Starting the application process for a new grant can be daunting. There are so many rules, requests, and criteria to wrap your head around, it can be tempting to set it all aside and get back to it a little closer to the deadline, but resist that urge! ORDE recommends that PIs spend six months developing their project and then their proposal. So, usually you do not have time to waste!
So, instead of giving in to a mild panic attack at the thought of beginning a grant proposal, consider using the following solid steps to get you started.
Create a timeline and work plan:
Once you've found the deadline and requirements for a grant application, create a timeline. Mark the deadline on your calendar and prepare to have the application finished a week ahead of time. Then work back week by week. When do you need to get a polished draft to your internal reviewers? How long will it take you to revise? When will you have each section drafted in enough time to set it aside and then come back to it with fresh eyes? Putting together this timeline and work plan can help you stay realistic about what you need to accomplish when and can help you chop up the seemingly insurmountable proposal into smaller, manageable tasks.
Read everything you can find:
When you've read the program announcement and guidelines for the proposal, go back and read them again. Then start reading everything else available. Go through the sponsor's website. Read the abstracts of past funded projects. Read the sponsor's strategic plan. Read the FAQ page. Read their "tips for success" page. Watch the old webcast they've made available to you. Then, go back and read the program announcement and guidelines again. Also, consider reaching out to past funded PIs and ask them if they're willing to share their proposal.
Create a proposal template:
Before you start to write, it's a good idea to go through the program announcement and guidelines and pull out the requirements and/or criteria in the call and to make those the sections of your project description. Oftentimes, when reading a call, you find yourself going through a series of requirements they want you to address, whether this list is a series, separated by commas or a bulleted list. The sponsor is telling you what they want you to respond to in your proposal and what they'll be looking for. So, take the hint and format your project description to respond to requests explicitly.
Secure letter writers and internal reviewers:
Usually, grant applications include requirements of letters of support or something like it. Identify what the sponsor wants in these letters, who they want them to be from, and identify your letter-writers as soon as possible. Reach out to them to make sure they're willing to write a letter. Offer to draft the letter for them that they can revise.
In addition to contacting letter writers, you also want to secure internal reviewers. Folks in your discipline or even laypeople who can give you valuable feedback on a polished draft of your proposal. ORDE suggests that you have three people review your grant, including one layperson and two people in your field. Ask these folks early if they will review your proposal and agree on a timeline for this review, i.e., when will you send them a draft and when can they get feedback back to you.
If you bear in mind these things to do as you get started applying for a grant, it can help you to get past that feeling of being overwhelmed and set you up for success right away!
Resources:
ORDE Proposal Development Timeline
On the art of writing proposals - Adam Przeworski and Frank Salomon
Friday, July 28, 2017
Thursday, July 20, 2017
Writing and speaking (two different skills)
Yesterday, I was talking with a colleague about a scholar we both admire, whose talks just blow people away every time. And, I found myself thinking, "Man, I really wish he wrote like he spoke!" as I remembered slogging through his last article. That made me think about the folks I know whose thinking and research don't quite translate from their oration to their writing. To be fair, it goes both ways. I once went to hear author Richard Foster speak, and was excited for what I thought would be a mind-blowing talk after reading one of his books. However, the talk was humdrum and unimpressive. I was surprisingly disappointed.
I could go on recounting instances, but the truth is that public speaking and writing are both skills that don't necessarily translate. Some folks possess both. Some possess one or the other. And, some possess neither. Although both skills are important in academia, I would suggest that writing is more important. I would say it's essential, but then I'd be ignoring the fact that so much academic writing by successful academicians is bad.
Yet, going back to my pining thought of great speakers writing like they speak, why can't they? I think that maybe they can, but they need to do a few things to make this happen. Below I suggest a few things you can do if you're great speaking/teaching doesn't seem to translate to your writing.
