The NOFO Graveyard

A Response to NIH's Defense of Its Vanishing Funding Opportunities

Image credit: @nihvigils.bsky.social

On March 23, 2026, Dr. Jon Lorsch, NIH’s Deputy Director for Extramural Research, published a blog post titled “NIH’s Path to a Simpler Funding Opportunity Landscape.” The post attempts to explain and justify why NIH is issuing dramatically fewer Notices of Funding Opportunities (NOFOs) than at any point in recent history. It is a carefully written document, fluent in the language of scientific stewardship and administrative efficiency. But it is built on assertions without evidence, and it sidesteps the most important facts about what is actually happening to NIH-funded science.

I spent 22 years as a Program Officer at the NIH. I know how NOFOs are created, what they accomplish, and what their absence means for the research community. I have been writing about this policy change on Substack and in The Chronicle of Higher Education, and I have the data to respond.

The Numbers Tell a Different Story Than the Blog

Dr. Lorsch acknowledges that NIH historically issued between 600 and 850 NOFOs annually. He frames the current reduction as a modest, principled streamlining. The data tell a very different story.

Using NIH’s own posting records, which I have compiled across 14 years (2012–2026) from the NIH Guide for Grants and Contracts and grants.gov, here is what the NIH-wide NOFO count actually looks like:

• 2012–2024 annual range: 511 to 1,081 posted NOFOs per year

• Average 2019–2024: approximately 710 per year

• Average 2023–2024: 724 per year (the immediate pre-policy baseline)

• 2025 posted NOFOs: 120, which is an 83% decline from the recent baseline

• 2026 posted NOFOs so far: 17, which is a pace far below even the already-collapsed 2025 level

NIH NOFOs Published Over Time (as of March 24, 2026)

To put 2025 in full context: in 2020, when COVID-19 shuttered laboratories and disrupted normal NIH operations worldwide, NIH still managed to post over 650 NOFOs. The 120 posted in 2025 is the lowest annual total in the entire 14-year record. This is not streamlining. This is a near-total halt.

And the picture worsens when you account for the new “forecasting” system. Under NIH’s new policy, ICOs must first post a forecast (a simple notice of an anticipated future NOFO), before being permitted to publish the actual funding opportunity. Across all ICOs in 2025, 271 opportunities were forecasted but only 120 were ever posted. Nearly seven out of ten forecasted opportunities never made it to the posting phase.

These are not opportunities being carefully considered. I have come to call this the “forecast graveyard.” It is a pipeline that generates false hope for researchers and then quietly buries it. This system introduces a whole new burden on investigators who read forecasted NOFOs that will never come forward. When seven out of ten forecasts never become actual funding opportunities, generating them is largely an exercise in false advertising.

Claim #1: “This Does Not Mean Fewer Funded Applications”

“Although there are fewer funding opportunities, this does not mean fewer funded applications.” — Dr. Jon Lorsch

This is the most consequential claim in the blog, and it is directly contradicted by NIH’s own published data. According to NIH’s own reporting, in FY 2024 NIH awarded 7,720 R01-equivalent awards. In FY 2025, that number fell to 5,885, a decline of more than 20%, despite a nearly flat NIH budget. The link to this data is on NIH’s own website.

Furthermore, according to a recent Association of American Universities report, NIH issued 66% fewer grant awards in FY26 through the end of February compared to the average for the same period in FY21–24. These are not small measurement artifacts. These are catastrophic drops in the actual funding of science, and the opposite of what Dr. Lorsch promises.

It is important to note that the drop in numbers of grant awards did not result from the drop in NOFOs. Rather, as a recent article in Science notes, the switch to a multi-year funding strategy was likely the primary cause. The cause matters less than the consequence. Dr. Lorsch assures the research community that fewer NOFOs would not mean fewer funded applications. The data show that funded applications fell sharply, whatever the reason. NIH is actually funding far fewer awards now, and it appears likely that this trend will continue. Telling the research community that fewer NOFOs will not mean fewer funded applications, while the agency’s own numbers show a 20% drop in R01 awards within a single year, is not a defensible position. It is gaslighting.

