NIMHD's $12 Million Endowment Forecast Has Six Slots and Six Incumbents: RFA-MD-28-001, a May 25, 2027 Due Date, and a 20-Year Corpus Lock

Most NIH money pays for a project and then it's spent. The John Lewis NIMHD Research Endowment Program works differently. The institution invests the award within 90 days. It can't touch the principal for 20 years after the project period ends, and it can spend only the investment income, under a plan NIMHD has approved. It is one of the few federal research programs that pays into an institution's balance sheet.

On September 8, 2026, NIH posted a forecast for the next round: RFA-MD-28-001, "Limited Competition: John Lewis NIMHD Research Endowment Program (S21 Clinical Trial Not Allowed)." The forecast lists $12 million in total program funding, six expected awards, and a $2 million award ceiling, with no cost sharing. The estimated dates are a March 25, 2027 posting, a May 25, 2027 application due date, and an award and project start of June 30, 2028, which falls in fiscal year 2028.

Those numbers match the program as it stands today. NIH RePORTER shows six active S21 endowment grants, each receiving $2 million a year, and all six project periods end on May 31, 2028. The forecast is the recompetition of that cohort, timed so the new awards start a month after the current ones end.

Any eligible institution that isn't one of those six is applying against an incumbent for every slot.

What the program buys, and what it doesn't

The forecast lists four objectives, all about institutional capacity:

1. Improving physical infrastructure and acquiring research equipment
2. Developing research-enabling technical expertise
3. Expanding academic science programs relevant to scientific research
4. Merit-based recruitment of highly accomplished researchers for open faculty positions

It also says plainly that the program "does not directly support research projects." This is not a research grant that happens to be large. Reviewers will look for an institution-wide plan that converts a permanent income stream into lasting health disparities research capacity. A list of studies the endowment would pay for misses the point.

The statutory authority is Section 464z-3(h) of the Public Health Service Act. The operating rules are in 42 CFR Part 52i, and those rules matter more than anything in the narrative.

The regulation: 20 years, 90 days, and full clawback

Part 52i is short, and every applicant's CFO should read it before the provost commits. The core provisions:

• Invest within 90 days. Award funds "must be invested no later than 90 days after the start date of the grant" (§ 52i.7(c)).
• The corpus is locked for 20 years after the project period ends. The full award amount "must be maintained as corpus by the institution for 20 years from the end of the project period" (§ 52i.7(e)). For a five-year award starting in mid-2028, that runs into the 2050s.
• No spending in year one. Income earned in the first year after award "shall not be expended to support programmatic activities until after conclusion of the initial year" (§ 52i.9(a)).
• Income is only what exceeds the corpus. On each withdrawal date, the institution calculates the fund value above the corpus and may spend only that excess (§ 52i.10). If markets fall and the fund drops below the original award, nothing is available to spend, and the rule requires "appropriate actions," such as reviewing investment strategy, to restore the corpus (§ 52i.7(f)).
• Spending follows state law and institutional policy. Recipients follow "the spending rules under the law of the state in which the institution is located," in practice the state's version of UPMIFA, as long as those rules don't conflict with federal policy (§ 52i.7(b)).
• Twenty years of reporting. Investments, income, corpus, and every expenditure of income must be documented and reported for the full period, with a final Financial Status Report due 20 years after the project period ends (§ 52i.11).
• Clawback includes earnings. If the institution spends corpus, spends income on impermissible purposes, or fails to invest prudently, NIMHD may terminate the grant and recover "up to the amount of endowment awards plus any income earned" (§ 52i.12(b)).
• After 20 years, the corpus can be spent on anything that "expands or develops the institution's minority health and/or health disparities research and/or training capacity," though NIMHD encourages keeping it intact (§ 52i.8(b)).

An institution may have its affiliated foundation hold the funds for investment, but the institution stays liable for any violation by the foundation (§ 52i.4). An institution receiving a 464z-3(h) endowment can't also receive endowment-designated funds through a NIMHD Center of Excellence award under Section 464z-4(f) at the same time (§ 52i.7(g)).

A rough sense of scale: if the next cohort follows the current pattern of $2 million a year for five years, each institution would build a $10 million corpus. At the 4 to 5 percent payout typical of university endowments, that produces about $400,000 to $500,000 a year in spendable income once the fund is fully built and past its first year. That covers a few faculty lines or a core facility's operating budget indefinitely. It does not fund a building.

