes to scholarly effort by faculty at various stages of their career, they do offer some dissertation fellowships.
http://www.acls.org/welcome.htm

The priority of the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) is to make the humanities available to all Americans.  Their grants do not fund doctoral research or writing except the Faculty Research Awards, given to minority colleges and universities.  It is possible to apply for projects you would want to pursue as junior faculty, once you have your degree.
http://www.neh.fed.us/

The University of California at Berkeley and the University of Michigan have websites with great links to major sources in the humanities:
http://ls.berkeley.edu/dept/townsend/hum_funding_sites_top.html

http://www2.h-net.msu.edu/announce/group.cgi?type=Funding

Tips: A wide range of disciplines make up the "social sciences". Sources for funding will depend partly on the nature of your research, by discipline and whether the research is applied and policy - related. 

Two well known sources (and therefore you may wish to go in other directions) are the Social Science Research Council and Fullbright grants. Other common sources are government agencies and departments, such as Dept. of Education, Dept. of Health and Human Services, HUD, etc. Each graduate group and research center will have leads as to general sources for your area.

The Penn web pages offer several excellent sources for funding research and grantwriting to meet your particular needs:

• The Career Services site offers a range of resources for doctoral students. Navigate from http://www.upenn.edu/careerservices/  > "Funding". Look at Cornell's Fellowship Notebook, which is a vast repository of fellowships and grants.

• Another solid repository is managed by the Vice Provost for Research. Located off the Penn home page > "Research"(http://www.upenn.edu/researchdir/  > "Services for Researchers" http://www.upenn.edu/research/. See in particular, "Funding Opportunities http://www.upenn.edu/research/funding.htm

• The Penn Library has a good funding related page.

• The Social Science Research Council is a source for funding. http://www.ssrc.org/
• Of interest on the site, for proposal writing in the social sciences is "The Art of Writing Proposals: Some Candid Suggestions for Applicants to Social Science Research Council Competitions"

 
• Try the Fullbright site : http://www.upenn.edu/oip/scholarships/faculty_
• research/fulbright.html

Tips: There are two main agencies that fund most disciplines in the natural sciences: the National Institute of Health (NIH) and the National Science Foundation (NSF).  See links below.
Other government agencies that fund research include the US Department of Energy (http://www.sc.doe.gov/production/grants/grants.html), the Department of Defense (www.dod.gov) and the
Department of Agriculture (www.usda.gov).
One of the best sites around is the 
Community of Science's Funding Opportunities website: http://www.cos.com/

National Institute of Health (NIH)

• To access information on funding opportunities http://grants.nih.gov/grants/index.cfm >Quick links- Grants Page

• Information specific to graduate students and postdocs can be found at http://www.nsf.gov/home/menus/grads.htm

• To access the grant proposal guide:http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2003/nsf032/gpg032.pdf

• To access information on a specific discipline: http://www.nsf.gov/   >site map    > directorates 

There are a variety of websites that are funding databases and can lead you to private as well as government funding. 
An example:
http://www.srainternational.org/newweb/grantsweb/index.cfm

To find more websites like these, do a search using your favorite search engine (i.e., Yahoo, Google, Netscape).