NSF Broader Impacts Guide: Examples That Win

If you're a researcher writing an NSF research, CAREER, or center proposal, this guide covers the current rules, what 2,070 FY2026 award abstracts actually describe, and how to build a plan reviewers can believe.

Most guides on NSF broader impacts tell you the same thing: broader impacts matter, here are the categories, good luck. Then they give you three bullet points from the PAPPG and call it a day. If you want context on the full range of NSF grant programs before getting into review criteria, that guide covers every funding mechanism NSF offers.

That's not helpful. Most broader impacts sections don't fall short because PIs don't know the categories exist. They fall short because the plan is vague, borrowed from someone else's field, or impossible to deliver with the people and budget in the proposal.

This guide covers the current written requirements, what funded projects in three directorates actually describe, and how to build a plan whose activities, partners, resources, and evaluation are plausible for your project.

What "Broader Impacts" Actually Means at NSF

NSF evaluates every proposal on 2 criteria: Intellectual Merit and Broader Impacts. According to NSF's PAPPG 24-1 Chapter III (opens in a new tab), the Broader Impacts criterion "encompasses the potential to benefit society and contribute to the achievement of specific, desired societal outcomes." The same chapter says broader impacts may come through the research itself, through activities directly related to the project, or through activities the project supports that complement it.

According to NSF's PAPPG 24-1 Chapter II (opens in a new tab), the Project Summary is limited to one page and must include an overview plus statements on Intellectual Merit and Broader Impacts. The Project Description, capped at 15 pages, must contain a separate section labeled "Broader Impacts."

What NSF's Policy Text Does Not Decide

NSF's policy tells you to address Broader Impacts, but it doesn't pick your outreach partner, set the right activity scale, or guarantee that any activity earns funding. Choose a plan your team can execute, that fits the research, and that uses the personnel and resources shown in the budget.

The goals come from statute. Section 526 of the America COMPETES Reauthorization Act of 2010, as amended in January 2017 by Public Law 114-329 and codified at 42 U.S.C. 1862p-14 (opens in a new tab), lists seven goals:

1. Increasing the economic competitiveness of the United States
2. Advancing the health and welfare of the American public
3. Supporting the national defense of the United States
4. Enhancing partnerships between academia and industry in the United States
5. Developing an American STEM workforce that is globally competitive through improved pre-K-12 STEM education and teacher development and improved undergraduate STEM education
6. Improving public scientific literacy and engagement with science and technology in the United States
7. Expanding participation of women and individuals from underrepresented groups in STEM

The NSF Broader Impacts page (opens in a new tab) frames the same idea as example outcomes: STEM education, public engagement, societal well-being, a globally competitive STEM workforce, partnerships between academia and industry, national security, economic competitiveness, and research and education infrastructure. It says the list isn't exhaustive.

The 2025 update. NSF's Statement of Priorities (opens in a new tab), dated April 18, 2025, says broadening participation efforts, including those done to meet the Broader Impacts criterion, "must aim to create opportunities for all Americans everywhere." Its FAQ tells investigators to prioritize the first six goals and says anyone addressing goal seven must make sure all outreach, recruitment, or participatory activities are "open and available to all Americans." The section on the policy update below covers what that means for drafting.

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How Broader Impacts Is Reviewed

Reviewers apply 5 review elements to both criteria. According to NSF's PAPPG 24-1 Chapter III.A.2 (opens in a new tab), they ask (paraphrased):

1. What's the potential for the proposed activity to benefit society or advance desired societal outcomes (the Broader Impacts version of element 1)?
2. To what extent do the proposed activities suggest and explore creative, original, or potentially field-changing ideas?
3. Is the plan well-reasoned, well-organized, and based on a sound rationale, and does it include a mechanism to assess success?
4. How well qualified is the individual, team, or organization to conduct the proposed activities?
5. Are there adequate resources available to the PI, at the home organization or through collaborations, to carry out the proposed activities?

Read elements 3 through 5 as a feasibility test. A broader impacts plan with no assessment mechanism, no one qualified to run it, or no resources behind it fails three of the five questions before a reviewer considers whether the idea is good.