Who is eligible

The forecast restates the statute. An applicant must be a public or private institution of higher education with:

1. A current or former HRSA Centers of Excellence award under PHS Act Section 736, and
2. A current or former NIMHD Centers of Excellence award under Section 464z-4, and
3. An institutional endowment equal to or less than 50 percent of the national median of endowment funds at institutions conducting similar biomedical research and health professions training.

The words "current or former" come from the John Lewis NIMHD Research Endowment Revitalization Act of 2021 (Pub. L. 117-104), signed March 18, 2022. Before that law, an institution had to hold an active Center of Excellence award, so institutions dropped out of eligibility when their center grants lapsed. The law reopened the program to them, and NIMHD renamed it for Representative John Lewis.

The endowment test is where institutions most often go wrong. Part 52i defines "institutional endowment" as "the corporate or system-wide endowment fund that is the sum total of the endowment assets of all campuses and their components," including foundation-managed assets and "state university systems." A health science campus with a small endowment of its own can fail the test once its system's assets are counted. Ask NIMHD for an eligibility determination well before the application is due. The contact is the NIMHD DCHPS Scientific Team at NIMHDDCHPSSciTeam@mail.nih.gov.

25 years of award data

We pulled every S21 award NIMHD has made from NIH RePORTER. The program has made awards to 17 institutions totaling $514.2 million since fiscal year 2001.

The largest cumulative recipients:

The program has shrunk sharply. Annual S21 obligations peaked at $40.6 million in FY2004, when individual institutions received up to $5 million a year. They fell to about $20 million a year by FY2012–FY2015, then to $9.9 million a year from FY2017 to FY2020, when awards were reset to about $2 million a year per institution. The program funded $4 million in FY2021, made no awards in FY2022, and has run at a flat $12 million a year since FY2023.

The current cohort came from RFA-MD-22-010, whose applications were due January 17, 2023. It includes three returning recipients and three new ones:

• Returning: Florida International University (first funded under RFA-MD-15-007 in 2016), SUNY Downstate, and UNT Health Science Center (both first funded under RFA-MD-17-004 in 2017)
• New project numbers, long histories: Charles R. Drew, Meharry, and Xavier, all original FY2001 recipients that returned after the 2022 eligibility expansion

Two institutions from the 2016 cohort, San Diego State University and SUNY Albany, each received $10 million and did not appear in the 2023 cohort.

What this means for applicants

Incumbents are favored, but the six slots aren't guaranteed. Part 52i lets a current recipient apply again while "in the last year of funding," and the forecast's June 2028 start is timed for that. Incumbents can show what their first corpus has already produced, including faculty hired, cores staffed, and income spent according to plan. Challengers can't. But the 2023 round shows turnover happens: three of six slots went to institutions that had been out of the program for seven to twelve years (Meharry's last prior award was FY2016, Drew's FY2015, Xavier's FY2011), and two recipients from the 2016 cohort didn't return.

For a challenger, the case rests on demonstrated capacity and a credible plan. The review factors in § 52i.6 are the merit of the plan to facilitate health disparities research, "the likelihood of its producing meaningful results," the adequacy of institutional resources, and "the adequacy of the applicant's plan for managing the endowment fund." That last factor is usually underwritten. Put the investment policy, the spending formula, the governance of the foundation (if one will hold the funds), and the 20-year reporting process in the application with the same care as the science.

Expect the forecast dates to move. The forecast puts 13 months between the May 2027 due date and the June 2028 award, an unusually long gap. Because these are FY2028 dollars, the timing and amount depend on appropriations that Congress hasn't written yet. Plan internally for a spring 2027 deadline and watch Grants.gov opportunity 363826 for the final RFA.

Start the internal work now. Large limited-competition NIH applications from institutions this size need the president's office, the CFO, the foundation, and the research office working together. Use the next five months to get an eligibility determination, settle which campus or system entity applies, draft the strategic plan for spending income (NIMHD must approve it before any income is spent), and line up the faculty recruitment and infrastructure priorities the four objectives require.

Read the current awards before writing. The six active project numbers are 1S21MD018960 (Drew), 2S21MD010683 (FIU), 1S21MD018959 (Meharry), 2S21MD012474 (SUNY Downstate), 2S21MD012472 (UNTHSC), and 1S21MD018975 (Xavier). Their RePORTER abstracts show what peer reviewers last rewarded.

For related NIH capacity-building and training opportunities with spring 2027 deadlines, see our analysis of NLM's T15 biomedical informatics training RFA and our coverage of NIH's record early-stage investigator R01 numbers.

The program has paid out $514 million over 25 years, and much of it is still sitting in invested corpus at the institutions that won. Granted can help your team turn institutional data into a strategic plan and endowment management narrative before the RFA posts.