Funding

Remember, applying for a grant or a fellowship can at times be a long and difficult process, and require that multiple components be organized then submitted. Often, successful applicants are often organized and patient, and have support from either an advisor or another peer. Below you can find some helpful resources for the application process:

• 10 Tips Towards Better Grant Writing
• NIH Video: Careers in Grant Management
• The NIH Peer Review Process
• APS Grant Writing Tips
• APA’s “8 Tips for Funding Your Dissertation”
• Advice for Getting that Graduate Fellowship

Make yourself valuable. Develop a set of demonstrable core competencies through your publications. Your cv is your portfolio of skill sets, and you will be judged on your ability to deliver. Don’t submit a proposal before you have a few publications under your belt in the relevant area

Get to know the funding sources. Different funding sources have different missions and different criteria. Your sponsored research office (SRO) should be able to help you get this information, and you should also peruse the foundation websites. Foundations have specific goals in terms of advancing a particular agenda. Government agencies have specific missions. Don’t forget about doing consulting work, particularly if you can turn the information gleaned from the work into an insightful publication. Identify the funding source which has the greatest overlap with your research interest and invest heavily in getting to know more about their interests

Get to know the key people. If you are going after grants, get in touch with the program officer. It is their job to know about their foundation, and they will often know about upcoming opportunities at both their foundation and others. But don’t waste their time. A courteous email which provides a concise outline of your research idea, and connects it to their mission is a much better introduction than a phone call out of the blue

Get to know the community by presenting at their conferences. This helps in several ways. First, a good presentation helps establish you as competent and explains your research agenda beyond your proposal. Second, the networking with others who have been successful at getting grants helps you get a better sense of the funding source’s portfolio, and the style of research they support. Third, members of the community will typically be asked to review any grant proposal you submit

Submit your first few grants with senior colleagues who have been successful in getting grants. Grant writing is a skill that is not typically taught in graduate schools, and on the job training is the best way to learn how to acquire that skill

Write well and have a focus. In your opening paragraph, state your focus. Every sentence that you write in the grant should develop your key idea. Write clear prose that assumes the reader is an expert, but not necessarily deeply embedded in your project. You should have a clear and logical beginning, a middle, and an end to your proposal. Write multiple drafts and eliminate verbosity, jargon and extraneous sentences. Cite other research that relates to your idea, but make it clear how your work fills an important gap in that research.

Ask for feedback and resubmit. It’s very important to get others to read your proposal and make critical suggestions so that you submit the strongest possible proposal to the funder. There are reputation consequences to submitting poor proposals. If you get good, constructive, reviews, consider resubmitting the proposal. Consult with the program officer before doing so, and spend a lot of time making sure you address each point carefully

Deliver. Once you get that first grant, make sure you deliver on what you promised. Let the program officer know about your publications, presentations, and other visible consequences of their investment in you. The more valuable that your research is, and the more active you are in the professional community, the more likely it is that the funding agency will continue to support you throughout your career.