NSF doesn't publish a rule that assigns a fixed percentage, rating, or funding result to either criterion. According to NSF's merit review page (opens in a new tab), proposals can be reviewed by ad hoc reviewers, a panel, or both, and NSF aims to tell applicants whether a proposal is declined or recommended for funding within six months. Supplement 1 (NSF 26-200) (opens in a new tab) adds that a full proposal must be reviewed by at least 2 reviewers, that NSF staff can conduct those reviews internally, and that a proposal can be returned without review if it lacks enough content for effective merit review. A Broader Impacts section that's a single generic sentence is the kind of gap that makes that outcome possible.

For a walkthrough of how panels and program officers handle a proposal from submission to decision, see how NSF grant review works.

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What 2,070 Funded FY2026 Abstracts Describe

Grantsights analysis of 2,070 FY2026 NSF award abstracts from the Biological Sciences (BIO), Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE), and Engineering (ENG) directorates found that undergraduate involvement is the most common broader impacts activity (42%), followed by public engagement (33%), course or curriculum work (30%), and K-12 students or teachers (27%). About 20% of abstracts named none of the seven activity types below, which is how a project looks when its broader impacts come mostly through the research itself.

Method. Grantsights pulled every award with an NSF award date from October 1, 2025 through September 30, 2026 from the NSF Award Search API (opens in a new tab) (6,730 of the 6,785 awards the API reported), kept standard and continuing grants in BIO, CISE, and ENG, dropped conference, travel, and workshop awards, removed duplicate abstracts from collaborative awards so each project counts once, and flagged each abstract for an activity type when it contained that type's keywords (for example "K-12," "high school," or "teachers" for K-12; "outreach," "museum," or "citizen science" for public engagement; "open-source" or "made publicly available" for open tools). Grantsights spot-checked matches by hand and tightened patterns that caught unrelated uses such as "teacher model" in machine learning or "elementary reactions" in chemistry.

What this can't tell you. NSF award abstracts are short public summaries, not the Broader Impacts section of the proposal. A plan can include activities its abstract never mentions, and keyword matching misses unusual phrasing. Treat these shares as a floor for how often an activity type shows up in funded work, not as the full picture or as a success rate. The analysis covers funded awards only, so it can't say which activities help a proposal win.

Three findings should change how you draft:

• Match your directorate's norms, then stand out inside them. CISE abstracts describe open-source tools and shared data more than twice as often as BIO abstracts (30.2% vs. 12.2%), and ENG abstracts mention industry about three times as often as BIO (23.6% vs. 8.5%). If you're writing for CISE, an open toolkit with documentation and tutorials is an expected activity, so make yours specific. If you're writing for BIO, undergraduate research appears in more than half of funded abstracts, so a generic undergraduate line won't distinguish you.
• CAREER plans carry more education work. Among the 555 CAREER awards in the sample, 39.3% mentioned K-12 students or teachers, compared with 22.8% of the other 1,515 awards. That's consistent with the CAREER solicitation's emphasis on integrating research and education.
• Broader impacts through the research itself is a real, funded pattern. About 1 in 5 abstracts named none of the seven activity types, and 7.2% (149) used no education, training, or outreach language at all. One university in Colorado, the University of Colorado Boulder, received $435,320 for a water disinfection project led by Karl Linden (award 2553642 (opens in a new tab)) whose abstract rests its societal case on safer, chemical-free drinking water and mentions no education or outreach activity. A Rice University project led by Daniel Preston (award 2533694 (opens in a new tab), $450,000) leads with wearable stimulation garments that let more people with movement impairments do therapy at home, and adds only one line about student research and teaching materials. If your research has a direct societal payoff, say so concretely; you don't need to bolt on an unrelated outreach program to fill space.

