Grant Development - Guiding Questions

There are many questions that need to be answered in a grant application. The mistake that many grant writers make is to begin answering these questions when they are actually writing the grant. Without clarity at the front end, grant writers often find their writing muddy and must spend more time writing and re-writing. Now re-writing/revising should always be a part of the grant-development process. Remember the grad school adage, "write to re-write." However, when you go into grant-writing clear on your message, you can spend your revising time on making your grant clear and compelling, instead of spending your time just getting it to understandable.

Below are some guiding questions to use to build a clear case for your grant before you write. You may want to use the questions to draft an outline of your project. You might also consider sitting down with a colleague and having them interview you using the questions and expanding on them to draw you into articulating your story clearly.

• What is your project?
• Who benefits from this project and how? 
• What are the human, financial, and ethical benefits to your project?
• What will be the major costs to complete this project?
• What is the timeline you anticipate for your project?
• How could you scale this project down and up based on the funding you're able to get?
• What is the long-term vision for your research that your project fits into?
• How will you fund your long-term vision?
• Why are you the best person to lead this project?
• Who will be on your team and how will that be the best team to complete the project?
• What funding agencies would be interested in this research?
• Why is your project the best fit for the agency?
• How will you prove that your project is the best fit?

Certainly this list could go on and get more detailed, but it gives you a sense of how you need to clarify and articulate your research and research project, as well as how you need to understand your sponsor(s) and how your work fits with their goals.

By doing this work first, you can identify gaps in your work early on so that you can begin to correct them. And, you set yourself on the path to developing a more focused grant.

Resources

Proposal Development Resources - ORDE

Grant Writer Resources - National Organization of Research Development Professionals (NORDP)