Aligning your project with your sponsor

Successfully funded researchers tend to consider and include the needs and interests of funding agencies and potential sponsors in their larger research goals. To do this, the PI needs to understand the goals of the sponsor to which they are applying and tailor their research project to allow the sponsor to invest in something that aligns with their priorities, preferred approach, ideology, etc.

This is not to suggest that researchers should throw their own background and agenda out the window to chase the big dollars. This will not work even if they do it, because they will be competing against researchers who do have the background and an agenda that lines up with the granting agency. Reviewers will see through an overly opportunistic PI and always go with the PI whose project and background are a match made in heaven. So, what to do? Developing a fundable project for an agency calls for a balancing act that I try to illuminate in this blog.

Find agencies that fit
As you develop a project idea, start searching for what agencies fund the sort of work you want to do. There are many resources available to you for this.  Faculty at CU Denver and Anschutz Medical Campuses are encouraged to reach out to ORDE to have a personalized fund search conducted for them/their project. Please visit our website to get more information on this service. Other ways to discover potential sponsors are to look at where your colleagues are being funded and which sponsors are funding projects similar to yours.

Also, try to think outside the box.  How can your research become a fit for an agency?  We've seen PIs able to form and re-form their research to appeal to diverse sponsors - NSF, NIH, and private sponsors while still staying on their research career path.

Understand the agency
To be successfully funded by diverse sponsors takes some skill at being able to reframe your work in different ways. However, that's only half of the work. You must also really understand an agency to be able to customize your work for them. Understanding an agency should happen on different levels. Of course, you want to understand the subject matter that a sponsor funds, but beyond that, you want to understand the approach the sponsor prefers (e.g., exploratory or applied), the level of risk and/or innovation the sponsor desires, and any ideologies or political motivations that might drive the sponsor. Does your agency report to congress? Or, what is the backstory on how your foundation began?

Develop your project
Once you understand your agency, it's important to meaningfully integrate their needs and priorities into your project.  Agencies and grant reviewers will see through superficial project changes that are tacked on to your project to respond to their interests. So, although you certainly have goals and a path for your research, this stage of aligning calls for you to step back to see how you can integrate sponsor priorities into your work. This may come in the form of new partnerships with colleagues in other disciplines that better connect your research to the sponsor. Or, it might come in the form of re-creating the story of your work to relate it to the agency - again, meaningfully.

Work with your PO
Another important way to gain insight into a funding agency as well as to receive feedback and a partner to help you customize your grant is to work with the agency's program officer (PO). POs generally have great insight into the agency and the grant review process and are interested in having the very best grants submission from you. Generally, you want to have a sense of the project you want to propose before you reach out to a PO. Once you do, send a short email to the PO (make sure the whole message fits in the view window), briefly describe your project (3-5 sentences), and ask to schedule a short phone call with them to discuss. If they don't respond to you within a week, follow-up with a call. Refer to your email and ask to schedule a call (they may not be ready to talk right then and there). When you talk to the PO, have specific questions ready that demonstrate that you are well-versed on the agency (don't let them catch you not having read the program announcement or information readily available on the website). Take careful note of any advice and feedback from the PO and integrate it into your project and ultimately your grant proposal.

Funding agencies are looking for the best and most promising research to fund, but they have their own ideas about what makes the best and most promising research. If you write a grant proposal understanding how they determine this, you'll have a competitive edge.

Resources:
Fund Search and Resources Page - ORDE
What do grant reviewers really want anyway? - Robert Porter, PhD
Can we talk? Contacting Grant Program Officers - Robert Porter, PhD

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 proposal.

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 application?

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 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

These tips can help you sculpt your title into something that can grab your reviewers' attention and give them a crisp snapshot of your project. See below for more tips!

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

Academic Writing vs. Grant Writing

I recently heard a story about a very high-level scholar who was resubmitting an academic journal article for the n-teenth time, and she kept getting feedback that it was too difficult to read for their audience. As she shared her frustration in re-writing and re-writing, she said in exasperation, "I just can't write for normal people!"

Although this is an extreme illustration, it does touch on a key dilemma that academics find themselves in when trying to write a grant. Not only does grant-writing require a different style, it requires a shift in perspective, from that of an academic and scholarly expert to that of a project manager and visionary.

In his award-winning article, Why Academics Have a Hard Time Writing Good Grant Proposals, Robert Porter suggests, "Sponsors rarely spend money on intellectual exploration. They will, however, consider funding activities to accomplish goals that are important to them." (2007, p. 163) This illustrates how traditional academic goals and writing will not fit the bill when it comes to sponsor goals and writing for them.