Named FY2026 examples by activity type

These are real FY2026 awards, described from their public abstracts:

• K-12 teachers: The University of Nevada, Reno's RET Site led by Mahdi Mehrtash (award 2601381 (opens in a new tab), $599,997) will bring 30 middle and high school science teachers, 10 per year, into a six-week summer research program on AI for energy storage, with academic-year classroom follow-up and industry partners NV Energy and Tesla.
• Teacher training from a CAREER award: A Wright State University CAREER project on stem cell differentiation led by Nasim Nosoudi (award 2614036 (opens in a new tab), $604,047) plans in-person sessions to help West Virginia science teachers add a tissue engineering module to existing high school courses.
• Open tools and curriculum: A Brown University CAREER project led by Peipei Zhou (award 2544032 (opens in a new tab), $795,718) will release open-source tools, datasets, and benchmarks through workshops and tutorials and fold the work into new curricular materials.
• An open textbook: A UC Berkeley CAREER project led by Henry Corrigan-Gibbs (award 2618355 (opens in a new tab), $650,000) on privacy-preserving web services pairs the research with undergraduate content and an openly available textbook.
• Public engagement: A Case Western Reserve University project on animal magnetoreception led by Brian Taylor (award 2554676 (opens in a new tab), $592,231) plans a new interdisciplinary course and a public-facing science center display.

Notice what these share: a named audience, a number or a format, and a direct link to the research topic.

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The 5 Elements of a Broader Impacts Section That Scores Well

In the Grantsights sample, 57% of funded FY2026 abstracts described two or more activity types and 34% described three or more. Breadth isn't the goal, though. The plans that hold up to the 5 review elements share five characteristics.

1. Specific Activities, Not Aspirations

What fails: "This research has the potential to benefit society through advances in renewable energy technology."

What works (hypothetical sample language): "We will develop a 6-week summer workshop for 15 community college students from the Phoenix metropolitan area, where participants will build and test small-scale solar cell prototypes using the thin-film fabrication techniques developed in Aim 2. Workshop materials will be made available as open-access curriculum through the MERLOT repository."

The difference is actionable detail. The second version names the audience (community college students), the location (Phoenix), the number of participants (15), the duration (6 weeks), the activity (building solar cells), the connection to the research (Aim 2's fabrication techniques), and the dissemination plan (MERLOT). The Reno RET Site above does the same thing with real numbers: 30 teachers, 10 per year, six weeks.

2. Named Partners and Existing Relationships

Reviewers are skeptical of plans built on hypothetical partnerships. "We will partner with local school districts" raises obvious questions: which ones? Have you talked to them? Do they want to partner with you?

Include: The partner's specific commitment, written into your Project Description or the Facilities, Equipment and Other Resources section, plus a letter of collaboration from that partner. For example: "The partner middle school will provide 3 hours of classroom time per month for research demonstrations during the 2027-2028 academic year." That one sentence carries more weight than pages of vague partnership language.

Get the letter format right. According to NSF's PAPPG 24-1 Chapter II.D.2.i (opens in a new tab), letters of collaboration "should be limited to stating the intent to collaborate" and shouldn't endorse or evaluate the project; NSF offers an optional one-sentence template that points back to the commitments described in the proposal. Letters of support aren't accepted unless the solicitation requires them, and a proposal with unauthorized support letters may be returned without review. That's a common mistake for PIs used to foundation or state applications, where support letters are routine (our guide to letters of support covers those funders).

3. Measurable Outcomes with an Evaluation Plan

Review element 3 asks whether the plan "incorporate[s] a mechanism to assess success." You wouldn't propose a research project without saying how you'll know if the hypothesis holds. Your broader impacts plan needs the same rigor.

Weak: "We will increase student interest in STEM careers."

Strong (hypothetical sample language): "We will measure changes in STEM career interest using a validated pre/post survey instrument (the STEM Career Interest Survey, Kier et al., 2014) administered to all workshop participants. Our target is a 15% increase in mean scores from pre to post assessment, based on effect sizes reported in comparable interventions. We will also track participants' academic trajectories for 2 years post-workshop through our partnership with the community college's institutional research office."

This level of detail signals two things to reviewers: you've thought about whether the activities will work, and you'll generate evidence that can improve later efforts. Our guide on writing a grant evaluation plan covers instrument choice and outcome targets.

4. Direct Connection to the Research

PAPPG 24-1 names three routes: the research itself, activities directly related to the project, and complementary activities the project supports. The best plans are ones where doing the research naturally advances the broader impacts.

