ABSTRACT
The former usually means a government department, whereas the latter source includes organisations such as the National Institutes of Health in the US or the Research Councils in the UK, which receive their budgets from government and spend them on supporting research. Public funding organizations need to be able to demonstrate that the research they funded has been useful to society. This desire to demonstrate relevance and impact has led to major changes in the information requested from scientists' applying for grants. Sometimes the chances of success of an application for a relatively small amount of money are greater than the chance of a large grant application getting funded. Small amount of money may not be large enough for scientists' to employ someone to do their research, but it will enable them to begin their independent scientific career. Grant applications for large projects requiring large amounts of funding can involve contributions from many scientists, sometimes based in many different countries.
