Grant Writing Articles- July 1, 2009
Grant Writing Articles:
Article 1: Pursuing Funding from Foundations
Article 2: Using the RFP as a Proposal Template
Article 1
By Lucy Deckard
Pursuing Funding from Foundations
An Interview with Dr. Mark Fossett, Head of the Department of Sociology and Professor of sociology at Texas A&M University
Dr. Fossett conducts research in racial and ethnic relations, social inequality, social demography and urban sociology. He has been funded by a variety of foundations, including the Ford Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation. He has also been funded multiple times by both NSF and NIH.
Q: What kinds of foundations might fund faculty?
A: Russell Sage, Ford, Rockefeller, Spencer, Social Science Research Council, and the Aspen Institute are all examples of foundations that fund faculty research. They are similar in that they are private and are supported by endowments. They are all long-standing foundations and have websites. However, the most important thing to understand is that they each have their own agenda and it’s important to learn about them and their agenda and then determine if there is a good match between your research interests and their agenda. They may accept unsolicited applications, but only send one in if there is a specific invitation on their website to do so.
Q: How do you find foundations that might be interested in funding your research?
A: I use OPD’s funding opportunities lists and I also look through various online funding lists like Community of Science and SMARTs. I search on key words related to my research. Web searches are also good, and I look at the literature. Many times funding agencies are acknowledged in articles. You may find foundations without a lot of visible presence, but be careful, because a lot of those turn out to be wired. Also be aware that a lot of the funding opportunities from foundations are geographically restricted.
Q: How do decide whether to pursue funding from a particular foundation?
A: It’s important to learn about the foundation and its mission. There are usually clear clues about a foundation’s current mission, and they give a lot of thought about what type of work they want to fund. Look at the programs they have, talk to the Program Officer – this is almost always helpful and it’s a way to pick up on things about the foundation that may not be posted on their website or included in mission statements or other written materials. They’ll state a particular area of emphasis or issue a call for proposals in a certain area. When their interests match what you do, they can be receptive. For example Rockefeller, Ford and Aspen all had cycles where they were looking for work like the kind of research I do, so I contacted them then.
Also investigate what the foundations have funded in the past. Many foundations may appear from their websites to be open to lots of areas, but, if they haven’t funded any projects in your area before, you are going to be a pioneer and must convince the Program Officer that yours is a worthwhile area to fund. People generally have a low success rate with these kinds of situations. For example, if you look at the Gates Foundation website, it looks like they might be open to all things. I’ve done work in computer simulation models of urban dynamics, which was enabled by the PC revolution, which I thought they might be interested in supporting. But when I investigated further, it turned out that they had an entirely different agenda.
So it’s important to identify the agenda of a foundation. It might be a policy agenda; it might be related to implementation of a program, and it may not be scientific. As researchers, our main product is publications. Make sure the foundation is interested in that product. Some are and some aren’t. Some foundations support the generation of new knowledge, or they may have policy goals, or they may want to help people directly. If their goals fit your interest, then it makes sense to look for funding from them. Don’t just shop what you’re doing if it doesn’t fit the foundation’s agenda – you have an almost zero chance. Even when the Program Officer is nice, you can pick up that there is no chance. The best strategy is to have a good idea first, then see if a foundation is receptive. Don’t generate an idea based on what you think the foundation will fund. If they’re not interested, look for another foundation that is.
It’s also important to understand that a foundation’s mission can change. For example, the Ford Foundation used to focus on rural poverty, but later they began focusing on democracy in Latin America. So there was a time when my research fit their mission, but now it’s no longer a fit, and I don’t apply to them. So be sure to get up-to-date information. The Program Officer can often have a large influence on what types of projects are funded, and a foundation’s culture can change as people change. Private foundations are more nimble than NSF and NIH, and their area of emphasis can change with the wind. A new Program Officer usually will put his/her own stamp on a program. Sometimes it is possible to meet with them at professional meetings; that can be a great opportunity to find out what is interesting them at the moment and where there new directions may be. Occasionally, they will even respond to your ideas and draw on them when thinking about their next initiative.
Q: How do private foundations differ from public funding agencies like NSF and NIH?
A: Compared to NSF and NIH, they can be more particularistic. There are fewer people involved, and a foundation can have a distinct personality. The first time you apply, you may not know the foundation’s personality, and you may not know whom to call for advice. You may just have to take a shot. However, if you can find someone who is plugged in to the foundation, that may help you.
The funding amounts from foundations are generally smaller. Some researchers have gotten large awards from foundations, but in general, those large awards tend to go to stars in the field.
Q: Are there advantages to going to foundations for funding?
