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fundamentals of grantsmanship |
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by Janet S. Rasey, Ph.D.
The Basic Principles of Grantsmanship
Before You Write: Doing Your HomeworkKnow Your Colleagues Get to know your colleagues, and ask them for help. Research is highly interdisciplinary and no one person can do it all. Colleagues are essential for ideas, critical review, teaching you techniques you don't know, and suggesting funding sources. Colleagues often have experience reviewing grants and may know the work of people who will review your grant. As you mature in your discipline, cultivate relationships with younger scientists with fresh ideas and new techniques. Know the Grantmakers Grantmakers, whether federal or nonfederal, don't exist to fund what you want to do; they fund work that furthers their mission, which is evidenced in proposals they have funded recently and in program announcements (PAs), requests for grant applications (RFAs), requests for contract proposals (RFPs), and annual reports. Poll your colleagues; consult your institution's Office of Sponsored Projects (or equivalent); explore the granting agency’s web site; use any legal means you can think of to learn the grantmaker's priorities. A successful (i.e., funded) grant proposal submitted by a colleague to your target grantmaker is a good example - analyze what made it successful. Know the funding limits, stated or implied, of the grantor when designing your budget request. Use the telephone and email to get to know granting officers and solicit their expert advice, but first do your homework to learn fundamentals of the agency’s processes and priorities. Know Yourself Know yourself: time, capabilities, and limitations. Know what you do well and have examples of data and publications to prove it. Know what you cannot do and seek collaboration. Give yourself far more time to write a proposal than you think you need; six months is a nominal time for an NIH R01 or similar proposal. If you get your thrills from pushing deadlines, save them for some project other than your grant. NO substitute for a good idea: know your subject. Know your subject and the pertinent literature so that you can propose something new, important, or needed that fills a gap in our knowledge or solves an important problem. Then communicate with potential grantmakers to query their interest. Find a good idea that turns you on - your enthusiasm for the work must show through. Be sure you are up-to-date on techniques, literature, and interpretations of ideas or theories. Specialize enough to develop and maintain your expertise and reputation - don't "subject hop" continuously, but don't get mired in yesterday's research either.
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Writing the GrantIt takes time, and more time... It takes about 120 hours, broken into many segments, to write a typical NIH R01 grant. A primary reviewer, assigned to read the proposal and write a critique, spends an average of 7-8 hours reviewing the grant. A reader, who does not have to prepare a written evaluation, averages less than 1 hour reading the proposal. In the Study Section meeting, the members spend slightly more than 20 minutes discussing the critiques and voting a priority score on the grant. This time compression points out the importance of clear communication of your goals, methods, and the significance of your work. Revise, revise again, with input from colleagues; give them and yourself enough time (about two weeks for each draft). There is no substitute for a good idea, but a successful grant application is an exercise in communication. A good idea is necessary but not sufficient. You must develop your idea in a clear, attractive, persuasive, convincing way. Match the idea with a workable plan of action. Get three kinds of reviewers for your proposal drafts: someone very knowledgeable in your field, an intelligent non-expert, and a good scientific editor. Don't ever assume your reader knows what you mean; explain it but do so without insulting his/her intelligence. This style of writing is an art form and you may need advice from successful grant writers and experienced reviewers. Keep abbreviations, acronyms, and discipline-specific jargon to an absolute minimum. Answer the questions: Who are you? What are you going to do? How will you do the work? How much will it cost? Why are you doing the work? Why is it worth doing? Where will the work lead? Different parts of a grant application allow you to answer these questions:
Seriously, read the instructions. Follow the rules on format, length of various sections, and elements to be included. You can fail to be funded for what you leave out as well as what you put in. Don't get creative with format - give the reviewers all the information they need in the format they expect to see. Try to get a copy of a successful grant as a model. Tell them what you are going to tell them, tell them, and then tell them what you told them. Repeat the same information, ideas or themes in a consistent way throughout the proposal. For example, have a section in the methods for each specific aim, and repeat the aim verbatim at the beginning of that section. Write the abstract last, so that it will be an accurate summary as well as a preview of the grant. The abstract and proposal title are used in assigning reviewers; make sure they accurately reflect content. For mechanism-oriented research, formulate hypotheses and design experiments that test the hypotheses. For discovery/engineering research: ask questions, define problems, unmet needs, or unfilled gaps, and formulate statements of rationale that support the value of solving the problem, meeting the need, or filling the gap. Avoid experiments that only collect data. If a reviewer sees a fishing expedition, your proposal is sunk. (There may be an exception to this when investigating a new subject; some baseline data gathering may be needed.) Focus your thinking and writing. KISS (Keep it simple [and short, and succinct], sweetheart.) The Review Process: Knowing What Happens After You Write Helps You WriteConsider the typical reviewer: a 50-something full professor with his/her own research projects, grad students, teaching assignments, committee overload, plus at home, rebellious teenagers, mildewed roses, and a spouse competing for the home office. Best time for grant review: between 11 PM and 1 AM. Lesson: Only clearly written, well-formatted proposals based on good ideas and proposing significant work will reach this reviewer. Get inside the reviewer's head. What do reviewers look for?
Make sure your writing reflects these elements. Some reviewers may not be experts in your area of research, and you are just as obligated to communicate with them as with the leading researchers in your field who know all the techniques and jargon. Learn as much as possible about the review group most likely to evaluate your proposal: names of members, areas of expertise and publications, possible biases towards your field of research Little things mean a lot. Reviewers like attention to details - good grammar, correct spelling, no typos, neatness. They expect you to follow the instructions and provide an easy-to-read format. Reviewers may ask themselves, “If the applicant can't write the proposal carefully, how carefully will he/she do the research?” Reviewers don't like surprises - altered format, instructions ignored, information missing or abandoned to the appendix rather than placed in the body of the proposal. A Word About Revising & ResubmittingThe only people who don't make mistakes are the ones who don't do
anything; so spend no more than one day wallowing in discouragement if
your first proposal is rejected. If the reviewers "just didn't understand you", YOU are responsible for that. Always be prepared to revise. Take reviewers' criticisms seriously but not slavishly - your ideas and your enthusiasm for them must come through in a revision. Try, try again, but remember that there is a point of diminishing returns. Sometimes a second or third revision is as good as it is going to get but fails to be funded because the ideas aren't getting any better. This is difficult to recognize by oneself; ask a colleague to help determine if you have reached this point. One final word: In the grants world and elsewhere, every failure has a lesson, and each new start is preceded by giving up something old. Never be afraid to move ahead. Revised 22 July 2005, 8 December 2005, 21 July 2008 Copyright 2008, Janet S. Rasey
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