Disabuse yourself of academese:
As a long-time student, as many of you have been, I've found myself re-trained to meet the writing rules of professor after professor. This is an interesting process for me, because as a Technical Writer, I'm partial to my own writing rules. Yet, I play along and translate entire papers into passive, third person or delete headers because an instructor insists that they are a crutch where writers should be writing transitions (apparently having both transitions and headers isn't an option). So, it's no wonder that academic writing ends up so muddled when former students, now academics, write trying to follow the sometimes contradictory and sometimes ineffective writing rules of their teachers.
Thus, many scholars should take a hard look at their writing and work to understand what rules they're following that are unnecessarily weighing down their prose and making them incomprehensible in some cases. Once you realize what you're doing and that it's creating a barrier to clarity, start re-training yourself. Disabuse your writing of these unhelpful notions.
Pinpoint the magic in your speaking:
If you are a talented and compelling speaker, try to identify what you're doing in your talks that makes your thinking so clear and compelling. Then, try to emulate that in your writing. If you have copious notes for your talks, try using the same system to write a speech down and use that as the foundation for your next publication. Or, if you don't use a lot of notes, record your next talk and transcribe it to see if that can give you a jumping off point for your writing. I recently gave a talk that was very well received. Although it was for a lay audience, I had still incorporated citations into my PowerPoint along the way to keep it academic. After a few requests for the presentation, I realized that my talk really could be easily translated into an article outline. So watch out for opportunities in your speaking that you can seize for your writing.
Consider your audience:
Even though writing and speaking are different skills, they both require the writer or orator to understand and deliver to their audience. Thinking through or finding out what the audience expects, what they already know, what would be most useful for them, and what is the context in which they will encounter your writing/speaking, are all important questions to answer before one designs their talk or their writing.
Of course, you may find that all of these strategies lend themselves to one another. For instance, the magic in your speaking may be that you really understand your audience and their needs. But, trying any or all of these strategies may allow you to use your speaking skills to push your writing to a new level.
Resources:
10 tips on how to write less badly - Michael C. Munger
I could go on recounting instances, but the truth is that public speaking and writing are both skills that don't necessarily translate. Some folks possess both. Some possess one or the other. And, some possess neither. Although both skills are important in academia, I would suggest that writing is more important. I would say it's essential, but then I'd be ignoring the fact that so much academic writing by successful academicians is bad.
Yet, going back to my pining thought of great speakers writing like they speak, why can't they? I think that maybe they can, but they need to do a few things to make this happen. Below I suggest a few things you can do if you're great speaking/teaching doesn't seem to translate to your writing.
Disabuse yourself of academese:
As a long-time student, as many of you have been, I've found myself re-trained to meet the writing rules of professor after professor. This is an interesting process for me, because as a Technical Writer, I'm partial to my own writing rules. Yet, I play along and translate entire papers into passive, third person or delete headers because an instructor insists that they are a crutch where writers should be writing transitions (apparently having both transitions and headers isn't an option). So, it's no wonder that academic writing ends up so muddled when former students, now academics, write trying to follow the sometimes contradictory and sometimes ineffective writing rules of their teachers.
Thus, many scholars should take a hard look at their writing and work to understand what rules they're following that are unnecessarily weighing down their prose and making them incomprehensible in some cases. Once you realize what you're doing and that it's creating a barrier to clarity, start re-training yourself. Disabuse your writing of these unhelpful notions.
Pinpoint the magic in your speaking:
If you are a talented and compelling speaker, try to identify what you're doing in your talks that makes your thinking so clear and compelling. Then, try to emulate that in your writing. If you have copious notes for your talks, try using the same system to write a speech down and use that as the foundation for your next publication. Or, if you don't use a lot of notes, record your next talk and transcribe it to see if that can give you a jumping off point for your writing. I recently gave a talk that was very well received. Although it was for a lay audience, I had still incorporated citations into my PowerPoint along the way to keep it academic. After a few requests for the presentation, I realized that my talk really could be easily translated into an article outline. So watch out for opportunities in your speaking that you can seize for your writing.