A: If there is a fit between your interests and the interests of the foundation, it can be nice compared to NSF and NIH because foundations can be more accommodating. They take a short prospectus and will give you feedback. Therefore, you get feedback quickly, and there is less up-front investment of your time in writing a big proposal. The process can go quite quickly, and you don’t spend a lot of time developing a proposal that isn’t going to be funded.
Foundations are often less bureaucratic than government agencies; they tend to be more flexible in budgeting (they will fund some things that the government agencies won’t fund if it’s clear that you need it to support your project), they are more nimble, and the project budgets they require are often less complicated. But even in this, different foundations have their own personalities.
Q: What strategies would you recommend for approaching a foundation and determining if it’s a good place to apply?
Talk to the Program Officer. Because the Program Officer can be hard to get hold of, it’s a good idea to e-mail and ask for a time when you can call to talk. Be persistent, but don’t be a nuisance. Be prepared and be able to describe your project well and succinctly. Don’t make a fishing call – that’s not good. Work to establish a good relationship with the Program Officer.
Try to diagnose early if the Program Officer has established relationships with a stable of favored researchers. Sometimes, foundations have relationships with a particular institution or set of universities, and it may not be easy to crack into that circle. The Program Officer or foundation may have high confidence in those people and feel it is a risk to go outside that circle of researchers. You can find this out; the Program Officer may make it clear when you talk to him/her. You can also ask colleagues in the field who have applied or gotten funded by the foundation. If you know someone who has obtained funding, call and ask them what the procedure was.
Another good way to get information is professional networking. Use professional meetings and short conversations with colleagues. Ask, for example, “What’s Russell Sage doing these days? Would someone like me have a chance there?” Larger foundations have Program Officers attending meetings. You can seek them out for face-to-face time – maybe just for a coffee. When you see them in person you can get more clues from body language. However, Program Officers are usually very popular at conferences, so it can be a challenge to connect with them, but just noting who they are talking to can give you clues.
Q: What is the procedure for applying?
A: Often, the Program Officer doesn’t want to see a full proposal at first; they want a preliminary proposal which might consist of a detailed abstract with sketches of the budget and timeline. Based on that the Program Officer will give you feedback, which may be as simple as whether or not they are interested. If they are interested, they will encourage you to submit a full-blown proposal. Since you’ve already made it through the preliminary proposal process, your chances of being successful are a lot better at this point, but you still have to execute and deliver a thoughtful proposal.
Q: What advice would you give about writing the proposal?
A: As I’ve mentioned before, it’s very important to connect your work to the mission of the foundation. Also, make sure that your project clearly fits into one of the foundation’s programs. Beyond that, the quality of your ideas and presenting them well are the most important things.
Q: How does the review process typically work at foundations?
The first stage is programmatic, and the response is simple. The second round sometimes yields very detailed reviews, while other times you get almost no feedback. For bigger projects, the foundation may get external reviews, which can be as rigorous as NSF or NIH reviews.
At foundations, you shouldn’t resubmit unless there is clear encouragement to resubmit. If they didn’t like it the first time, they won’t change their minds. If they think they might like to fund your idea, they will let you know.
Q: How important is it to develop a relationship with a foundation?
A: In the best case, the same Program Officer stays at the foundation and the mission of the foundation stays the same. Then you develop a relationship, and this gives you an advantage and more possibility for a personal connection. In the long run, though, the quality of your ideas is the most important thing. A relationship can help your high-quality ideas get a hearing, but if your next idea is of lesser quality, the Program Officer won’t fund you. If your next idea is of equal quality, then you might get a hearing faster since you have a track record with the foundation.
What advice would you give new faculty?
Occasionally, foundations have a small grants program that is explicitly for bringing in new people. This is a chance to seek funding without having to compete with people who are established at the foundation. But even if there aren’t these kinds of programs, if the foundation is really open to receiving proposals and if your ideas are good, you may have a realistic chance. Some practical tips for new faculty are to collaborate with a more senior researcher, and start with a modest project centered around an interesting idea. If your project has a grand budget, then the program officer is likely to be more cautious. Network at meetings. Set out to become known to the people at the foundation, and, of course, work to establish yourself in the field.
Article 2
By Mike Cronan
Using the RFP as a Proposal Template
In the development and writing of a proposal narrative it is helpful to develop a first draft using the RFP guidelines as a proposal template that includes section headings taken directly and verbatim from the RFP. By listing and responding to every fine grain question embedded in the RFP template, you will ensure that the final proposal narrative is fully responsive to the program solicitation, a fundamental requirement for a funded grant. Using the RFP as a template for the first draft of the proposal text is a very helpful first step towards achieving a competitive proposal, and it can form the basis of a red team review process used to refine the final narrative (see Red Teaming Proposals, February 2009: http://opd.tamu.edu/articles-from-opd-newsletters ). As narrative drafts are more refined, completed, and integrated, this initial template framework will dissolve as the essential elements of the proposal meld more seamlessly into the final version of the narrative.
