K.I.S.S. - Keep it simple sweetheart

The biggest challenge facing researchers in grant writing is describing their complex research objectives clearly and simply for reviewers. It brings us back to that old K.I.S.S. adage from high school English class - Keep it simple stupid (or sweetheart as my teacher preferred).

Say it back to me
This week, Dr. Bill Hay, Professor in our School of Medicine, spoke at our ORDE seminar on applying for an NIH K grant. He suggested to us that when you have identified your research goals, begin by sharing your research project idea with someone else in one or two sentences and ask them to repeat back what they heard. This will give you insight into how clearly and succinctly you are communicating your idea, and also help you to hone in on the areas where your reviewers might get hung up in your explanations.

Draw it back for me
Another way to get feedback is once you have a solid draft of your grant overview, whether it be in the form of Specific Aims, Project Summary, or Abstract, find a layperson to review your project and ask them to create a conceptual diagram of your project based on how they understood it. This can then show you, the researcher, where there might be holes in your description.

Draw it yourself
On the subject of conceptual diagrams, these can be valuable tools for illustrating clearly and quickly what you're going to do in your project. Dr. Michael Schurr, Associate Professor in the School of Medicine and long-time NIH reviewer, recently spoke at an ORDE seminar on grant-writing and he mentioned that as a reviewer, he had never seen a Specific Aims portion of a funded grant without a conceptual diagram of the project. Admittedly, this is a big commitment of grant "real estate" to a visual, given that the Specific Aims page is only one page long. But, going back to our K.I.S.S. principle, a visual is often the simplest and clearest way to communicate something, so don't rule it out!

Resources
What Do Grant Reviewers Really Want, Anyway? - Robert Porter, Ph.D.
Writing Concisely for Grant Proposals - Tufts University Office of Proposal Development (under General Grantsmanship Advice)