Porter offers a chart of differences (p. 162) between academic and grant writing in his article, but chief among them are to use collaboration, brevity, and passion in your grant-writing, despite any academic tendencies to the counter.

Whereas in academic writing oftentimes researchers approach it individually and largely for their own purposes and progress. In grant writing, it is wise to look at your project as a partnership that needs to serve the needs and goals of the sponsor as well as further your research. Additionally, the grant writing process should be collaborative.  You should be developing a relationship with the PO at your target sponsor's organization and incorporating their feedback into your grant.

As a recent assignment in my doctoral program reminded me, in the academic realm, page minimums seem to be the rule. It comes as a bit of a shock then when researchers, who are more used to writing dozens of pages on their research, are asked to summarize it in one page or less for a grant proposal, but this is indeed the reality of grant-writing: it must be succinct, clear, and compelling.

One key aspect that makes grant writing compelling is when the PI's passion is incorporated into it.  This can again fly in the face of traditional academic writing that strives to be objective and dispassionate. Not that you want to overstate the importance or necessity of the research, but it is essential to include a contagious excitement in your grant writing, so that you grab the attention and enthusiasm of your reviewers.

Grant writing is not as alien as it may feel when you first start doing it, it's just a different goal and audience than academics are generally used to. Porter suggests that we begin by poring through a program announcement to cull the goals and priorities of the sponsor and then, if it is a good fit, adapting our research to meet the needs and priorities of the sponsor.

Resources:
Porter, R. (2007). Why Academics Have a Hard Time Writing Good Grant Proposals. The Journal of Research Administration. XXXVIII, 161-167.

Porter, R. (2011). Crafting a sales pitch for your grant proposal. Research Management Review, 18(2), 1-7.

Give reviewers a road map

Reviewing grant proposals this week, I realized the importance of "road maps." Too often, PIs are so immersed in their research and quick to jump into their project, they forget that their reviewers haven't been beside them as they've developed their research. From the reader's perspective then, they begin reading your proposal and they feel as if they've been dropped off in the middle of the jungle and told to figure out how to get home. So, what do they need...? a road map. Here's how you create a road map in your proposal so you don't leave your reviewer stranded and frustrated.

Start with a map
To return to my jungle metaphor, think about how reading your proposal is like dropping your reviewer into uncharted terrain; uncharted unless you chart it. Although, the first thing you want to do in your proposal is create a hook, i.e., describing the great big problem your project will address, you want to quickly show your reader what your project is about and how it's going to solve the big problem. This serves as an overview or a bird's eye view of your project. This gives your reviewer a sense of what they're going to come away with. Tell them what you'll convince them of before you try to convince them. This way they are less likely to get lost in your discussion.

Use Signposts
Now, the road map of your introduction will be helpful, but in the jungle or your research, things start to look a lot alike, a how do I tell this swamp from that swamp sort of thing. This is where signposts or headings become useful. Signal your reader that you're about to describe the cutting edge research or you're about to delve into the methodology. If your reviewer has a heading to guide them, again they'll be more likely to follow you through the section and see how the sections fit together into the larger map or proposal.

Review and reiterate important directions
If you're like me, when someone gives you directions and you follow the first two, you've forgotten the rest of them (if you're really like me, you probably didn't even make it past the first direction). Similarly, in grant proposals, you can't assume that your reader/reviewer will remember everything you've already told them. We've heard heartbreaking stories from PIs who received comments back with a rejected grant, saying they hadn't outlined this or that. The PI woefully describes how the requested information was on page eight! And, although we don't tell these frustrated PIs this at the time (better not to rub salt in the wound), it's still their fault for not reminding their reviewer about this critical information more than once.

So, when things are important in your project or related to the problem you're pursuing, say it at least twice in different areas. Now, this doesn't mean you should copy and paste. Instead, you just want to re-emphasize important points using different examples or even statistics. One successfully-funded PI described how she would give national statistics about how bad the disease she was studying was in one section and then global statistics in the next section, just to remind the reviewers about how bad the problem was.

These three tips can help keep your reviewers on top of the information you're providing them instead of making them wade through the unknown depths of your research.

Resources:
7 Strategies for Writing Successful Grant Proposals - Professor Claudia Sanchez
Grant Proposals - or Give me the money! - University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill