Don't bomb your grant proposal with your budget

It's a particular kind of frustrating when you review a grant proposal that you really like until you get to the budget, and you're surprised (and not in a good way). Yet grant-seekers often put far less thought into their budget and make a series of very common errors. Also, important to note, is that many grant reviewers report looking at the budget before reading the body of the proposal, so when you think about how your application will be received when, from the reader's perspective, you're leading with a poor budget, you may be dead in the water.

Below, I share some of the top grant proposal budget bombs:

Padded budget:
Agency budgets are tight these days. Funders are trying to fund as much good research as they can with limited budgets, and in doing this, they often negotiate with PIs they want to fund to bring their budgets down. Unfortunately, some PIs, knowing this, decide to pad their budget upfront so that they have some easy places to trim. Or, sometimes, early-career researchers aren't all that sure where they'll need money so they overestimate the places that they do know they need funding so they can move things around later (which is not necessarily allowed). These are poor strategies because reviewers and Program Officers know generally how much things cost and what it takes to fund a project, so the budget padding will jump off the page when they look at the budget and reflect poorly on you.

Vague budget:
When you treat your budget as an afterthought, you may not do your homework to get exact costs, thinking "Oh, this equipment will be about $5,000, a flight will be about $400, and $50/day is a good per diem." Your guestimate may be in the right range, but a guestimated budget looks sloppy and will likely annoy reviewers and give them a reason to like your proposal less.

Miscalculated budget:
ORDE has a saying, "math is hard," but then again, so is being a faculty researcher, so we know you're up to the challenge! In all seriousness, it's amazing how many grants proposals I review internally where the PI has made a small error in arithmetic. So check your numbers and check them again. Nothing puts egg on your face like a miscalculated budget.

Misaligned budget:
Another common faux pas is the misaligned budget, where the project the PI is describing doesn't match up with the budget. This can happen when the PI needs money for something, equipment or funding for their GRA, to do one thing that doesn't make for a very exciting project, and so the PI finds a way to incorporate that funding need into a more exciting project, even though the project described doesn't need the budget item. Again, reviewers and Program Officers know what's up. They will see through your plan and again it will reflect poorly on you and your project.

Unjustified budget:
Budget justification may seem like a nuisance, but it's really an opportunity for you to make clear connections between your project and your budget. You've described your project, you've named your budget, now it's time to explain the connections. Be sure to explain the obvious things, but definitely explain the less obvious things. This will keep your reviewers from thinking you've used any of the above bombs when you haven't. If they're questioning an expense in your budget, you explain it to them in the budget justification, which they will read to see if you've given that explanation.

Budgets and timelines are not the most exciting part of your grant proposal for you or for your reviewers, but it is where you show what kind of a project manager you'll be and prove to your reviewers that this well-thought, well-planned project will be successful.

Resources:
How to Prepare a Grant Proposal Budget for a Nonprofit - Heidi J. Kramer
The Who, What, Where, When and How of Grant Budgets - Grant Adviser