Disconnected (common): A computational biologist proposes to volunteer at Science Olympiad events. Fine activity, but it has nothing to do with computational biology.

Connected (better): A computational biologist develops an open-source genomics visualization tool as part of the research and creates a module for undergraduate bioinformatics courses that uses the tool to teach students how to interpret genomic variation data.

Deeply integrated (best): A computational biologist's research requires annotating a large genomic dataset. They design a citizen science platform where undergraduates from partner institutions annotate subsets of the data as a course assignment, which advances the research and trains future computational biologists at the same time. The annotation accuracy data becomes a research question itself.

The third version is what NSF means by integration. The broader impacts aren't an add-on. They're part of how the research gets done.

5. Sustainability Beyond the Award Period

Reviewers want to know what happens when the money runs out. A 5-year outreach program that disappears on day 1,826 is less compelling than one designed to continue.

Approaches that demonstrate sustainability:

• Curriculum materials deposited in permanent open-access repositories
• Train-the-trainer models where participants become future workshop leaders (the RET model above trains teachers who keep teaching the material)
• Partnership agreements with organizations that have their own funding
• Activities embedded in existing institutional structures (courses, programs, centers)

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Specific Broader Impacts Examples: What Works and What Doesn't

Each activity type below shows up in at least 18% of the 2,070 funded abstracts in the Grantsights sample. The weak and strong versions are hypothetical sample language written for illustration; the real FY2026 awards named above show what funded projects describe.

K-12 Outreach

K-12 work appears in 27.2% of the sampled abstracts and 34.9% of ENG abstracts.

Weak version: "The PI will visit local K-12 schools to give presentations about their research."

Why it's weak: No specifics on which schools, how often, what content, or how impact will be measured. One-off presentations have little measurable educational effect.

Strong version (hypothetical): "We will partner with a named middle school (enrollment: 65% free or reduced-price lunch eligible) to deliver a 10-session after-school robotics program aligned with Next Generation Science Standards MS-ETS1. Each session will use sensor systems developed in our research as teaching tools. The program will run in Years 2-5, serving 20 students per year. We will assess learning gains with a validated engineering design assessment and track participants' high school STEM course enrollment through a data-sharing agreement with the school district."

Undergraduate Research

Undergraduate involvement appears in 42.1% of sampled abstracts, the most of any type, so specificity is what sets yours apart.

Weak version: "We will provide research experiences for undergraduate students."

Strong version (hypothetical): "In Years 1-4, we will host 2 undergraduate researchers per summer through a partnership with a named tribal college's Department of Environmental Science, under an existing memorandum of understanding. Students will spend 10 weeks in our lab on sub-projects tied to Aim 3, with weekly one-on-one meetings, a midpoint oral presentation, and a final poster at our university's undergraduate research symposium. This award will formalize an arrangement that has already placed students in the lab informally."

Open-Source Software and Data

Open tools appear in 30.2% of CISE abstracts but only 12.2% of BIO abstracts.

Weak version: "All software and data will be made publicly available."

Strong version (hypothetical): "We will release our spectral analysis toolkit as open-source software on GitHub under an MIT license, with full documentation, tutorials, and example datasets. We will maintain the repository for the duration of the award and transfer long-term maintenance to our research group's institutional GitHub organization. To support adoption, we will host a 2-day virtual workshop in Year 3 for researchers and educators, with recorded sessions posted publicly. We will report downloads and active users annually, using our current beta release's usage as the baseline."

Data sharing also overlaps with your Data Management and Sharing Plan, which Supplement 2 moved into a Research.gov (opens in a new tab) tool. See our NSF data management plan guide so the two documents don't contradict each other.

Public Engagement

Public engagement appears in 33.1% of sampled abstracts and 41.5% of BIO abstracts.

Weak version: "The PI will disseminate results to the general public."

Strong version (hypothetical): "We will develop a 4-episode podcast series with our university's science communication office, translating findings from each research aim into 20-minute episodes for general audiences and distributing them through the university's existing podcast channel. In Year 4, we will work with a named regional science museum to build an interactive exhibit on water quality monitoring that uses real-time data from our sensor network. The museum has committed gallery space for a 6-month installation, as described in Facilities, Equipment and Other Resources and confirmed in its letter of collaboration."

