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Key Strategies for Writing Successful Proposals 9/26/2011 Academic Research Funding Strategies, LLC [email protected] 1 Presentation by Mike Cronan, PE (Texas 063512, inactive) Regents Fellow, 2001-2004 , TAMUS/TEES [email protected] 979-229-8009 Chancellor’s Summit on Education Academic Research Funding Strategies, LLC http://academicresearchgrants.com/about_us Copyright 2011 Academic Research Funding Strategies. All rights reserved.

Key Strategies for Writing Successful Proposals 9/26/2011 Academic Research Funding Strategies, LLC [email protected] [email protected] 1 Presentation

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Page 1: Key Strategies for Writing Successful Proposals 9/26/2011 Academic Research Funding Strategies, LLC mjcronan@gmail.com mjcronan@gmail.com 1 Presentation

Key Strategies for Writing Successful Proposals

9/26/2011Academic Research Funding Strategies, LLC [email protected]

1

Presentation by

Mike Cronan, PE (Texas 063512, inactive)

Regents Fellow, 2001-2004 , TAMUS/TEES

[email protected] 979-229-8009

Chancellor’s Summit on Education

Academic Research Funding Strategies, LLC

http://academicresearchgrants.com/about_us

Copyright 2011 Academic Research Funding Strategies. All rights reserved.

Page 2: Key Strategies for Writing Successful Proposals 9/26/2011 Academic Research Funding Strategies, LLC mjcronan@gmail.com mjcronan@gmail.com 1 Presentation

Presenter: Mike Cronan

9/26/2011Academic Research Funding Strategies, LLC [email protected] 2

• 23 years of experience developing and writing successful proposals across The Texas A&M University System.

• Named a Texas A&M University System Regents Fellow (2001) for developing and writing A&M System-wide grants funded at over $100 million by NSF and other research agencies, 1990-2000.

• Developed, staffed, and directed two highly successful proposal development offices at Texas A&M, one in the Texas Engineering Experiment Station (Office of Research Development & Grant Writing, 1994-2004) and the second for the Vice President for Research (Office of Proposal Development, 2004-09).

• Undergraduate degrees in civil (structural) engineering (University of Michigan), political science (Michigan State University), and a MFA in English (University of California-Irvine).

• Registered Professional Engineer (Texas 063512, inactive).

Page 3: Key Strategies for Writing Successful Proposals 9/26/2011 Academic Research Funding Strategies, LLC mjcronan@gmail.com mjcronan@gmail.com 1 Presentation

Types of university proposals

9/26/2011Academic Research Funding Strategies, LLC [email protected] 3

• Research (basic, applied, mission, applications, contract)

• Educational• Hybrid research and education• Small $, few PIs• Large $, multiple PIs, centers • Supplements to grants

Page 4: Key Strategies for Writing Successful Proposals 9/26/2011 Academic Research Funding Strategies, LLC mjcronan@gmail.com mjcronan@gmail.com 1 Presentation

Generic Competitive Strategies

9/26/2011Academic Research Funding Strategies, LLC [email protected] 4

• The information needed to find research funding and write a successful proposal is largely generic rather than discipline or agency specific.

• Regardless of whether you are submitting a proposal DARPA or DoED your core competitive strategies will be largely similar, you must:

• Make a compelling case for the significance of your research and how it brings value-added benefits to the agency mission.

• Understand the mission and culture of the agency sufficiently to explain how your research fits agency’s research priorities as defined in the funding opportunity.

• Write a research narrative that fully responds to the program guidelines.

• Understand how your proposal will be reviewed.

Page 5: Key Strategies for Writing Successful Proposals 9/26/2011 Academic Research Funding Strategies, LLC mjcronan@gmail.com mjcronan@gmail.com 1 Presentation

The Successful Project Summary

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• It is here you must convince your reviewers to want to read the rest of your proposal—thoughtfully, carefully, and attentively, and with interest and curiosity.

• If you lose the reviewers here, you have likely left them without reason or interest to read the next fifteen, or twenty-five, or more pages of your proposal.

• Your clarity of language, logic and argument is critical in the project summary.

• You certainly don’t want to write a project summary that puts reviewers in mind of H. L. Mencken’s comment on an article he reviewed as “an army of words marching across the page in search of an idea.”  

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The Successful Proposal Narrative

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• The proposal narrative development process is akin to a slowly lifting fog, whereby a continuous process of draft text iterations gradually transforms initially diffuse ideas into a tightly crafted proposal narrative.

