11 Tips to improve your chances of winning a grant
Editor's Note: The competition for research funding is intense, so how can researchers improve their chances of winning grants?
In a previous article, Dr. Mindy Levine shared excellent guidelines on What reviewers look for in a grant proposal. This article expands on those tips and will guide researchers looking to increase their odds of having a grant successfully funded.
Tip 1: Identifying funding sources. Nobody will fund a grant proposal, no matter how strong the technical merits, if it is not responsive to the particular grant solicitation. When funding agencies write grant solicitations, they are often very specific about the type of research they are looking for and the type of research they are definitely not looking for. Read that section extremely carefully; if your ideas are not a good fit for the solicitation, do not apply. If you decide that the solicitation is a good fit for your ideas, make sure you are clear several times in the proposal how your ideas are responsive to particular solicitation elements. Where can you find funding opportunities? If you are based in the United States, you can look at “grants.gov” for a broad-based listing of funding opportunities. You can also look at websites for particular agencies, including the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and many others. You can and should search local, regional, and national agencies to see what funding opportunities are available. You should use google and enter search terms such as “funding for female chemists,” “grant opportunities in pesticide detection,” and similarly specific phrases. Compile a list of funding opportunities WITH THE DEADLINES for each opportunity clearly listed. Decide which ones you will apply to. Generally, consider writing only one major grant a time; working on multiple grant applications simultaneously can result in confusion, burnout, and stress, which in turn increase the likelihood that none of the proposals get funded. Note that if your proposal is not responsive to what the solicitation is looking for, it is likely to be rejected outright.
Tip 2: Speaking to the program officers. Before you start writing your proposal, talk to the Program Officer in charge of the funding program. Their name and contact information will generally be listed on the solicitation number. The main reason to do this is that even though you think your research ideas are responsive to the solicitation, the program officer will be able to tell you if this is in fact the case. They may also be able to give you some advice/tips/thoughts about how to tailor your research to be responsive to the program announcement and the request for proposals. In general, my advice in conversations with Program Officers is to try to keep them talking as much as possible, and to listen carefully to the advice that they give. They generally cannot tell you “write this,” or “don’t write that,” but they probably can tell you “it would be interesting to focus on this area,” or “consider that this application may be relevant for you.” The best way to contact them is usually by email, and include in that email a BRIEF (less than one page) summary of what you are thinking about for your research proposal. Ask them to set up a time to talk by phone about your research ideas and the fit with the solicitation for proposals. If you can set up an in-person meeting, that would be even better. Many program officers attend the major conferences in their respective fields, and so it is particularly advantageous to try to set up one-on-one meetings at those conferences.
Tip 3: Finding proposals that have been funded. In addition to reading program solicitations carefully and talking with the program officer responsible for the particular solicitation, it is highly advised to find proposals that have been funded through that solicitation/program/division and read them carefully. This will provide important data as you write your proposal, in trying to understand what reviewers for that particular solicitation consider to be fundable. You can generally find abstracts online for proposals that have been funded in particular areas, and reaching out directly to principal investigators who wrote funded proposals can provide you with the full text of their proposals. Do not be discouraged if those investigators are not willing to share their full proposals, however, as in many cases the investigators are interested in protecting their intellectual property and research ideas from dissemination. Keep on trying and contacting investigators, especially those who you know or those who are at your institution.
Tip 4: Familiarizing yourself with the proposal instructions. I cannot stress this step enough. Reviewers are looking for reasons to reject proposals without review. They will find any case in which you did not follow the instructions exactly as an excuse to reject your proposal and return it without review. You absolutely do not want this to happen. Read the proposal instructions EXTREMELY CAREFULLY. Make sure you follow all instructions. Please.
Tip 5: Setting up the online application early. Setting up an online application for the grant submission can be tedious. In many cases, grants.gov or research.gov (for US-based funding agencies) can provide the portal necessary for grant submission, although agency-specific websites such as the NSF Fastlane (https://www.fastlane.nsf.gov/) or the NIH website for ERA commons (https://public.era.nih.gov/) might also be necessary. I have seen agencies that estimate the time required for the non-technical aspects of your proposal to be in the range of 30 hours. This number feels high but is likely realistic, especially for first-time grant applicants.