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The Biggest Broader Impacts Mistakes

Each mistake below maps to one of NSF's 5 review elements, so each one costs you on more than one question.

Mistake 1: Treating Broader Impacts as an Afterthought

This shows in the proposal structure. When broader impacts gets half a page at the end of a 15-page project description, reviewers can tell it was written last. NSF doesn't set a page count for the section, so give it enough room to name specific activities, people, and evaluation, and weigh that against your research plan. For a CAREER proposal, the education activities need real depth, not a closing paragraph.

Mistake 2: Listing Activities Without a Logic Model

"We will host workshops, create curriculum, and mentor students" is a list, not a plan. Connect the dots: what problem are you addressing, which activities address it, what short- and long-term outcomes do you expect, and how will you measure them? If you've written a logic model for a federal grant, the same framework applies here.

Mistake 3: Proposing Activities You Can't Actually Do

If you've never run a K-12 program, proposing an ambitious multi-school initiative is a red flag for reviewers checking element 4 (qualifications). Either partner with someone who has the experience and include them in the budget, or start with something smaller that matches your current capacity.

Mistake 4: Ignoring Your Institution's Existing Infrastructure

Most universities have STEM outreach offices, education centers, and community engagement programs. NSF's own five tips for broader impacts statements (opens in a new tab) suggest checking whether your institution has resources to help. Building on existing infrastructure also answers element 5 (resources) and shows the work can continue if you move on.

Mistake 5: Confusing Broader Impacts with Intellectual Merit

"This research will advance our understanding of climate change" is intellectual merit, not broader impacts. Broader impacts is about who benefits beyond the advance in knowledge, how they benefit, and what you'll do to make it happen.

Mistake 6: Framing Participation by Protected Group

Under NSF's 2025 priorities, a common mistake is recruiting language that limits eligibility by a protected characteristic. That kind of framing fails because the FAQ says activities can't directly or indirectly preference or exclude people on that basis. The policy section below covers what still works.

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How to Write Your Broader Impacts Section: A Step-by-Step Process

Work through these 5 steps before you write a sentence of the section itself.

Step 1: Identify Your Real Connection

What educational or societal contribution can your specific research enable? Don't start with "what broader impacts activities should I do?" Start with "what can my research make possible that wouldn't exist otherwise?" If the answer is a direct benefit, such as safer water or cheaper therapy, lead with it.

Step 2: Choose Activities That Match Your Capacity

Be honest about what you can run alongside a full research program. One well-executed activity is better than four half-hearted ones. If you're a first-time PI, partner with existing programs instead of creating new ones.

Step 3: Find and Formalize Partners

Contact partners (schools, museums, community organizations, other institutions) before you write. Agree on specific deliverables, describe them in the Project Description or Facilities section, and get a letter of collaboration that states the intent to collaborate. A partner who's agreed to specific deliverables is far more convincing than one who's agreed to "explore potential collaboration."

Step 4: Design Your Evaluation

Choose an assessment approach for each activity. For educational activities, use validated instruments when you can. For public engagement, track meaningful measures, not just attendance. Build evaluation costs into your grant budget justification. NSF's five tips post also reminds applicants to budget for broader impacts costs.

Step 5: Write It Like a Research Plan

Give the section the same structure as your research plan: rationale, methods, timeline, expected outcomes, and evaluation. If it reads like boilerplate, rewrite it.

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Broader Impacts for Different Proposal Types

The 15-page Project Description limit in PAPPG 24-1 applies to most proposal types, and the Broader Impacts section has to fit inside it. How much room it takes depends on the program.

Standard Research Grants

Broader impacts is a review criterion with no NSF-set page count. Focus on 1 or 2 activities done well instead of a long list, and make sure each one is in the budget.

CAREER Proposals

The CAREER solicitation (NSF 22-586) (opens in a new tab) asks for a description of the proposed educational activities and their intended impact, and separately for "other broader impacts, besides the education activities." So the education plan is a large part of a CAREER proposal's broader impacts, but it isn't automatically the whole of it. The current CAREER program page lists the next deadline as July 28, 2027. See our NSF CAREER award guide for the rest of the proposal.