• The evolving proposal narrative serves as an incubator of ideas, particularly in the early stages of proposal development, and acts as the structural framework, imposing rigor, clarity, and simplicity on evolving ideas and concepts and establishing their connectedness to operational and performance details.

• The proposal narrative process typically begins with a significant amount of (pick your adjective) chaos, uncertainty, vagueness, ambiguity, false starts, and indecision, among many other indeterminacies, concerning how best to meet the funding agency research objectives.

• Do not be alarmed by a certain amount of uncertainty and ambiguities about the shape the final proposal will take. This is fairly common at the beginning of any proposal development effort.

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The Successful Proposal Narrative

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• As mathematics or a computer program help impose rigor, relational clarity, logical sequences, and simplicity on our understanding of the behavior of the physical world, language plays a similar role in the evolving proposal narrative.

• The key point to understand and anticipate is that competitive ideas evolve and converge over time; they do not appear fully and perfectly formed by a narrative genie. Most ideas that eventually evolve and mature during the development and writing of a proposal narrative originate from your first reading of the solicitation.

• The path to the end product, a competitive proposal narrative, is often far from clear at the earliest stages of proposal development.

• Successful proposals converge on excellence by going through multiple iterations wherein ideas and the language used to express them are continuously refined and made better draft after draft after draft.

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Proposal Partnerships & Collaborations

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• Multi-institutional and multi-disciplinary partnerships for research and educational proposals have become an increasingly important and a much larger component of university external funding portfolios. Partnership proposals (aka collaborative, or team research) offer significant advantages over single PI grants or grants with a few coPIs.

• Most importantly, the capacity to develop successful research and educational partnerships expands your funding opportunities enormously. The trend towards team-based research solicitations has been increasing significantly at federal research agencies whose investment priorities include addressing complex problems that require transinstitutional and transdisciplinary approaches.

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Reasons for Partnerships & Collaborations

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• There are many reasons to explore and develop research partnership configurations, chief among them their potential to open up new research funding opportunities and thereby offer researchers the potential to advance their own and their colleagues’ interests. Other reasons to collaborate include:

• Collaborators may bring needed research knowledge, skills, or resources to a project requiring the integration of multiple research and/or educational strands to meet the overarching goal and multiple objectives defined in the funding solicitation.

• Collaborators may have a stronger track record or connections with an agency, or across a few agencies, that strengthen a proposal’s competitiveness.

• Collaborators may offer institutional characteristics that better suit a project for funding, e.g., partnerships with predominantly undergraduate institutions, community colleges, minority-serving institutions, tribal colleges, Hispanic-serving institutions, K-12 schools, or outreach partners such as museums, science centers, and informal learning centers that disseminate research to the public domain to promote social benefit.

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Reasons for Partnerships & Collaborations

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• Multidisciplinary projects are becoming more common and necessary to address transformative science and engineering. These solicitations are often funded at greater dollar amounts over longer periods of time than are single PI or single institution grants, hence offering funding opportunities to a range of disciplinary areas.

• Partnership proposals often have research requirements or educational, workforce diversity, and public outreach, benefits to society beyond the core research focus of the project. These benefits can expand the research opportunities for faculty whose disciplinary expertise alone may offer fewer chances for funding outside the partnership structure.

• While perhaps not mandatory, partnerships are often essential for center and center-level proposals. As with all partnership grants, competitiveness is a function of your capacity to demonstrate a partnership with a history of research collaborations.

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Successful Partnerships Take Time

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• Represent a much more complex and resource-intensive research development and writing effort than single PI grants, particularly when it comes to the writing of multiple research strands and their integration;

• Must address composition of leadership team and roles, including selecting the PI early on in the development process since the capacity to develop and manage a major partnership grant is one indicator of the PI’s capacity to manage a funded research grant;

• Must give clear and compelling reasons why the partnership has value-added benefits and synergy that impact the funding agency mission or strategic plan and research roadmaps;

• Must determine early on who will write the grant, who will serve as lead author on various sections of the grant, and who will act as the “integrating author,” weaving narrative sections into a seamless whole as if written by a single author;

• Must have the capacity to develop a performance-based budget and not merely a budget arrived at by “dividing the pie equally.” A total budget amount simply divided by N-partners will be the Achilles heel of a partnership effort.

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Successful Partnerships

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• An informed decision to submit a partnership proposal must be grounded on a candid self assessment of the capacity to perform and of the capacity to develop a competitive proposal in the time allotted.