Claim #2: Targeted NOFOs Limit Investigator Flexibility

“Their narrow scope can sometimes limit flexibility for investigators to propose novel or unexpected ideas.” — Dr. Jon Lorsch

This is the foundational premise of Dr. Lorsch’s entire argument, and it collapses under the weight of NIH’s own historical data. NIH has tracked, for decades, the proportion of funded research that comes from investigator-initiated versus targeted NOFOs. The NIH Data Book charts show clearly and consistently that broad parent mechanisms — the very investigator-initiated grants Dr. Lorsch says he wants to protect — have always dominated the NIH funding portfolio. Targeted NOFOs have never crowded out investigator-initiated science. This is not a problem that exists.

Dr. Lorsch acknowledges as much, writing that “broad funding opportunities like parent announcements have supported a large share of NIH-funded research for many decades.” If investigator-initiated research has always been the dominant mode, what exactly is the problem being solved?

Here are some representative charts from the NIH Data Book:

In 22 years at the NIH, I do not recall a single instance in which the extramural research community complained that too many NOFOs were forcing them to constrain their scientific ideas. Scientists were always welcomed and encouraged to submit their best ideas through parent mechanisms. Most did. The data confirm it. Dr. Lorsch provides no survey, no listening session summary, no Request for Information, and no documented complaint from the research community to back up his claim that NOFO proliferation was limiting scientific innovation. The assertion is simply stated as fact, repeatedly, but repetition is not the same thing as evidence.

Innovation and discovery are not impeded by the existence of targeted NOFOs. Indeed, the vast majority of Nobel-winning NIH-funded research has been funded through unsolicited, investigator-initiated grant applications during times when more targeted NOFOs were issued at the same time. To date, the NIH has funded 174 Nobel laureates who collectively received or shared 104 Nobel Prizes for their groundbreaking work. All of that occurred during the same decades when NIH was issuing hundreds of targeted NOFOs each year.

Claim #3: Fewer NOFOs Reduce Administrative Burden on NIH Staff

“Streamlining the number of funding opportunities also reduces administrative complexity across NIH, allowing NIH program staff to focus more on scientific stewardship.” — Dr. Jon Lorsch

As someone who spent more than two decades as a NIH Program Officer, I can speak to this directly: the number of NOFOs is not what burdens program staff. Scientific stewardship — talking with investigators about their ideas, nurturing portfolios, identifying scientific gaps — is the job. It is what program officers were hired to do, and it is what they want to do. Having a robust portfolio of targeted NOFOs does not prevent that work. It enables it.

What does create genuine administrative burden and prevent scientific stewardship is something Dr. Lorsch does not mention at all: the ongoing requirement that program staff screen grant portfolios and applications for terms that may potentially be associated with misalignment with the agency’s new priorities’ such as DEI, mRNA research, vaccine hesitancy, and climate research. Program colleagues who remain at NIH describe spending countless hours defending grants in their portfolios, coaching applicants about which words to avoid, and navigating an ever-changing list of politically sensitive topics. This is what diminishes innovation. This is what limits investigator flexibility. This is what keeps program staff from focusing on scientific stewardship.

In 2025, NIH terminated thousands of grants worth billions of dollars. HHS grant terminations impacted more than 74,000 clinical trial participants in the name of eliminating DEI. Even after a federal judge determined that DEI screening of NIH grants was illegal, the practice continues. If Dr. Lorsch genuinely wants to free his program staff to focus on science, he should address that problem.

Claim #4: This Is About “Reducing Fragmentation”

“Moving toward the use of broader funding opportunities rather than highly specialized announcements reduces fragmentation in the funding landscape.” — Dr. Jon Lorsch

Dr. Lorsch never defines “fragmentation,” and this vagueness is telling. NIH has 27 Institutes, Centers, and Offices (ICOs), each with a distinct and congressionally mandated mission. The National Cancer Institute exists to fund cancer research. The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism exists to fund alcohol research. The Fogarty International Center exists to fund global health research. When these ICOs issue targeted NOFOs that reflect their specific missions, that is not fragmentation. That is the system working as Congress intended.

What the new system actually does is centralize control. Under the previous policy, targeted NOFOs were approved by ICO directors and their affiliated advisory councils composed of scientific experts with deep domain knowledge making peer-reviewed judgments about scientific priorities. Under the new policy, every targeted NOFO must be approved by the NIH Office of the Director, HHS, and OMB — political appointees whose expertise is political, not scientific.

