8 tips to help grant application success
Writing grant proposals can be the bane of many researchers professional lives. They are time-consuming, require incredible attention to detail and often get rejected. For young and new principal investigators (PIs), knowing how to write a grant proposal with the greatest chance of success is the biggest issue.
The more experience you have, the easier it becomes as you get better at satisfying the reviewers requirements. Here we have collated a list of 8 tips to help with this process.
1. Make sure your research is novel and necessary
The best, most interesting and most read science is built upon new ideas. Most funding bodies are aware of this and want to support research that is going to gather new, relevant results that fit their mission. In addition, if you can explain the importance of the research and why it needs to be carried out as soon as possible, this information will help your cause. Oh the other hand, your research should not be too speculative. If what you’re suggesting is too out there, reviewers will probably consider it less viable, particularly when there isn’t much money available.
2. Find the best funding programme for your proposed research
Funding programmes want to give away money; that is the whole reason for their existence. Most of them employ people who can help you to identify whether your grant is appropriate for their fund. Use this insight as well as the information on their websites to inform your decision to apply to that fund. If your grant application doesn’t fit their criteria, then don’t waste your time and energy applying to it.
3. Follow the guidelines fastidiously
Once you have found a relevant fund, read the request for applications carefully and respond to that request specifically. Once you know how you are going to respond, make sure you follow all of the guidelines. Any application that doesn’t meet the guidelines requirements won’t get to the reviewers. Length and formatting are two of the most frequently broken standards.
4. Justify all of the required resources
One of the main purposes of the review board is to make sure that no money is wasted on unnecessary resources. Therefore, once you have convinced them that your experimental question is valid and worthy of study, you must explain (without being longwinded) what resources you need, how much they will cost and why you need them. If you don’t (or can’t) justify your request, then you are unlikely to get the money for it.
5. Get input from your colleagues
When you have written the grant application, ask a trusted colleague (preferably with lots of successful grant application experience) to read it. If possible, ask someone who is an expert on a different topic to your own. This will ensure that the application is clear and understandable to the reviewers. While they will probably be researchers from a similar field, they probably won’t understand all of the jargon related to your subject matter.
6. Get to know your grant administrator
Your grant administrator should be your best friend at the fund to which you have applied. The better they understand what you want and why, the more likely they are to advocate your proposal. Talk to them via email, over the phone or in person (where possible). They want to help you and are probably the person with which you have the greatest impact.
7. Become a grant reviewer
The best way to understand how a reviewer considers an application is to become one yourself. The experience will not only give you first-hand awareness of the difficulties that reviewers face when handing out limited resources. It will also provide insight into how other reviewers react to different aspects of an application; what they like and what puts them off.
8. Accept rejection and try again
Rejection happens. What needs to be addressed is why and what you can do to fix it. Answer each of the criticisms one by one and resubmit. Make it explicit why this proposal is better than the previous one. Rejection rates are very high, particularly in tight funding environments. Even very promising applications are turned down simply because there isn’t enough money to fund them all. One way to deal with rejection is to apply for grants in batches. This means you always have something under consideration to keep your research moving in the right direction.
Many scientists see grant applications as a necessary evil of scientific research, but by following the guidelines, asking for a little help and ensuring you have plenty of time they don’t need to be so horrible. In fact, writing your grant application should be a pleasure. It’s a chance to write down your ideas and thoughts about your area of expertise and what you think the next experimental step should be. So next time you sit down to start a new grant application, use these tips and try to make it enjoyable.
)