A Collaborative Pediatric Cancer Research Awards Program, 2027 Cycle: Six Charities Fund Childhood Cancer Grants of Up to $50,000 or $100,000 a Year, With Letters of Intent Closing 14 September 2026

A Collaborative Pediatric Cancer Research Awards Program, 2027 Cycle: Six Charities Fund Childhood Cancer Grants of Up to $50,000 or $100,000 a Year, With Letters of Intent Closing 14 September 2026

Childhood cancer research has a structural funding problem that has nothing to do with the science: the money is scattered across dozens of small family foundations, each with its own portal, its own forms and its own deadlines. A researcher chasing $50,000 can spend more effort on paperwork than the grant is worth.

A Collaborative Pediatric Cancer Research Awards Program exists to fix exactly that. Six nonprofits pool their grantmaking behind a single application, a single peer-review process and a single submission portal. You write one letter of intent; any of the participating organisations can end up funding you. Rally Foundation for Childhood Cancer Research, based in Atlanta, serves as the grant administrator.

The 2027 cycle opened its letter of intent stage on 3 August 2026 and closes on 14 September 2026 at 3:30 PM EDT. That is a short window, and it is the only gate: full applications in November are by invitation only, so missing the September date removes you from the entire cycle.

Key Details

What the Collaborative Is and Why the Pooling Matters

The Collaborative describes its members as national nonprofit organisations dedicated to accelerating the development of safer, more effective treatments designed specifically for children and, ultimately, eliminating childhood cancer. For the 2027 cycle those members are Rally Foundation for Childhood Cancer Research, Arms Wide Open Childhood Cancer Foundation, Infinite Love for Kids Fighting Cancer, Kids Join The Fight, Luke Tatsu Johnson Foundation and Mighty Millie Foundation.

Two practical consequences follow from that structure.

First, your proposal is seen by more than one potential funder. You are not writing to a single board’s taste; you are entering a shared pool where a project that does not fit one organisation’s emphasis may fit another’s. Rally administers the grant, but the funding decision may come from any participating organisation, and a funded project may be supported by more than one of them.

Second, the audience for your writing is genuinely mixed. The scientific review is done by the Rally Medical Advisory Board, described as an international team of leading childhood cancer experts running a competitive dual peer-review process. But the guidelines are explicit that the layman’s summary exists to help each Collaborative Organisation’s board of directors evaluate the Medical Advisory Board’s recommendations. Volunteer board members — often parents of children treated for cancer — read that summary. Scientists who treat the plain-language section as an afterthought are misreading who decides.

The scale is real. In 2026 Rally awarded $7 million to 94 researchers across 48 institutions worldwide, its largest annual distribution since the foundation’s founding in 2005, bringing its cumulative total to $47.5 million.

The Four Grant Types, and Choosing Correctly

Postdoctoral and Clinical Research Fellow Grant — up to $50,000 per year for one or two years. Fellows in the final year of their fellowship are eligible for one year of funding only, and may apply through the Independent Investigator Grant in the following cycle. The Collaborative Organisations state an explicit interest in funding fellows, and a portion of available funds is reserved for Fellow Grants contingent on scores received.

Independent Investigator Grant — up to $50,000 per year for one or two years. On the face page you identify yourself as either a Young Investigator (no more than five years post-fellowship) or an Independent Investigator (more than five years post-fellowship). As with fellows, a portion of funds is reserved for young investigators, again contingent on scores.

Consortium Grant — up to $100,000 per year for one or two years. A consortium means at least three institutions, each making a unique contribution, collaborating on the proposed project, with the lead institution housing the principal investigator. “Unique contribution” is doing real work in that sentence: three sites running the same assay is not a consortium in the sense the guidelines intend.

Outside the Box Grant — $50,000 for one year, no second year. This category has its own research priorities that are not the six listed for the other awards, so the separate Outside the Box guidelines must be read before you write anything. At the end of the award, researchers may apply for further funding in the next cycle through a Fellow, Independent Investigator or Consortium Grant as appropriate.

The rule for choosing is stated plainly: consider your anticipated position as of the start of the award period, 1 July 2027 — not your position today. A fellow finishing in June 2027 who applies as a fellow is applying under the wrong category.

One more thing worth knowing before you plan: not all grants are awarded in full, and not every applicant who requests two years receives two. Amounts and durations are set by the peer-review scores.

Who Can Apply

Eligibility is broader than many disease-specific foundations. Applicants at all academic ranks from Instructor to Professor may apply, as may postdoctoral and clinical research fellows and research scientists, provided they hold at least an M.D., D.O., Pharm.D. and/or Ph.D. degree.