Center-Scale Proposals (ERCs, STCs)

Large center solicitations typically expect broader impacts programs with dedicated staff, advisory structures, and multi-year evaluation. Check the specific solicitation, and give the broader impacts work its own budget lines and personnel instead of borrowed time from the research team.

SBIR/STTR Proposals

NSF's SBIR/STTR solicitations use 3 review criteria. According to NSF 26-510 (opens in a new tab), released May 21, 2026, they are Intellectual Merit, Broader Impacts, and Commercial Potential, which "encompasses the potential of the project to lead to significant outcomes in the commercial market." Broader impacts for a small business still means societal benefit, but it sits next to a separate commercial test. See our SBIR Phase I guide.

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The April 2025 Policy Update: What It Means for Your Proposal

NSF's Statement of Priorities (opens in a new tab) is dated April 18, 2025, and the page's FAQ was last updated July 24, 2026. Here's what it says and what it doesn't.

What didn't change: The Broader Impacts criterion itself. Every proposal is still reviewed on Intellectual Merit and Broader Impacts, and neither PAPPG supplement rewrote the criterion.

What changed: According to NSF's priorities FAQ, investigators should prioritize the first six broader impacts goals defined by the America COMPETES Reauthorization Act of 2010. Investigators addressing goal seven must ensure that all outreach, recruitment, or participatory activities are "open and available to all Americans." The FAQ adds that engagement aimed at protected characteristics is allowed only as part of broad engagement activities.

What still works: The FAQ says investigators may expand participation based on non-protected characteristics, "including but not limited to institutional type, geography, socioeconomic status, and career stage," as long as those activities don't indirectly preference or exclude people based on protected characteristics.

What this means for your proposal:

• Frame access by institution, place, or career stage. "Students at primarily undergraduate institutions," "community college students in rural counties," and "teachers in a state with limited STEM pathways" fit the FAQ's examples.
• Say plainly that participation is open. The Reno RET Site abstract states that all outreach, recruitment, and participatory activities "will be open and available to all Americans." Only 7 of the 6,730 FY2026 abstracts Grantsights pulled used that exact phrase, so you don't need to paste it in; what matters is that your recruitment plan really is open.
• Lead with the first six goals where they fit. Economic competitiveness, health, national defense, industry partnerships, STEM education, and public scientific literacy are the goals NSF says to prioritize.
• Ask the program officer if you're unsure how a specific activity reads under the FAQ.

Funded abstracts show the shift. Grantsights ran the same keyword method on 3,298 FY2024 BIO, CISE, and ENG abstracts (from 11,587 of the 11,687 FY2024 awards the NSF Award Search API (opens in a new tab) reported) and compared them with the 2,070 FY2026 abstracts:

The decision this changes: write the societal case in the terms NSF now asks for first. Workforce language more than doubled and security or competitiveness language more than doubled, while group-based language fell by more than four-fifths. Access framing by place or institution type also fell, so it isn't a direct substitute; if you use it, tie it to a real gap you can document, such as a partner college with no research lab. These are funded-award summaries, so the change reflects what NSF approved and published, not a rule about wording.

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PAPPG 24-1, Its 2 Supplements, and the Draft Replacement

NSF 24-1 is still the PAPPG in effect. According to NSF's PAPPG page (opens in a new tab), it applies to all proposals submitted or due on or after May 20, 2024.

NSF published the draft Guidance on Financial Assistance for public comment in the Federal Register (91 FR 38030) (opens in a new tab) on June 24, 2026, with comments due August 24, 2026. NSF's webinar slides (opens in a new tab) say one more 30-day comment period will come before it's final and that NSF aims to issue it for use in early to mid FY2027. Until then, write to NSF 24-1 plus the two supplements and your solicitation.