• Successful partnerships succeed by virtue of good team dynamics and team leadership grounded on good reasons to submit, including:

• The development and writing of the proposal will serve the long-term interests of an emerging research partnership by moving it towards a more competitive configuration;

• The process will help prepare the research partnership for the possible submission of smaller, more focused research grants that will provide an important research component for the future, i.e., components required for a research center, particularly since center-level awards often are built on a strategic configuration of successful small research grants that de facto form the core research framework of a future center;

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The Successful Partnership Leader

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• Respected by colleagues;• Able to define an overarching, integrative vision• Possesses strong organizational skills and the capacity

to communicate across participating disciplines and research teams

• Skilled in managing team dynamics• Able to clearly state why the integration of the research

strands proposed under a partnership structure achieves a more compelling research vision and clear synergy (value added) not possible in research strands funded as separate projects

• Is fully engaged, passionate, and available to team members (not a PI in absentia)

• Inspires the team with a feeling of confidence in the project’s likely success.

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The Successful Partnership Team Member

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• Earns trust of other team members• Capacity to perform• Respects team development principles• Earns the confidence of partners• Reliable (e.g., meets deadlines, high-quality contributions

to team effort)• Fully and consistently engaged in the research

development effort• Informed (e.g., reads the RFP and understands her or his

role in it)• Expertise brings value-added benefits to the proposal• Good communicator• Plays well with others…not looking for a free ride.

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Unsuccessful Partnerships

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• “Top down” administrative directives to submit a proposal for money and institutional prestige, but without a successful history of research capacities in the topic areas at the specific agency, or perhaps with only a “thin veneer” of institutional research capacities;

• Attempts to “force fit” previously disconnected researchers lacking a history of collaboration into a center-level proposal. This amounts to a research version of a shotgun marriage.

• Attempts to cobble together preexisting research partnerships that, at best, only partially meet the intent of the solicitation, followed by the forming of hasty “marriages of convenience” with other possible research partners designed to overcome significant deficits. This is the research version of speed dating.

• Poorly thought out partnership configurations, poorly managed proposal development efforts, poorly written proposals, and proposals with poorly defined visions, goals, and objectives, or proposals cobbled by poor and uncommunicative team dynamics are sure to fail and squander all the valuable time and resources put into the effort.

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Solicited & unsolicited proposals

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• Proposals may be initiated in two general ways by the university researcher: • 1) in response to a published solicitation (solicited proposal, RFP, BAA, PA); or

• 2) initiated by the investigator (unsolicited proposal).

• IES Unsolicited Grant Opportunities• The Institute of Education Sciences accepts unsolicited applications for research, evaluation, statistics, and knowledge utilization projects that would make significant contributions to the mission of the Institute: http://ies.ed.gov/funding/unsolicited.asp

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Unsolicited/Investigator Initiated Proposals

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• Program Description or Program Announcement instead of a solicitation• More general statement of interests of funding agency or program

• Typically the main source of research funding for individual researchers funded by NSF, NIH, DoD• Majority of external research funded by NSF (~50%) and NIH (~80%) result from unsolicited proposals

• Formatting guidelines are often in a separate document or URL

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Understand Agency Guidelines

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• Grantmaking at ED--Answers to Your Questions About the Discretionary Grants Process• http://www2.ed.gov/fund/grant/about/grantmaking/grantmaking.pdf • http://www2.ed.gov/fund/grant/about/grantmaking/index.html

• Forecast Of Funding Opportunities Under DoED Discretionary Grant Programs, September 6, 2011• http://www2.ed.gov/fund/grant/find/edlite-forecast.html

• For application packages and other information related to ED funding opportunities:• http://www2.ed.gov/fund/landing.jhtml • http://www2.ed.gov/news/fedregister/announce/

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Funding unlikely to pan out…• Grand visions for doing good

• Ambitious plans to improve the world

• Administrative infrastructures

• Bricks & mortar• Unfocused ideas & enthusiasm

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If you don’t write grants, you won’t get any

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• Target the proposal at the intersection where: • research dollars are available; • your research interests are met;

• a competitive proposal can be written within the time available.