Funneling the research community toward fewer, broader parent mechanisms also makes the grant portfolio far easier to monitor and filter for political purposes. When every application arrives through the same parent announcement, screening for ideologically disfavored topics becomes straightforward. This may not be what Dr. Lorsch intends, but it is the structural consequence of the system he is describing.

The practical result of these new NOFO policies is visible in the data, and it is not evenly distributed.

Which ICOs Have Been Hit Hardest?

The data I compiled reveal that the collapse in NOFO activity is not evenly distributed. Using the average of 2012 – 2024 as the pre-policy baseline, here is what some of the hardest-hit ICOs experienced in 2025:

• NICHD (child and maternal health): posted just one NOFO in all of 2025. Its 14-year average was 41.7 per year, making the decline approximately 98%. Thirteen forecasted NOFOs sit in the graveyard.

• NINDS (neurological disorders): posted 3 NOFOs in 2025 against a 14-year average of 49. That is a 94% decline. What makes the NINDS story particularly striking is the trajectory: the institute had been accelerating its activity for years, reaching what turned out to be its all-time peak of 80 NOFOs in 2024 and then collapsed 94% the very next year. Sixteen forecasted NOFOs remain unposted.

• NCI (cancer): NIH’s highest-volume institute by any measure. Over the full 14-year record it averaged 86 NOFOs per year, and in the five years immediately before the policy it averaged more than 90. In 2025 it posted 4, a 95% decline. Twenty-four NCI forecasts are sitting in the graveyard, representing cancer research programs that were anticipated, announced to the community, and then quietly shelved.

• NIMH (mental health): averaged nearly 60 NOFOs per year over 14 years. It posted 4 in 2025, a 93% decline. Mental health research, an area of enormous and well-documented unmet need, has been reduced to a trickle.

• NIAAA (alcohol research): issued zero NOFOs in 2025 despite having 9 in the forecast system. Its 14-year average was 21 per year, with annual totals ranging from 10 to 44. NIAAA has never had a zero-posting year in the entire 14-year record. Nine forecasted opportunities were announced to the alcohol research community and then never materialized.

• NIEHS (environmental health): posted zero NOFOs in 2025, despite 6 forecasted. Its 14-year average was 14 per year, and like NIAAA it has never previously had a zero-posting year. Calls for targeted research on environmental contributions to disease, including cancer, reproductive harm, and neurological conditions, simply stopped.

The mandate, as I understood it from NIH leadership before I left, was a 50% reduction in the number of NOFOs issued each year. What the 14-year data show is an 83% reduction system-wide, with most individual ICOs experiencing declines of 90% or more.

What Targeted NOFOs Actually Do — And Why Losing Them Matters

Dr. Lorsch’s blog does not spend any time describing what targeted NOFOs actually accomplish. It should. As I explained in my last essay, a NOFO is how NIH tells researchers what the agency needs. It specifies a research problem or a training need, explains why it matters, describes the approach NIH is looking for, and sets aside dedicated funding to solve it. Critically, NOFOs typically focus on problems that are not being addressed by unsolicited investigator-initiated applications. Targeted NOFOs exist precisely to address the gaps that broad parent mechanisms do not fill. When you eliminate targeted NOFOs, you eliminate the funding signal for exactly those areas of science that would otherwise be overlooked.

Moreover, some of the most consequential scientific programs in NIH’s history were built on targeted NOFOs: the Human Genome Project, the BRAIN Initiative, the All of Us Research Program, the Cancer Moonshot, the IDeA program that builds research capacity in historically underfunded states. None of these emerged from investigators independently deciding to pursue them through parent mechanisms. They emerged because NIH identified a strategic priority and issued a targeted funding opportunity to pursue it. To suggest that targeted NOFOs limit innovation is to misunderstand how some of the most innovative federally funded science of the past three decades actually got done.

Many of these programs are also mandated by Congress. The IDeA program, for example, exists because Congress determined that states with historically low NIH funding deserved targeted investment to build research infrastructure. When NIH stops issuing NOFOs for congressionally mandated programs, it is not just making a policy choice. It may be failing to fulfill a legal obligation.