Critically for international readers: applicants do not need to be U.S. citizens or located at a U.S. institution. The applicant’s institution may be a hospital, university or private lab. The 2026 cohort spanned 48 institutions worldwide, so this is not a nominal openness.

There is no cap on the number of letters of intent an institution or a principal investigator may submit. That is unusual and worth using deliberately — though submitting several thin LOIs is a worse strategy than submitting one strong one, since all of them are scored against the same competitive field.

What Gets Funded, and What Will Not Be Paid For

The application must address at least one of six priority areas relating to cancer in children, adolescents and/or young adults up to age 24:

• Innovative approaches to research that could lead to advanced studies, better delivery of treatment or clinical translation
• Basic science studies likely to lead to a new discovery
• Under-studied cancer types
• Quality of life, survivorship and palliative care studies
• Personalised, targeted, alternative or integrative research proposals
• Data utilisation through data standardisation, collection, storage, analysis and sharing

The funded age bands are defined as childhood (0–14), adolescent (15–19) and young adult (20–24).

The Collaborative considers applications on all types of childhood cancer, but for the 2027 cycle designated funding is also available for acute myeloid leukaemia, diffuse midline glioma, neuroblastoma, medulloblastoma, rhabdomyosarcoma, sarcomas and Wilms tumour. If your work sits in one of those seven, say so unmistakably in the first lines of your summaries — designated pots change the arithmetic of your odds.

Three categories will not be reviewed at all: proposals with no direct relevance to paediatric cancer or outside the programme’s scope, proposals to fund infrastructure programmes, and incomplete or late applications.

The budget exclusions are equally firm. The Collaborative will not fund construction, renovation or maintenance of buildings or laboratories, purchase of land, student tuition costs, or institution recharges — the guidelines name data network, IT support, general auto liability, general employment liability, computer and network support, and administrative and human resource support as examples. Human embryonic stem cell research is not funded. And indirect costs are not paid at all. If your research office assumes a standard overhead rate, that conversation needs to happen before you submit, not after an award letter arrives.

The Letter of Intent: What Is Due by 14 September

The LOI is submitted through ProposalCentral, where templates and requirements became available on 3 August 2026. It comprises:

• Layman’s summary (2,000 characters) — roughly half a page in plain language for a general audience. The guidelines point applicants to NIH’s plain-language guidance.
• Scientific summary (2,000 characters) — a separate half-page on research objectives and rationale.
• Other support — recently completed (within three years), current and pending support, covering all resources made available to you in support of or related to your research.
• Biographical sketch — for the principal investigator and any co-investigators.
• The letter of intent itself, limited to two pages, with four required elements: Specific Aims; Rationale and Approach; Innovation; and Potential for Translational Application and Future Patient Benefit.
• Relevant references, limited to one page, restricted to current and pertinent literature.
• E-signatures from both the applicant and the institution’s signing official, completed in ProposalCentral before the deadline.

Formatting rules are enforced administratively, not charitably: Arial 11-point throughout, margins of at least half an inch on all sides. Applications that are incomplete, typed in a smaller font or over the page limits will be rejected administratively. Character limits in ProposalCentral include spaces.

That signing-official e-signature is the single most common way a good LOI dies. Institutional officials do not sign at 3:00 PM on the deadline day. Build in a week.

If You Are Invited: The Full Application

Full applications open to invited applicants on 9 November 2026 and close 8 January 2027 at 3:30 PM EST — a window that runs straight through the holiday period, which is worth noting when you plan collaborator sign-off.

The full application repeats the layman’s summary, scientific summary, other support and biosketch, and adds:

• Human subjects documentation — IRB approval letter or proof of pending submission, per NIH guidelines, for applicable projects
• Vertebrate animals documentation — IACUC approval letter or proof of pending protocols
• Budget — project costs by budget period, reflecting only the costs the Collaborative Organisations would support, up to $50,000 per year, which may represent only part of a larger project. No indirect costs. A direct-cost budget justification limited to 5,000 characters goes in the Budget Summary section.
• Research plan, limited to six pages — Specific Aims followed by a Research Strategy covering Significance, Innovation, and Experimental Approach and Research Design
• Relevant references, one page
• Letters of support — required from the department head for young investigators, plus letters from any collaborators or consultants confirming their roles
• E-signatures from applicant and signing official

The guidelines frame the research plan around four questions: what do you intend to do, why is the work important, what has already been done, and how are you going to do the work.

How Reviewers Read These Proposals

One sentence in the guidelines tells you more about scoring than any rubric would: reviewers “will weigh heavily the feasibility of carrying out the project in the projected time span,” analysing potential difficulties and limitations of the proposed procedures and specific aims.