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What NSF's Policy Pages Don't Tell You About Broader Impacts

NSF's policy pages define the criterion, but they don't track whether proposed broader impacts actually happen. Research does. A 2023 study by Thomas Woodson and Sophia Boutilier in Research Evaluation ("From intent to impact," vol. 32, pp. 348-355 (opens in a new tab)) compared broader impacts proposed in NSF award abstracts from 2014 to 2017 with what PIs reported in project outcome reports and found that the number reported was significantly lower than the number proposed, across directorates and impact types. Outreach promises are the easiest to make and the easiest to drop.

The gap usually isn't random. Plans that depend on partners, volunteers, or infrastructure the PI doesn't control are the ones most likely to fall short. The proposal wins. The partner school changes principals or programs. The museum exhibit gets bumped. The summer workshop loses its co-PI. Reviewers know this pattern, and element 5 (adequate resources) is where it shows up.

So don't propose activities where the bottleneck is someone else's budget, staffing, or priorities, unless that partner has committed in writing. If your plan requires a museum to keep a gallery installation, a school district to hold three curriculum slots, and a community college to supply recruiters, you've built in failure points you don't control. One way around that is a plan that runs mostly inside your own group: an open-source toolkit with recorded tutorials hosted on an institutional GitHub and a yearly virtual workshop whose logistics you control. It's less flashy than a big partnership, but delivery doesn't depend on anyone else. In the Grantsights sample, 30.2% of funded CISE abstracts already describe this kind of open tool.

The other gap reviewers catch is a mismatch between the broader impacts budget and the activities. If you promise four years of school outreach for 20 students per year with letters of collaboration, but the budget shows $1,200 for broader impacts, reviewers can do the math. School outreach carries real costs for transportation, supplies, and teacher stipends, and an 80-student program can't run on that.

Build the broader impacts budget before you write the section. Start with what you can afford given the total award size, then design activities to fit. In a hypothetical $400,000 award with 10% set aside for broader impacts, you'd have $40,000 over four years. That can pay an undergraduate for two summers, cover curriculum development, and still fund real outreach. Don't write the activities first and assign them a token budget afterward.

If you're still deciding which NSF program fits the project, you can search open federal grants on Grantsights by agency and keyword before you commit to a solicitation.

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Resources for Building Stronger Broader Impacts

At your institution:

• Your Office of Research (many have broader impacts specialists)
• STEM outreach offices and community engagement centers
• Your university's education school, for assessment expertise

From NSF:

• NSF Broader Impacts page (opens in a new tab)
• NSF 101: Five Tips for Your Broader Impacts Statement (opens in a new tab)
• NSF Award Search (opens in a new tab) for funded abstracts in your program, which NSF's five tips post also suggests reviewing

External:

• ARIS (Advancing Research Impact in Society) (opens in a new tab): NSF-funded resource with examples, templates, and webinars

Related Guides

• How NSF Grant Review Works
• NSF Research Grants Guide
• NSF CAREER Award Guide
• NSF Data Management Plan Guide

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Sources

• NSF Proposal & Award Policies & Procedures Guide (PAPPG) page (opens in a new tab)
• PAPPG 24-1 Chapter II: Proposal Preparation (opens in a new tab)
• PAPPG 24-1 Chapter III: Proposal Processing and Review (opens in a new tab)
• PAPPG 24-1 Supplement 1 (NSF 26-200) (opens in a new tab)
• PAPPG 24-1 Supplement 2 (NSF 26-202) (opens in a new tab)
• NSF Statement of Priorities and FAQ (opens in a new tab)
• NSF Broader Impacts page (opens in a new tab)
• NSF Merit Review page (opens in a new tab)
• NSF 101: Five Tips for Your Broader Impacts Statement (opens in a new tab)
• 42 U.S.C. 1862p-14, Broader impacts review criterion (opens in a new tab)
• CAREER solicitation NSF 22-586 (opens in a new tab)
• SBIR/STTR solicitation NSF 26-510 (opens in a new tab)
• Federal Register, 91 FR 38030: NSF Guidance on Financial Assistance comment request (opens in a new tab)
• NSF Award Search API (opens in a new tab)
• Woodson and Boutilier, "From intent to impact," Research Evaluation 32(2), 2023 (opens in a new tab)
• Advancing Research Impact in Society (ARIS) (opens in a new tab)