Writing
Successful
Grants
Grants
Joy Johnson
W
What makes for a
successful grant?
The Core Questions
Are your questions significant ? (Does
anybody care?)
Can you address them? (Are you any
good?)
Is your research likely to be of greater
impact than other grants in the
competition? (Is your stuff amongst the
best?)
A great idea….
Pressing issue
Challenge to the field
Address a gap
Solve a problem
What is your great idea?
Identify the Best Funding
Source
Look for a match between the goals of
your project and the funder’s mandate.
Sources for grants: national and
provincial funding agencies, nonprofits,
foundations etc.
WRITING GREAT GRANTS
Your goals
1. To convince the grants panel that you can really do the
research:
- your track record
- how well you’ve written the grant
2. To demonstrate that the project is built on a solid
foundation of published work (yours/others) & preliminary
data.
3. To get the panel excited about the project - this proposal is
so terrific, it just has to be funded.
A Skill Like Any Other
YOU CAN DO IT!!
GOOD GRANT WRITING IS
FORMULAIC, LEARNABLE
Work on Your Idea Early
Good grants are not
written at the last
minute
Write
daily!
Take advantage of all opportunities to work
on your grant
“Young
faculty members who write in brief
daily sessions publish 3-4 times as much as
those who have a romantic notion that writing
should be held off until the muse strikes, and
then done in a marathon” - Prof. Boice
Make Your Grant a Priority
“The ability to focus attention on important things is a
defining characteristic of intelligence.”
- Robert J. Shiller, - Irrational Exuberance
******************************************************
Do you start every day by working on your most important project?
This is an essential habit of the most productive people I know.
Many of us start with a warm-up period that sometimes morphs into
time-wasting.
- Ref: Google Academic coach
Learn the Requirements!!!
CV Requirements
Budget
Expectations regarding formatting
Key deadlines
Details on how to submit
Find Examples of Good Grants
Imitate great style- - get copies
of a couple of great grants: what did they do?
Get it down! - Don’t be a sentence ‘caresser’
1. Get it down
2. Get it right
3. Get it pretty
4. Get it out!
Key to Writing Well
Good expository writing has two predominant features.
1. Great lead sentences
2. Paragraphs with an inverted pyramid structure
A convincing argument
• Ask “Who’s the audience?”
• Give the BIG picture. Make the reader care.
• Don’t drown the reader in detail (the reader doesn’t
want to know). Too Much Information!
• State Why a study needs to be done
•
Make it enjoyable for the reviewer!
Make Your Grant
Interesting
Use illustrations
Use examples
Use an active voice
Work on A Solid Construction
- CREATE INTEREST
- DEMONSTRATE IMPORTANCE
- STATE OVERALL OBJECTIVE
- STATE CLEAR BRIEF SPECIFIC AIMS & RESEARCH PLAN
- GIVE TIME FRAME
- ARTICULATE SIGNIFICANCE TO THE WORLD
Key components
• Background and Preliminary Results
• Research plan
• Significance
Finding a balance
Technical language versus jargon
Important details versus getting lost in
minutia
Justifying every design decision versus
assuming an intelligent reader
No project design is
perfect
Acknowledge limitations and indicate
how you will address them
Demonstrate that you have put together
the best possible approach (given
resources, state of science etc)
Place Yourself In a Strong
Position
• Demonstrate productivity
• Show you have the necessary
skills
• Put together a solid team (but
demonstrate independence)
Team Science
Increasingly research applications
include multiple investigators
Chose your team wisely – individuals
who have skills, abilities, resources that
can contribute to the project
These individuals should have strong
track records
Remember – large teams can be
difficult to manage.
Budgets
• Justify your budget
• Know what are allowable
expenses
• Model it after someone else’s
Organize an Internal Peer
Review
• Select three peer reviewers and ask
them to meet with you
• Ask them to assesses the presentation
& scientific content
• Gives you experience in reviewing
grants
• Fosters collegiality
• Always vastly improves your grant
Before submission!
• Read it all, again, on the screen
• Read a printed version!
• Have someone else read a printed version
Sometimes, you aren’t funded!
“Research is driven by positive thinking”
- Rando Allikemets, Columbia University
IF YOU DON’T GET FUNDED
Don’t get discouraged!
Read the reviews carefully
- do you need more preliminary data?
- do you need to write the grant better?
- is it not a good project?
Questions??????