The Gift of Active Voice

As we enter the holiday break, I am feebly searching to make connections between the season and grant development. This week, I wanted to return to a grant writing pitfall that is one of the most common - using the passive voice. And, offer you the gift of an active voice. :)

Many PIs have been trained to do their writing in the passive, third-person voice rather than the active, first-person voice. As a quick reminder, here's the difference:

Passive, third-person: The research will be conducted by the research team.

Active, first-person: We will conduct the research.

Researchers are often taught to use the passive, third-person in both their manuscripts and grant proposals because it sounds more objective. It's not that you think something is happening, it's that a thought has been considered, like the thought is derived from the ether.

Writing in the active, first-person in your grant proposals is a better choice for a couple of reasons: it is easier to read and it cuts out extra words.

Now, I don't mean to pick on anybody. I recently got a review on a manuscript that critiqued my abrupt switch to the third person in discussing my methods. I reported my interview protocol in first-person, active voice and then stated, "the interviews were transcribed." Because I didn't transcribe the interviews myself, I just removed the subject from the sentence.

It is true that most proposals I review are not completely in passive voice. They often start off in active, first-person voice and then slip into passive a couple paragraphs in and proceed to move back and forth between the two. So, when I am giving feedback, I'm often on a hunt to find those little slips into the passive. Below, are some of the clues that usually make those passive slips stand out.

• will be collected
• can be assessed
• was determined
• It is plausible that
• It has previously been shown
• less is known

These phrases tend to be in passive and third-person sentences. To correct them, you'll generally switch the order of the object and subject of the sentence from their inverted position and identify the subject if it's been removed. Here's an example.

Passive, third-person: The samples will be collected by the team. Or The samples will be collected.

In this first sentence, "samples" are the object and "team" is the subject. In the second, the subject is missing altogether. To correct this, revise to the following.

Active, first-person: We will collect the samples.

Again, we identify the subject, "we" and we flip the subject and object so that we begin with the subject.

By looking out and correcting these slips in your grant writing, you'll find yourself writing a proposal that is much easier to read and your reviewers will thank you for it - it's a gift after all!

Resources:

Use the Active Voice - the University of Wisconsin Writing Center

How to Effectively Use Active and Passive Voice in Research Writing - editage insights

Diversifying Your Funding Portfolio

Yesterday, our Vice Chancellor for Research, Dr. Tom Flaig, gave our "state of the research" talk and in it showed how researchers at our Anschutz Medical Campus were largely funded by federal sources. It's great to see how successful our researcher are at agencies like the NIH, but it's still a good idea to diversify your funding sources. This can allow you new opportunities to find funding for projects you have brewing that aren't a good fit for the usual suspects.

Private foundations can be a good funding source to consider. However, the first challenge researchers face in considering private foundations, especially if you're used to going after R01s at NIH, is setting your sights quite a bit lower in terms of dollar amount.

Besides smaller funds, private foundation generally have the following attributes:

• They are unique and differentiated from one another in terms of mission, approach, cause, etc.
• They do not want to fund projects that are fund-able by federal or other public sources
• They want to fund projects that are innovative or even risky
• They want to fund projects that will further their specific cause
• They are sometimes a good place to find seed funding (when they see themselves as partners with government or institutional funders)

Susan M. Fitzpatrick and M. Bren Dolezalick expand on these attributes in their book chapter: Diversifying Your Portfolio: The Role of Private Funders in Writing Successful Grant Proposals: From the Top Down and Bottom Up.

In his book, The "How To" Grant Manual, David G. Bauer differentiates private foundations into four basic types:

National General Purpose: These organizations fund projects across the nation and are looking for research that will have an impact on a broad scale.  An example would be the Rockefeller Foundation.

Special Purpose: These define the scope of research they will fund much more narrowly and generally focus on one target area. An example would be the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (focused on American Health Care).

Community: These foundations focus on issues or areas of focus that are important to a particular region or community.  An example would be The Denver Foundation.

Family: These foundations are often created as memorials by a family and the projects they fund must be in line with the family's goals and ideologies.

Clearly, you want to understand the type of foundation that will be a good fit for your research based on the foundation's goals and your own.  But, private funding can serve as a good source for supplementary funding or initial funding as a seed grant.

For CU faculty, oftentimes you need to work with the Office of Advancement or through the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research when pursuing private foundation grants so that the university communications are coordinated and consistent, so be sure to check on the appropriate processes when pursuing a private foundation grant.

Resources:
Diversifying Your Portfolio: The Role of Private Funders
What is a private foundation?

Notes from "Writing a Successful Science Proposal"

 As some of you may know, this semester ORDE hosted its first virtual book club. We read the book "Writing Successful Science Proposals" by Andrew Friedland, Carol Folt, and Jennifer Mercer. Yesterday, we held our book club meeting and highlighted strategies from the book and from our own experiences, which I outline below.

What to include in the Specific Aims/Project Overview

The Specific Aims/Project Overview is the most important component of your proposal. Given this, you should focus on offering an overview of your project, as well as making a case for why this project is so important. One PI recommended including the "who, what, when, where, why, and how" in your Specific Aims. It's important to give your reviewers a clear understanding of your project as well as why it's needed right at the get-go. Another tip is to make sure you end your Specific Aims/Project Overview with the vision of your research. Where are you going from here? What's the ultimate goal of your research trajectory? This helps your reviewer get excited about the possibilities of your research.

Taking a Reviewer Perspective

When writing your grant proposal, it is crucial to consider your reviewer. Remembering that reviewers look at many proposals at once, anything you do that might frustrate them can really sink your chances for funding. Our group agreed that, because of this, it's important to make your proposal easy to read - leave space between paragraphs and include a conceptual diagram and other visuals that can quickly communicate what you're doing. Also, as we discussed, some reviewers still print out proposals before reviewing them, while others review them completely online. Make sure that your final proposal is proofed and is easy to read in different forms. Also, consider ability when putting your proposal together, remembering that some people can't see color. Some people who are sighted still have difficulty seeing really small text that might be in your figures.

Discussing authorship early for research teams

As more and more researchers are participating in team research, strategies for collaboration and considering team dynamics are significant. Our group talked extensively about the importance of discussing and agreeing to authorship and order of authors at the start of a team's work together. Even as you begin working together to develop a project and grant proposal, discuss how many publications you anticipate and who will do what work on those, and who will be first, last, or in other author positions. This can help prevent confusion, frustration, and conflict down the line.

Overall, our group found the book to be a valuable resource for grant development, particularly for early career investigators. Stay tuned for ORDE's Spring 2021 Book Club!

Resources:

ORDE Book Club Meeting Video

"Writing Successful Science Proposals"