Tips for Authoring Grant Proposals

Tips for Authoring Grant Proposals

Writing grant proposals is hard. They are harder than papers because they are part creative writing. Creative writing tends to come unnaturally to scientists and engineers who may be more comfortable dealing with known facts. Ph.D. students encounter a similar challenge when proposing their Ph.D. work. Below present:

• A checklist of questions good research proposals tend to answer and
• A generic 1+15-page grant outline.

Both are based on over twenty years of writing and evaluating grant proposals. They offer a starting point for developing your thoughts. Most successful grant proposals do not answer the questions explicitly, but rather weave a convincing story.

Take-away point: Focus first on the problem you seek to solve and why it is interesting. Only when properly prepared, will readers and evaluators be motivated to care about your potential solutions?

Seven Criteria

• CARE: Are you tackling an important problem? If you can make progress on it, will anyone care?
• NOW: Why now? If this problem is so important, why has it not been addressed before?
• IDEAS: Do you have concrete ideas for starting an attack on the problem and a vision for proceeding further? Is initial progress likely and subsequent progress possible?
• RESULTS: Do you have some preliminary results? Do you demonstrate a good understanding of the problem and the methods needed attack it further?
• PLAN: Do you have sensible plans and methods (e.g., concrete steps and ways of decoupling risks)?
• CAN-DO: Why you? Why are your qualifications and infrastructure appropriate?
• LEGAL: Have you followed the rules of the solicitation (e.g., compelling broader impacts for NSF)?

Find the above criteria valuable for both writing and evaluating grant proposals.

Generic Outline

Most NSF grants ask for the research to be described in a 1-page summary, followed by a 15-page description, not counting references. A rough outline is as follows, but feels free to expand and contract sections to fit your circumstances.

• Summary (1 page): A one-page abstract that touches on all seven criteria.
• Introduction (2 pages): Discuss the problem, addressing criteria CARE and NOW and forecasting answers to other criteria.
• Preliminary Work (3 pages): Show some progress on understanding and addressing the problem, e.g., half of a good paper, to address the criterion RESULTS.
• Research Directions (4 pages): Show vision with concrete steps for middles parts of the grant (after the preliminary work) and promising directions for the later years, addressing criterion IDEAS.
• Research Methods/Plan (2 pages): Show you know what methods you need, steps you may follow, and why you can do it, addressing criteria PLAN and CAN-DO.
• Related Work (2 pages): Discuss the related work of others if this is not already integrated in other sections.
• Own Prior Work (1 page): Discuss your prior work, addressing the criterion CAN-DO.
• Broader/Educational Impacts (1 page): Discuss broader and education impacts, etc., addressing the criterion LEGAL. Read and consider citing articles on these matters.
• Conclusion (0 pages): Finish with a short, one-paragraph conclusion, as this is too late to say something important.
• References (extra pages): Show that you are familiar with the state-of-the-art, addressing the criterion CAN-DO.

Especially when authoring your first grant proposals, ask colleagues to privately share with you examples of successful proposals. Read and initially emulate their successful style; later develop your own approach. Also, liberally use figures, diagrams, and graphs to promote understanding even from those who only skim your proposal.