That is the fulcrum of a $50,000, one-to-two-year award. The failure mode is not an unambitious proposal; it is an R01-shaped proposal compressed into a small grant. Three aims that each need a year of work will be read as one aim you will actually finish and two you will not. Specify a timetable. Name the hazards. State what you will do if aim two’s assay does not behave.

The Innovation section asks for a detailed explanation of how the application seeks to shift current research or clinical practice paradigms, and asks you to elaborate on advantages over existing methods. “Novel” as an adjective earns nothing; a comparison against the current standard method earns the point.

The Significance section asks you to critically evaluate existing knowledge and specifically identify the need the project fills, relating the aims to long-term objectives. The word “specifically” is the operative one — reviewers in paediatric oncology know the general case for the field and do not need it restated.

Common Mistakes That End Applications Early

Adult-oncology work with a paediatric paragraph bolted on. Proposals with no direct relevance to paediatric cancer are not reviewed. A mechanism studied in adult tumours needs a genuine argument about paediatric biology, not a claim of eventual relevance.

Budgeting overhead. No indirect costs are paid, and institution recharges are explicitly excluded. Draft the budget with your research office knowing this from the outset.

Treating the layman’s summary as filler. It is read by the boards who approve the Medical Advisory Board’s recommendations. Two thousand characters of plain English, written for an intelligent non-scientist, is a serious writing task.

Formatting drift. Smaller fonts and over-length sections are grounds for administrative rejection, which happens before any scientific reviewer sees the work.

Applying under the wrong career category. Category is judged by your anticipated position on 1 July 2027.

Late e-signatures. Both your signature and your institution’s signing official’s are required before the deadline.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I submit more than one letter of intent? Yes. There is no limit on the number of LOIs an institution or a principal investigator may submit.

Do I have to be in the United States? No. Applicants need not be U.S. citizens or based at U.S. institutions, and the institution may be a hospital, university or private lab.

Can I get a second year if I am awarded one? Independent Investigator grantees awarded one year may apply for a second year by submitting a Grant Renewal that bypasses the letter of intent stage. Renewals are peer-reviewed alongside all other applications in the cycle, so a renewal is not a formality.

How long can one project keep being funded? After two consecutive years of funding for a specific project, a new letter of intent is required, and it competes with everything else in that cycle.

How is the money paid out? One-year grants are paid in two installments and two-year grants in four, one every six months. Each installment after the first is released only once the interim report — specific aims, studies and results, significance, plans, a layman’s summary, a written statement on the grant’s value to your research, and a financial report on the provided template — has been completed in ProposalCentral.

What happens at the end? A final progress report is due no later than 60 days after the award period ends, along with a final financial report. Any unused funds must be returned unless an approved no-cost extension is in place; extension requests should be submitted no fewer than 10 days before the grant period ends.

Do I have to acknowledge the funder? Yes. Recipients must cite the funding organisation in peer-reviewed publications and presentations, and should acknowledge it in non-peer-reviewed articles and presentations as well. Funding also authorises each organisation to use the applicant’s name in fundraising solicitations and to link to the applicant institution’s website with prior arrangement.

What To Do Next

The LOI window is roughly five weeks wide at the time of writing. A workable sequence:

1. Read the guidelines for your specific award category — Fellow, Independent Investigator, Consortium or Outside the Box — rather than assuming they are interchangeable. Outside the Box in particular has different priorities.
2. Register or log in at ProposalCentral, update your Professional Profile (the fourth tab from the left), then find A Collaborative Pediatric Cancer Research Awards Program under Grant Opportunities (the sixth tab) and start the correct application.
3. Decide your category by your anticipated position on 1 July 2027, and decide whether your disease area falls under one of the seven designated funding areas.
4. Draft the two-page LOI around its four headings, then write both summaries last, when you know what the project actually claims.
5. Notify your institution’s signing official this week, not in the final days.

For technical problems with the portal, ProposalCentral customer support is reachable at 1-800-875-2562 or +1 703-964-5840, or at [email protected]. Programme questions, including how the Collaborative defines indirect costs, go to Rally’s Senior Grants Manager; the grants contact published on the 2027 guidelines is [email protected], and Rally’s office line is (404) 847-1270.

Official Links

• Programme page and full grant cycle timeline: https://rallyfoundation.org/become-a-rally-funded-researcher/
• Application portal: https://proposalcentral.com/
• Rally Foundation research overview: https://rallyfoundation.org/research/

Deadlines, amounts and eligibility above are drawn from Rally Foundation’s programme page and the 2027 cycle grant guidelines published in July 2026. Confirm every date against the official page before you submit, and check the guidelines specific to the award you are applying for.