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Finding Research Funding

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• Funding from Federal Agencies• Grants.gov, Federal Register, FedConnect• Agency sites• Electronic alerts, including modifications by RSS or email alert

• Funding from Foundations• Foundation websites, e.g., Spencer Foundation

• Funding in the Humanities & Related Social Sciences• Associations, libraries, museums, centers, institutes, NEH,

DoED • Funding for Less Well-Supported Research Areas

• Partnerships and collaborations; center-level proposals; research websites of funded centers, institutes; research journal articles for references to funding sources; business and industry; associations and foundations; NGO’s; local, regional, state government; community partnerships.

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Searching for funding

• Develop search protocols to fit research interests;

• Know relevant agencies;

• Learn grant cycles;• Use agency email

alerts and RSS feeds;• Know process for

unsolicited proposals

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Search in the right places…

• Talk to colleagues funded in your discipline

• Read research publications for references to funding sources

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Focus on your research interests

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Searching for research funding

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• Define a disciplinary domain of interest (e.g., education, engineering, science, social science, humanities, education, health and biomedical sciences, etc.);

• Characterize the nature of the research interests within the disciplinary domain (basic, applied, applications, contract, mission agency);

• Identify funding agencies whose mission, strategic plan, and investment priorities are aligned with your research interests;

• Develop research & educational partnerships and collaborations with other disciplines and institutions.

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Searching for research funding

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• Further align research interests with funding agency opportunities by:

• review past funding solicitations,

• review agency mission statements,

• review strategic investment plans, research roadmaps and related documentation.

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Solicitation Modifications

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• RSS feeds and email alerts also post modifications to program announcements that are made prior to the due dates

• This is particularly important for solicitations with long open periods, or RFPs from mission agencies

• Google search on “RSS feeds at agency name”

• Grants.gov New/Modified Opps by Agencyhttp://www07.grants.gov/rss/GG_OppModByAgency.xml

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Learn about proposals funded by foundations

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• Foundation Center (Find Funders)• http://foundationcenter.org/findfunders/

• Foundation Finder• http://lnp.foundationcenter.org/finder.html

• 990 Finder• http://foundationcenter.org/findfunders/990finde

r/

• http://foundationcenter.org/findfunders/990pffly.pdf

• http://foundationcenter.org/getstarted/tutorials/demystify/

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What is a Solicitation?

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It is an invitation by a funding agency for applicants to submit requests for funding in research areas of interest to the agency.

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What is in the Solicitation?

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• The key information you will need to develop and write a competitive proposal that is fully responsive to an agency’s

• submission process, • research objectives, • review criteria, and • budget requirements.

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What it is; what it is not

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• The RFP is a non-negotiable listing of performance expectations reflecting the goals and research objectives of the funding agency.

• The RFP is not a menu or smorgasbord offering the applicant a choice of addressing some topics but not others, depending on interest, or some review criteria but not others.

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No irrational exuberance!!

• Understand the RFP for what it is… not what you want it to be…

• It is not a speculative investment…

• Invest your time, resources, and energy wisely

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Map your expertise to the RFP

• Is it a fit?• Is it really a fit?

• No partial fits allowed

• No wishful thinking

• Close doesn’t count

• If you are not a fit—don’t submit!

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The RFP as Treasure Map

• Follow directions• Review step by step• Understand it• Understood by all PIs• Keep focused• Don’t wander off path• Continuously calibrate ideas, objectives, and details to the RFP

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Role of the RFP in Proposal Organization

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• Copy and paste the RFP’s key sections, research objectives, and review criteria into a beginning draft narrative as an organizational template for the full proposal.

• This ensures that subsequent draft iterations of the research narrative are continuously calibrated to the guidelines and fully responsive to all of the sponsor’s requirements: • fully responds to all requested information, • offers information in the order requested, • provides the required level of detail, • integrates review criteria into the narrative, and • makes a complete and compelling case for the significance

of your research, i.e., why it has valued added impact on the agency’s mission.

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Relationship to Program Officer

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• Never be hesitant about contacting a program officer for clarifications-

• Timidity is never rewarded in the competitive proposal process

• Ambiguities are always punished!

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Reviewing the RFP• Clarify ambiguities;

if unresolved-- • Get clarification

from a program officer.

• Ambiguities need to be resolved prior to proposal writing so the proposal narrative maps to the guidelines with informed certainty.

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Never be Timid!

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The RFP as Reference Point

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It is used continuously throughout proposal development and writing as a reference point to ensure that an evolving proposal narrative fully addresses and accurately reflects the goals and objectives of the funding agency, including the review criteria.

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Address the Review Criteria in the RFP

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• The review criteria are a key part of the RFP.