Consider your audience:
Even though writing and speaking are different skills, they both require the writer or orator to understand and deliver to their audience. Thinking through or finding out what the audience expects, what they already know, what would be most useful for them, and what is the context in which they will encounter your writing/speaking, are all important questions to answer before one designs their talk or their writing.
Of course, you may find that all of these strategies lend themselves to one another. For instance, the magic in your speaking may be that you really understand your audience and their needs. But, trying any or all of these strategies may allow you to use your speaking skills to push your writing to a new level.
Resources:
10 tips on how to write less badly - Michael C. Munger
Wednesday, July 12, 2017
Formatting
Proposal formatting can feel like a nuisance. If you're like many folks, you develop a proposal using your preferred Word format. Then when you're getting close to the deadline, you start to copy and paste it into the agency's template online or reformat your original document to meet what they're asking for. It's at this point that you start to realize you hadn't noticed some of their formatting guidelines and you are confronted with some options. 1-You can shoehorn your current proposal into their format, 2-You can rework your proposal to best respond to their guidelines, or 3-You can throw out their guidelines and do it your way...
If you've read my blog before, you've probably guessed that option 2 is the "right" answer, but you may also realize that in the time crunch and pressure that often accompanies proposal development, you may be tempted to opt for 1 or 3.
Here's why you shouldn't.
Although it may seem that agencies put together formatting guidelines to make your life more complicated, they've actually done it to make their lives easier. When reviewers are going through proposal after proposal, preparing for a review meeting, they come to expect the flow of the required format. They know where to go when they want to flip back to your biosketch or your budget after reading your abstract. If you move things around on them, they will not appreciate it.
Proposal guidelines are developed to give you direction and a better understanding of what the agency wants and how they want it. We all know that funded proposals respond well to the call and the guidelines. So, if that's a given, your chances for funding are much better if you truly understand the call and guidelines from the beginning.
Although you may think that some agencies will appreciate your creativity with formatting, they won't. If they wanted creative formatting then they wouldn't have painstakingly developed their formatting guidelines.
Convinced? Great, here are some tips to help you out.
If you've read my blog before, you've probably guessed that option 2 is the "right" answer, but you may also realize that in the time crunch and pressure that often accompanies proposal development, you may be tempted to opt for 1 or 3.
Here's why you shouldn't.
Although it may seem that agencies put together formatting guidelines to make your life more complicated, they've actually done it to make their lives easier. When reviewers are going through proposal after proposal, preparing for a review meeting, they come to expect the flow of the required format. They know where to go when they want to flip back to your biosketch or your budget after reading your abstract. If you move things around on them, they will not appreciate it.
Proposal guidelines are developed to give you direction and a better understanding of what the agency wants and how they want it. We all know that funded proposals respond well to the call and the guidelines. So, if that's a given, your chances for funding are much better if you truly understand the call and guidelines from the beginning.
Although you may think that some agencies will appreciate your creativity with formatting, they won't. If they wanted creative formatting then they wouldn't have painstakingly developed their formatting guidelines.
Convinced? Great, here are some tips to help you out.
- The first thing to do is read the call for proposals and the formatting guidelines and then read them again.
- Before you start writing, create a template based on the call and the required format.
- Don't try to sneak your proposal through with a smaller font or no paragraph breaks.
- Once written, return to the guidelines to make sure your proposal meets them all.
- If you're unsure about the call or guidelines, ask. This is an opportunity to engage a Program Officer (just make sure you couldn't find the answer to your question in any of the agency's documentation or website, otherwise the PO will know you didn't do your homework).
Remember, even through formatting feels like a pain, it can actually provide you more insight into what the agency is looking to fund and what they think is important, based on required sections and space allotted to those sections. So, please, take formatting requirements seriously, because we know that funding agencies do!
Resources:
What do grant reviewers really want anyway? - Robert Porter
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