Asking People for Money: A Girl Scout Analogy

Do you get girl scouts selling cookies in your neighborhood? Are you happy to see them when that time rolls around? Maybe you are and maybe you're not, but you likely are comfortable with them checking to see if you want any cookies, even if it does threaten to ruin your healthy diet.

Now, imagine how you would feel if you started to get three or four sets of girl scouts knocking on your door trying to sell you cookies - how would you feel then? It would probably get annoying having to tell each set of girls that you already bought cookies from other scouts, and it might even lead you to swear off buying cookies altogether in hopes that a girl scout would never grace your doorway again.

I heard a colleague use this analogy today to describe why it was important for those faculty researchers looking for funding from individuals or local private foundations to work with the CU Foundation. Our foundation manages our relationships with donors and foundations in the area to make sure that we are not overwhelming them with requests for funding and are only putting projects in front of them that are a perfect match with their mission and goals, thus making it more likely that CU will be funded in some capacity.

Now, happily, when applying for grant funding from federal sponsors in response to an RFP or program announcement, any researcher from the University can usually respond. But, even though it is easier to ask directly for money from these sponsors, it would serve us well to still bear in mind the relationship and fit aspect that is crucial in asking individuals or local foundations for money.

You must understand what your sponsor wants and what their major goals are and then offer them a grant proposal that fulfills all of their dreams and some of yours. Now this may seem a little counter intuitive to what you thought you were trying to do - fund your project. As one faculty member said, partly in jest, "I don't want a lot, I just want everything!" Now, at ORDE, we want our faculty to have everything when it comes to funding their research, but we also realize that everything comes with time to those who are strategic...

Unfortunately, most faculty members do not have their own foundation whose purpose is to fund their research agenda. Therefore, researchers must take baby steps toward their goals. One must write grants that fulfill all of the needs of the sponsor and can further their own research agenda in a smaller way. Even though this can be frustrating, the good news is that in the funding world, money attracts money. As a researcher builds their research and funding portfolio, they show their current and future sponsors that they are worth investing in and can begin to move their work more and more in alignment with their own research goals and agenda. But, again, it takes some time to build rapport with any sort of donor, including federal sponsors.

Know Your Agency: The American Heart Association

ORDE piloted a new series this fall, entitled, “Know Your Agency (KYA) Lunches.” For years, ORDE has offered Know Your Agency briefs on particular agencies of interest to our faculty. Now, to further understanding and facilitate Q&A around these agencies, KYA Lunches provide opportunities for faculty experts with experience and success in getting funding from an agency to give brief presentations and lead follow-up discussions on the agencies.

In early November, our KYA lunch focused on the American Heart Association (AHA) and Professor and Chair, Robert Eckel, former President of the AHA gave a presentation and answered a host of questions for both AMC and Denver Campus faculty who were interested in pursuing funding with the AHA. Dr. Eckel encouraged the participants, saying, “You can really spread your wings [with the AHA] from very basic to clinical to population science in almost anything that you could connect to cardiovascular disease. And that’s really grantspersonship isn’t it? How we write grant applications relates to the agency we’re applying to.”

As part of the Know Your Agency Lunch on AHA, ORDE put together a two-page brief on the AHA for grant-seekers: http://www.ucdenver.edu/academics/research/AboutUs/ORDE/funding/Pages/KYASeries.aspx

Also, at the link above are briefs on the following agencies:

• Air Force Office of Scientific Research
• BrightFocus Foundation
• Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation
• National Endowment for the Humanities

Understanding an agency, their goals, ideologies, and preferred approaches are crucial before you begin writing your grant. These briefs and KYA lunches are a first step in researching your target sponsor, but you should also review the projects that the sponsor has funded in the past to understand some of the trends and nuances of the sponsor and their grant reviewers.

Please suggest other agencies you are interested in applying to in the comments area.

 

 

What's in a Name? Titling Your Grant Proposal

Pardon my cliché title, but since this is a blog, I just cannot help myself with some of my dubiously clever titles! However, I do think that this gives us an example of a title that makes sense for a blog, but the tone of which would not be appropriate for a grant proposal.

Here is why. As I consider my blog title(s), I first think about you, my audience. I assume that you are faculty researchers, mainly at the CU Denver and Anschutz Medical Campuses. I assume that you are busy and are looking for some strategies and tips to improve your grant development and/or honing your research projects to appeal to funders. When this title pops up in your RSS feed, I'm trying to communicate two things to you.

1. That this won't be a horribly boring or overly technical blog post through my initial overused Shakespearean pun.
2. That this blog is about grant titling through the latter half of the title

For those of you who would like "just the facts ma'am," and are not interested in the background information, you have likely skipped to the tips at the very bottom. For those of you who are reading the whole thing, I take you on my brief mental journey to illustrate the very process to use in creating a title for your grant.

So, your grant and its title is for your peer reviewers. Who are they? What environment are they reading in? And, what is their goal in reading your grant?

Who: Usually other faculty researchers, but not necessarily if you are applying to a private foundation.

Environment: When they find a spare moment in the day or on the plane ride out to the review session they are trying to get through all the grants they have been assigned.

Goal: Understand all the grants they have been assigned to make a decision on which to support.

Now, as you see, entertainment or deeply contemplating new phraseology is not what reviewers are looking for, so we must develop titles that best facilitate the goals of our audience. Grant titles should be concise and descriptive. These two words might seem in opposition, but it really just means, every word has to count and we have to choose the title that best gives an understanding of what is most important in our grant.

In addition to always rooting yourself in your reader's needs and interests when making writing decisions, below are some quick tips for grant titling:

ORDE's Titling Tips:

• Review titles of funded projects by your sponsor (warning: do not assume these titles are the best, but consider your impression of the project based on the title)
• Be original and relevant (look up the hot language used by the sponsor and see if it fits with your concept)
• Be accurate and use agency-friendly keywords
• Use results/impact-driven words instead of describing a process
• Be authoritative (Questions, although they may seem intriguing can imply yours is an exploratory, risky, or questionable project)
• Only use abbreviations that are better understood by the reader (e.g., DNA)
• Use active verbs (e.g., remodeling, reconstructing, creating, etc.)
• Use plain language (remember, get the point across clearly)
• Get feedback from colleagues and your program officer
• Proofread your title along with everything else
• Use the same title in resubmittals so your reviewers know to focus on your changes

 
Resources:
Murder Most Foul: How Not to Kill a Grant Application
Research Paper Titles in Literature, Linguistics, and Science: Dimensions of Attraction