• A competitive proposal must clearly address each review criterion, and the proposal should be structured so that these discussions are easy for reviewers to find.

• Subject headings, graphics, bullets, and bolded statements using language similar to that used in the RFP can all be used to make the reviewers’ jobs easier.

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Read Material Referenced in RFP

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• If the RFP refers or links to publications, reports, or workshops:• Read the referenced materials • Understand how the references influenced the agency’s vision of the program

• Cite those publications in the proposal as appropriate

• Demonstrate in the narrative you are fluent with the ideas underpinning the RFP.

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Analyzing the Funding Agency

• Analyzing the mission, strategic plan, investment priorities, and culture of a funding agency provides information key to enhancing proposal competitiveness.

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Understand the Agency is Key to Success

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• The more knowledgeable you are about a funding agency’s mission, strategic plans, research culture, investment priorities, and the rationale behind them, the better able you will be to write a more compelling and successful proposal narrative.

• How well you convince reviewers that your research will play a key role in advancing the agency’s mission-critical objectives as listed in the solicitation, or in the guidelines for unsolicited submissions, will be the determining factor in the decision whether or not to fund your proposal.

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Why Analyze the Funding Agency?

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• To better understand key elements common to every competitive proposal narrative: • Who is the audience? • How do you best address that audience?• What is a fundable idea within the context of the agency’s research priorities?

• How are claims of research uniqueness and innovation best supported in the proposal text?

• What arguments are likely to be most compelling in communicating your passion, excitement, commitment, and capacity to perform the proposed research to reviewers and program officers?

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Know Your Audience

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• Understanding an agency’s mission, strategic plan, research culture, investment priorities, and the rationale behind them helps you weave a more compelling and competitive proposal narrative better embedded in the agency mission context.

• It helps you better describe how your research plan maps to the research goals detailed in the RFP and advances the agency’s larger research plan.

• Convincing program officers and reviewers that your research advances the agency’s research objectives is a key factor in the decision to fund or not fund your proposal.

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Understand the Research Culture

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• Understanding the research culture of the funding agency helps you to more knowledgably embed your proposed research plan within the research focus and context of the agency.

• E.g., While NSF and DoED both fund education research, they often fund research in very different areas under that umbrella.

• Sometimes the differences are clear, and in other cases more nuanced, but the distinctions are there, and you need to be aware of them.

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Know what was recently funded

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• Learning about recently funded research in your area helps you understand what an agency is looking for in the review process• Review abstracts of funded proposals on agency web sites

• Talk to the principal investigators of funded proposals in your area

• Obtain copies of funded proposals• Ask the PI• Ask the agency (funded proposals are public)

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Agency Program Officers

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• The role of the Program Officer varies markedly among funding agencies. In some agencies, they dictate the priorities of their program and may have almost sole control over which proposals get funded.

• In other agencies, their role may be more administrative, and they may have very little influence on the funding decision. An important part of getting to know the funding agency to which you plan to apply is to determine the role of the Program Officer for that agency and the culture regarding relationships with the Program Officer.

• At the DoD, for example, it’s virtually impossible to get funded if you haven’t talked to the Program Officer. At NSF, most Program Officers see themselves as mentors to new faculty and are happy to provide advice and guidance. At NIH, PIs are often funded without ever having talked to the Program Officer.

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Know Language of Funding Agency

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• Agencies often speak in a dialect unique to them.

• Echo the language of the funding agency back to them.

• This is important in writing the proposal narrative, and helps to frame arguments more clearly and make them more easily understood by program managers and reviewers.

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Questions common to all reviews

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• Specific review criteria and review processes differ from agency to agency, as well as by program within an agency, but the core questions program officers and reviewers need answered can be simply stated: • What do you propose to do?• Why it is it important?• Why are you able to do it? • How will you do it?• How does it contribute to the interests and objectives of the agency and program?

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Write for the reviewers

If I had moretime, I wouldhave writtenyou a shorter

letter. Mark

Twain

Click icon to add clip art

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Writing for Reviewers—Generic Tips

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• Sell your proposal to a good researcher but not an expert;• Some review panels may not have an expert in your field, or

panels may be blended for multidisciplinary initiatives, so write to all the reviewers on the panel;

• Proposals are not journal articles; proposals must be user friendly and offer a narrative that is compelling and memorable to reviewers;

• Proposals are not mystery novels. Reveal the significance of your research quickly, not at the conclusion;

• Reviewers will assume that sloppy errors in language, usage, grammar, and logic will translate into sloppy errors in your research;

• Write a compelling project summary (or abstract) and narrative introduction:

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You must intrigue the reviewers!!