Tip 6: Working with a grants office to develop a realistic budget. The granting office at your institution has likely had significant experience writing and developing budgets for a variety of solicitations and funding agencies. Use that expertise to develop a budget that is well-reasoned and well-justified. Understand that the office staff works with a variety of investigators and that it is highly advised to approach them early in the process so that you have time to develop the budget carefully and without time constraints. The office staff is also likely able to provide assistance in the other, non-technical aspects of the grant, so use their advice in the preparation of biographical sketches, facilities and resources descriptions, institutional descriptions, etc. Note that your institution is likely to have an internal deadline for grant submission that is earlier than the deadline listed by the funding agency. Find out if this is the case at your institution, and make sure to abide by those deadlines.
Tip 7: Following up with the program officer if the assignment is problematic. This tip is specific to the NIH, which will let you know what study section is assigned to review your proposal. If you receive that notification and you think it is not the correct fit for your research, reach out to the program officer and let them know. Make sure that you have a compelling reason why the study section is not a good fit and why you think another section is a better one. Where your proposal is reviewed makes a tremendous difference in whether it is likely to be funded. Use all opportunities available to try to influence this decision.
Tip 8: Addressing previous feedback on resubmission. If you are preparing a resubmission, strongly consider all of the feedback that you received on your first submission. For the NIH, the reviewers for the resubmission are likely to be many of the same reviewers who saw your first submission. For other agencies such as the NSF, the reviewers may be completely different. Nonetheless, strongly consider every point that the reviewers have raised and decide how you want to address those points. You will need to indicate changes to the proposal in some way, either through underlines or margin notes or some other form of notation (try not to use red font colors to show those changes), as well as likely in a one-page summary of the changes that you made. Even if the reviewers on the resubmission are completely different from the reviewers on the first round, the second-round reviewers are likely to agree with many of the scientific critiques from the first-round reviewers. Even if they do not agree, showing them that you have taken previous feedback seriously can only help your chances of being funded.
Tip 9: Do the work for the reviewer. In general, reviewers are assigned a large number of proposals (ranging from 8-15) for a particular reviewing cycle, which means that they can easily become fatigued from the sheer volume of their work. Because you do not want the reviewer to be fatigued by your proposal, and miss the key points, keep in mind that you should be doing as much work as possible for the reviewer. In practice, this means that you should not use a large number of abbreviations, especially non-standard abbreviations, because the reviewer will have to keep checking what the abbreviations mean. You should not expect a reviewer to go to your website to look at your publication list there, or your works in press; in contrast, any information that is necessary for the reviewer should be included in the grant proposal. Similarly, if you are referencing literature and work that has been done previously, briefly summarize what the literature results are rather than expecting the reviewer to read all of the literature in order to understand the point. For every specific aim and/or objective in the technical proposal, tell the reviewer what are the expected outcomes of the aim, how does this advance scientific knowledge, and what are potential applications in the research. You do not want the reviewer to have to figure out how your proposed work advances scientific knowledge; rather, you want to make it clear to the reviewer that you have already thought about this issue and have a well-worded explanation of what the scientific advances are.
Tip 10: Becoming a reviewer. Many agencies have opportunities for early career investigators to become reviewers. Try to take advantage of those opportunities to learn first-hand how the review process works. There is no substitute for this experience, and the chances of such experience improving your funding odds are extremely high.
Tip 11: Do not get discouraged. If your grant is rejected, do not get discouraged. Remember that most grant proposals are rejected. Remember that there are other opportunities for funding and that you will be able to apply for those opportunities. In many cases, you will be able to address the feedback on a resubmission for the same funding opportunity. Keep applying. Keep trying.
Reference
1. https://report.nih.gov/success_rates/Success_ByIC.cfm
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