A Personal Example: What a Targeted NOFO Can Accomplish

By 2016, I had recognized that behavioral and social science doctoral training was falling dangerously behind the rapid growth of big data and computational methods. University programs across the country were not preparing graduate students to handle the health data of the future. No investigator was going to solve this problem by submitting a parent mechanism training grant application. It required a strategic, coordinated response from NIH.

I spent years developing a concept, pitching it across institutes, gathering feedback, drafting budget scenarios, and building the case for action. I persuaded OBSSR leadership to commit $2 million per year over five years. I recruited 11 NIH institutes as co-signers. And in 2019, we issued a targeted NOFO (RFA-OD-19-011) to launch the first national data science training program for behavioral and social science graduate students in the country.

The first eight programs were funded in 2020. The RFA was reissued in 2024. Over 100 scholars have now been trained, significantly expanding U.S. behavioral data science capacity in ways that will pay scientific dividends for decades.

That program did not happen because an investigator independently decided to propose it. It happened because a program officer identified a gap, built a coalition, and issued a targeted NOFO. Under the new system Dr. Lorsch is describing, that process would require approval from NIH/OD, HHS, and OMB before a single word of the funding opportunity could be published. Given what we know about how many forecasted NOFOs actually make it to posting (fewer than one in three in 2025), there is a reasonable chance that program would never have existed.

Conclusion

Dr. Lorsch’s blog is well-written, but it is not well-supported. The central claims are each contradicted by available data: that targeted NOFOs limit investigator flexibility, that fewer NOFOs will not mean fewer funded awards, that this is about reducing administrative complexity. The NIH’s own published numbers show a collapse in NOFO activity that dwarfs the mandated 50% reduction, a parallel collapse in R01 awards, and a forecast system in which the majority of anticipated opportunities are never published.

The blog presents none of this data. It makes no reference to the administrative burden created by DEI screening of grants, which is the actual burden consuming program staff time. It offers no analysis to support the claim that investigators felt constrained by targeted NOFOs, because no such analysis exists. It makes no distinction between the policy as stated (50% reduction) and the policy as implemented (83% reduction).

The research community deserves an honest accounting of what is happening. This is not a simplification of the funding landscape. It is a contraction of it, and one that is falling most heavily on the ICOs and research areas that serve the most vulnerable populations, including children’s health, mental health, alcohol and substance use, cancer, environmental health, and neurological disease.

Fewer NOFOs means fewer signals to the research community about what NIH needs. It means fewer protections for understudied areas that cannot compete through open parent mechanisms. It means a transfer of authority away from scientific experts and toward political appointees. And, as the data now confirm, it means fewer funded awards.

That is not a simpler funding opportunity landscape. That is a diminished one.

This essay is part of an ongoing series reflecting on what I learned over more than two decades working inside the U.S. biomedical research enterprise. Each piece stands alone, but together they examine how science is shaped not only by ideas and funding, but by the structures that support or constrain them.

Sources

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Agarwal, K. (2026, March 20). Data show dramatic slowdown in NIH grantmaking. Association of American Universities. https://www.aau.edu/newsroom/leading-research-universities-report/data-show-dramatic-slowdown-nih-grantmaking

Kaiser, J. (2026, February 20). NIH research grant funding rates plummeted in 2025. Science. https://www.science.org/content/article/nih-research-grant-success-rates-plummeted-2025

Patel, V. R., Liu, M., & Jena, A. B. (2026). Clinical trials affected by research grant terminations at the National Institutes of Health. JAMA Internal Medicine, 186(1), 126–128. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamainternmed.2025.6088

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Wilcox, C., Richter, H., Voosen, P., & Kaiser, J. (2025, December 12). Do you wanna build an ice dome? We could live in there on Mars. ScienceAdviser [Newsletter]. Science. https://www.science.org/content/article/scienceadviser-do-you-wanna-build-ice-dome-we-could-live-there-mars#nih-grant

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Ginexi, E. (2026, March 17). Why is the NIH abandoning science? This is not a temporary slowdown. The Chronicle of Higher Education. https://www.chronicle.com/article/why-is-the-nih-abandoning-science

NOFO data was compiled by the author from NIH Guide for Grants and Contracts historical archives and grants.gov records. Analysis covers all funding announcements published from 2012 through March 24, 2026.