Resubmitting Your Proposal

At most agencies, resubmitted grants have a higher success rate than first-time grant submissions. For instance, the NIH reported that in 2015, their first-time submissions had a success rate around 13% and their resubmissions was closer to 33%! Yet many researchers are deterred from resubmitting when reviewer comments and critique are difficult to swallow. The most successfully funded researchers have usually received as many no's as they have yes's and often more. However, when you receive a "no," you have a decision to make. If you decide to resubmit, you want to move as quickly as you can to revise and resubmit.

As you consider resubmitting and what you might do in your resubmission to enhance your chances of success, consider the following questions and suggestions:

What level are the suggested changes?
Getting comments from reviewers that suggest you clarify a section of your grant or make minor changes to your methods are very different from comments that suggest a flawed hypothesis or a poor fit between your research goals with the agency's funding priorities. Determining if reviewers are excited about your project and whether changes you make can move you from a not funded to funded in the next iteration is key to deciding if you should revise and resubmit to the same agency.

Is there a better agency fit?
Sometimes in reading reviewer comments, you may get a sense that there is a fundamental disconnect between your project and the agency's mission or goals. If this is the case, you may want to begin to search for agencies whose mission might better align with your work.

Which comments hold water?
One of the most frustrating aspects of reviewer comments is when you get contradicting opinions or comments that seem out of left field. Despite initial reactions to comments, after you've taken a couple of days to mull them over, go back to your proposal and honestly weigh which comments can make your project better and which can't and why they can't.  For those that can help you improve, be grateful for them and begin incorporating them. For those that are not helpful, see if there are ways you can improve your proposal to make your decisions and line of thinking more clear.  Perhaps a reviewer misunderstood aspects of your proposal, which led to their questionable comment. Are there ways you can revise to avoid such confusion by future reviewers?

Must you respond to all comments?
Of course some of your reviewer comments will be good to respond to or incorporate into your grant resubmission, but the question of whether you need to respond to all comments depends on whether the agency to which you're submitting allows a response statement in your resubmission.  Agencies such as the NIH require an introduction to the grant that outlines your responses to your summary statement.  In  cases where you must respond directly, it's wise to respond to all of the comments, especially when you will have the same reviewers for your resubmission.  If, like at the NSF, all grants are considered new even if they are resubmissions, you needn't respond to each and every comment in your grant if it does not make sense to do so.

Should you talk with your Program Officer?
The answer to this question is almost always - Yes! But, with resubmissions, make sure that you're not angry or trying to defend yourself before you pick up the phone.  Once you're ready to have the conversation, do call/email your Program Officer.  Oftentimes, your Program Officer was in the room during the review of your grant and they can offer you some clarification, advise you on changes you're considering making, and even help you make the decision as to whether you should resubmit.

Don't forget, if you've done your homework and made sure your project is a good fit for the program you're applying to, you should likely resubmit with revisions. Bear in mind, the most successfully funded researchers have also received the most rejections!

Resources
Are you on the fence about whether to resubmit? - Michael Lauer, NIH
Resubmission of the Grant Proposal - Chapter from Writing Dissertation and Grant Proposals (Chasan-Taber, 2014)