Voucher specimens are the physical receipts of biodiversity. Yet archiving them is chronically under‑funded, slowing discovery and undermining reproducibility. With a $75 ,000 pool, we’ll issue rapid micro‑grants ($500–$2,500) so researchers can:

• collect and deposit voucher specimens

• run focused surveys of Insecta, Funga, and soil biota

• contribute samples to the California All‑Taxa Biodiversity Inventory (CalATBI)

• engage students and community scientists in hands‑on field work

Every funded project posts open progress updates on Experiment, turning field notes into shared knowledge.

Grant Tiers

Tier	Purpose	Amount* (up to)
Voucher confirmation	Specimen deposited in museum/herbarium	$500
Targeted field survey	Research helps inform statewide inventory Insects, Fungi, & Soil biodiversity	$500
ATBI sample pack	Project sends insect, funga, soil, & litter samples for processing and sequencing by CalATBI statewide ATBI Protocol Introduction ATBI Site Selection & Best Practices ATBI Leaf Litter Sampling ATBI Soil Sampling ATBI Insect Sweep Net Sampling ATBI eDNA Sampling	$1,500

*Awards can include DNA barcoding or soil eDNA sequencing for submitted material. 

ELIGIBILITY:

• Work must occur within California.
• Open to university labs, tribes, NGOs, independent researchers, and dedicated amateurs.
• Researchers must submit a complete project via Experiment.com.
• Accepted projects must follow responsible collecting guidelines and deposit vouchers/samples in recognized repositories (see below).

ROLLING SUBMISSIONS: The goal of this small, fast grant program is to get these projects off the ground quickly. Projects will be reviewed on a rolling basis, until the end of the submission window or until the funding has been fully allocated, whichever comes first.  

Projects will not be considered for the grant until they have gone through the Experiment.com review process and been approved per those requirements. This can take some time, so please don't wait until the grant deadline to submit. The sooner you start your project and get it approved by the Experiment team, the better your chances of receiving funding (use the "start a project" link).

All projects that are successfully approved by Experiment.com, regardless of whether they are allocated any funding through the grant, will launch their campaigns on or after July 1st, 2025.

 

FUNDING STRATEGIES: For projects that are allocated grant funds, the award size will be between $500-$2,500, but researchers can raise additional funding on the Experiment.com platform. All projects are Experiment.com projects, which means they are also eligible for crowdfunding and run on an all-or-nothing funding model. We encourage every researcher to plan for and implement a crowdfunding campaign, as not all projects will receive grants and not all grants will cover the full budget of a project. Projects which receive awards that only partially fund their target budget will need to crowdfund the remainder of their budget in order to receive any funding, in accordance with the Experiment.com all-or-nothing funding model. You may wish to consider the use of Stretch Goals in your project for a greater chance of meeting your minimum target budget and receiving any funding. Funding discretion rests with the Science Angel.

VOUCHERING GUIDELINES: If you have your own vouchering guideline or if you're using one provided by an archive or museum, please let us know in your submission or in a Lab Note tied to your project. Otherwise, please follow an appropriate guideline listed here. 

• Invertebrates: COLLECTING AND PRESERVING INSECTS AND MITES: TECHNIQUES AND TOOLS EDITED BY M. E. SCHAUFF* Systematic Entomology Laboratory, USDA National Museum of Natural History, NHB 168 Washington, D.C. 20560 - https://www.ars.usda.gov/ARSUserFiles/80420580/CollectingandPreservingInsectsandMites/collpres.pdf; Morgan Brown, Sara Ottati, Valeria Trivellone. A non-destructive, fast, inexpensive, non-toxic chelating beads-based DNA extraction protocol for insect voucher specimens and associated microbiomes. Authorea. January 05, 2025 - https://doi.org/10.22541/au.173607115.51950228/v1 
• Lichens: https://northwest-lichenologists.wildapricot.org/Curation-Materials
• Macrofungi: Halling, R. E. 1996. Recommendations for collecting mushrooms for scientific study. Pp. 135–141. In: Alexiades, M. N. and J. W. Sheldon (eds.), Selected Guidelines for Ethnobotanical Research: A Field Manual. The New York Botanical Garden Press, Bronx - https://sweetgum.nybg.org/science/projects/boletineae/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2016/08/collecting_illustrated.pdf; https://namyco.org/publications/mcilvainea-journal-of-american-amateur-mycology/working-toward-a-north-american-mycoflora-for-macrofungi/; https://namyco.org/publications/mcilvainea-journal-of-american-amateur-mycology/making-scientific-vouchers-of-north-american-macrofungi/
• Plants: Liesner R. 1997. Field techniques used by Missouri Botanical Garden; collecting - https://www.tropicos.org/docs/MadCat/handbook.pdf; Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. 2024. Technical Information Sheet 15: Making herbarium specimens. Board of Trustees of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. 5p - https://brahmsonline.kew.org/Content/Projects/msbp/resources/Training/15-making-herbarium-specimens.pdf; Tippery, Nic. 2021. Voucher Specimens. YouTube. Webpage Accessed April 17 2025 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T89HhjaISuE; USDA Natural Resource Conservation Service. 2018. Technical Note Plant Materials No. 70: Collecting and Processing Botanical Voucher Specimens. Boise (ID): USDA, NRCS. 5p. - https://www.nrcs.usda.gov/plantmaterials/idpmctn13305.pdf; USDI National Park Service. 2003. Fire Monitoring Handbook. Boise (ID): Fire Management Program Center, National Interagency Fire Center. 274p. - https://www.nps.gov/ngpfire/Documents/Fire_Monitoring_Handbook.pdf; Funk VA, Gostel M, Devine A, Kelloff CL, Wurdack K, Tuccinardi C, Radosavljevic A, Peters M, Coddington J. Guidelines for collecting vouchers and tissues intended for genomic work (Smithsonian Institution): Botany Best Practices. Biodivers Data J. 2017 Jan 30;(5):e11625. - https://doi.org/10.3897/bdj.5.e11625; https://www.cnps.org/education/botanist-certification/code-ethics