Some tricks for improving your proposal

If you've ever read this blog before, you know there is no silver bullet for good grant writing. There is no easy way through crafting an innovative and compelling proposal. But, what I can do today is offer you some tricks to developing a strong proposal. Most of these ideas come out of the book, Good to Great Grant Writing by Julie Cwikla, PhD.

Check your proposal in a word cloud:
There are several sites/apps where you can enter text and it forms a word cloud of your doc. In word clouds the words you use most are the biggest. Dr. Cwikla notes doing this and found that the word she used most was "just," which was not a great word to overuse in a proposal, so she went through and took almost all of them out.

Treat your RFP like a job call:
You would never dream of applying for a job by just writing what you wanted to do in your ideal job, regardless of the skills and expertise that the job call asked for. Don't do this in your grant proposal either. Treat the RFP like a job call and respond directly and clearly to what the sponsor is asking for.

Over cite - catch potential reviewers:
Your grant proposal will not include an extensive literature review, but you will need to give your reviewers a sense of the cutting edge research in your area and how your work is contributing to it. When you're doing this, make sure to over-cite the concepts you're discussing. Whereas a couple of recent references for a concept, usually suffices in an academic article, in a proposal, cite as many people as you can (using a numbered bibliography to save space). This allows you to avoid missing referencing your anonymous reviewers, and let's face it, every scholar likes to be cited if they've done work contributing to certain concepts.

Find buzzwords:
I've talked before about using buzzwords from the sponsor in your proposal, but how do you know what those buzzwords are? Usually, you can find these in the sponsor's strategic plan or on the website. They'll use the buzzwords to talk about their initiatives or what's most important to the agency currently. Use these words to talk about how your project helps the sponsor attain them.

These easy tips/tricks can help you to make small or bigger improvements to your grant proposal and maybe make all the difference!

Resources:
Top 5 Tips for Successful Grant Writing - Herbert and Neubauer
10 Tips for Successful Grant Writing - Chasan-Taber