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Thinking About Resubmission

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• The reviewers felt the project wasn’t a good fit for the program. The Program Officer is usually the person who instructs reviewers regarding the priorities and scope of the specific funding program, so this issue can easily be explored by talking to the Program Officer. You can respond to this critique by either submitting your proposal to a different program that’s a better fit, or by modifying your project so that it better fits the program based on the Program Officer’s advice.

• The reviewers felt the scope of the project was inappropriate (either too ambitious for the funding and time available, or not ambitious enough). Talk to colleagues in your field to assess whether the reviewers might be correct. If you still feel that your project’s scope is appropriate, revise your proposal to directly address this issue. Include a detailed project timeline showing how long it will take to accomplish each task. If reviewers felt the project was too ambitious, discuss your previous experience that demonstrates that you can accomplish what you’re promising in the time allotted.

• The reviewers had specific technical concerns. This is usually the easiest issue to address. Determine whether the reviewers’ concerns are valid. If they are, revise your project plan accordingly. If you don’t agree that the reviewers’ concerns are valid, talk to colleagues to get their assessment. If you’re still confident that you’re correct, revise your proposal to specifically and respectfully explain, using data if possible, why those technical concerns aren’t a problem.

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Thinking About Resubmission

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• The reviewers felt your research wasn’t exciting or significant enough. This is a more difficult problem to address. First, honestly assess your project. Are they correct? If so, remember that the degree of innovation and impact expected varies by agency, so a project that may not be innovative enough for NSF might be considered by the Air Force Office of Sponsored Research if it meets one of their specific needs. (This is often the case for research that is more applied than basic.) In that case, you might want to explore revising and submitting your proposal to a different agency. If you do feel the project is significant, then you may simply need to do a better job of explaining that in your proposal. In that case, revise the text of your proposal to make a more compelling argument.

• Most of the reviewers liked your proposal, but one reviewer panned it. This is a classic case where talking to the Program Officer can be extremely helpful. Usually the Program Officer was in the room during the review process and can give you some insight into the discussion. It’s often the case with review panels that most of the reviewers are not experts in your particular subfield. If the reviewer who didn’t like your proposal happened to be the reviewer who was most knowledgeable in your field, then that person’s comments likely carried a lot of weight with the other reviewers, and you’ll need to take those comments very seriously.

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Thinking About Resubmission

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• The reviewers didn’t seem to understand your proposal and brought up concerns that weren’t applicable or that were addressed in the proposal. In this case it’s tempting to dismiss the reviewers as incompetent. However, it’s more likely that your proposal wasn’t clear. Remember that reviewers aren’t necessarily experts in your subfield; they may have to review a large number of proposals in a short period of time, and they may be reading your proposal at two a.m. Your project description needs to be clear, well-organized, and easy to follow. You need to make it very easy for reviewers to find the main points and to locate where you address each review criterion.

• The reviewers weren’t convinced that the project was likely to succeed (either because of a lack of preliminary data or because they felt the PI or team weren’t sufficiently qualified). Reviewers want to fund projects that are likely to succeed. If your project appears to be risky, then you’ll need to give the reviewers some evidence that these risks are manageable. If the reviewers identified one particular aspect of the project that they felt was too risky, you may need to generate some preliminary data to convince the reviewers that that issue is actually not risky, or you’ll need to develop a plan to work around problems in that area to convince the reviewers that the project can still be successful even if that particular program component doesn’t work out.

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Thinking About Resubmission

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• The reviewers were generally complimentary, but didn’t give the proposal a high enough score to be funded. This can be one of the most frustrating kinds of reviews – the reviewers were all generally complimentary; they might have brought up a few minor points but didn’t mention any major shortcomings of the proposal, but they just didn’t give the proposal high enough ratings to be funded. In fact, if it were an NSF panel, they might have recommended the proposal for funding, but didn’t “highly recommend” it. In all likelihood, your project idea had merit, but it didn’t excite the reviewers as much as some other proposals did. This is another case where it’s important to talk to the Program Officer. Often, the Program Officer can give you an idea of how close you were to being funded, and she can tell you whether any other factors played a part (for example, yours may have been one of several good proposals in a narrow subtopic, and they only wanted to fund one).