Developing and Using a Concept Paper

This week, we held our Spring ORDE Book Club, focused on the 5th edition of Successful Grant Writing. We had a good discussion, and one thing that came up was the development and use of a concept paper for your research project.

Concept papers are one to two page overviews of a research project or idea that an investigator uses to vet and tailor their project to be a good fit for a particular funding agency. 

A concept paper can be used as a tool to allow a researcher to hone a particular research idea, but they also serve as a tool for marketing your research and networking with potential collaborators or Program Officers. You can keep concept papers on hand at conferences to give to folks you're interested in partnering with, or email them to a Program Officer to get a sense of the fit of your project for their directorate, study group, or program.

In our book, the authors recommend the following elements be included in you concept paper:

Problem statement/hypothesis: In one to two sentences what is your project intended to do?

Objectives: What are the key goals/outcomes you expect?

Methodology: Briefly describe what you'll do.

Budget: Optionally, include a broad budget, identifying where you'll use funding.

Key Personnel: Who is on your team?

This will give you a generalized concept paper that you can shop around at conferences to both POs and potential collaborators. However, as we discussed at our meeting, if you know what agency you plan to target for funding your project, it makes more sense to use the overview format that agency expects in their proposals. So, for example, if you plan to submit a proposal to the National Institutes of Health, write up a Specific Aims page. If you're going to the National Science Foundation, write up a Project Overview, including merit and broader impacts statements. Or, if you're going to the DOD, you might use a whitepaper format. The point is, when you're going to a particular agency, use the format that the PO is used to seeing when vetting your idea.

If you're not sure where you're planning to go for funding, or you're going to a foundation that does not have a clear format for the overview, the book's recommended format is a good way to go. As a bonus, creating a concept paper gets your idea on paper and pushes you to start thinking about what the project might look like ultimately.

Resources:
ORDE Book Club Video
How to Write a Concept Paper - Hanover Research