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