The first draft template for the proposal narrative should be lifted directly (copy & paste) from those sections of the RFP that address the specific sponsor requirements you must address in the proposal narrative, e.g., research goals and objectives, significance, intellectual merit, and other specifics detailed in the solicitation as essential components of the fully responsive proposal. Typically, such essential responses include the problem or issue being researched, addressed or solved in some way, including the agency goals and objectives related to the research; project or program design; performance expectations and methods; management and administration; capacity to perform; qualifications of key personnel; evaluation and assessment; anticipated results; outcomes or deliverables or products, etc.
These programmatic questions will vary by the type of proposal (e.g., research, hybrid research and education, education, see following article herein) and type of agency funding the proposal (e.g., a mission agency or basic research agency). There are other topics depending on agency, but in one guise or another these topics form the core of most proposals.
In the template, core topics may stay as section headings in the final text, but other finer grain components from the RFP need to be entered as temporary section headings in the template as well. Enter such information as the following as temporary section headings, including also under each section heading all of the often very specific and detailed research performance requirements of the solicitation:
• Agency research goals and objectives
• Review criteria
• Funding agency mission and vision statements specific to the RFP
• Eligibility requirements stated in the RFP
• Preliminary ideas for further development by the proposal team
• Anticipated support documentation such as data, charts, tables, references
• Past performance profiles on similar projects
• Supporting partnerships
• Other topics gleaned from a close reading of the RFP that need to be addressed
It is often helpful to include at the end of this template another temporary section that serves as an electronic scratch pad, or log, for discarded text and ideas, or text that may or many not be used later. A section where undeveloped ideas and suggestions that arise during proposal development sessions can be recorded for further development later, or to be discarded if they do not prove productive. It is important to continuously update the proposal template and make it available for all members of the proposal development team as ideas are translated from verbal discussions at development meetings to the more permanent structure of the narrative. It will also serve as a guide to discussions at proposal development meetings so there is a log of what was said and ideas that were considered, and thereby help keep the often nuanced connections among the research vision statement, research strands, and research performance detail continuously accessible to everyone involved in the proposal development and writing.
Over time, this template will undergo a metamorphosis from a somewhat disorganized draft proposal into a strong, competitive proposal structure that will be refined through multiple iterations into a competitive submittal. The template process will ensure that the final document fully addresses every requirement of the funding agency. It will avoid the most common and fatal mistake made by grant applicants--not responding fully and clearly (to eradicate ambiguity!) to every question asked by the funding agency, or worse, failing to respond at all to one or more critical questions upon which the agency will base an award decision.
Article 3
By Mike Cronan
Understanding the Types of University Proposals & Their Role in Developing Competitive Proposal Narratives
An understanding of the various types of university proposals that are funded by federal agencies is a key factor in developing the appropriate competitive strategies for pursuit of that funding. Making clear distinctions and eliminating ambiguities in the research narrative is a fundamental requirement for success in obtaining funding from any agency, foundation, or industry source. However, for universities seeking funding from federal agencies it is important to make some very key distinctions related to proposal type early on and eliminate any ambiguities as to the type of research solicitation published by an agency, something that will be clearly linked to the mission of the particular agency.
The overall research domain of various federal agencies is very large. According to AAAS, the federal government entered FY 2009 with an R&D portfolio of $147.3 billion, an amount significantly enhanced by Recovery Act R&D funding approved last February. However, to effectively compete for funding in that very large R&D universe, it is very important to clearly understand the sub-domains of the R&D funding universe and be able to sharply differentiate them. It can all too often happen in exploratory discussions related to possible research opportunities and team development, particularly on large efforts as in the case of Recovery Act funding, that there is not sufficient time taken by participants to define what each participant means by research and how that then maps to how the funding agency characterizes the research they fund, either overall as an agency, or within a specific solicitation. Similarly on smaller research efforts, involving only one or a few principal investigators, it is critical that an applicant clearly understand the research objectives of the funding agency. For example, it is often the case that a broad research domain is funded across multiple federal agencies, e.g., the environment, energy, climate models, materials, biological/biomedical, etc., but have that research characterized quite differently by agency, or within an agency by specific solicitation type.
With this in mind, it is important in any preliminary discussions of research, particularly long-term research strategic planning, that the important distinctions about various university research types be made, understood, and discussed early on. The capacity to make distinctions clearly and eliminate ambiguities in the proposal narrative are two fundamental requirements of a well written, fully responsive proposal narrative—a fundamental requirement of a funded proposal. In OPD, we work with the following definitions in better defining the various university research domains so we are better able to help PIs map their research interests to specific agencies and funding opportunities in the appropriate ways.
Categories of University Research Funding
Generally, university proposals are divided into two broad categories: research and educational. Research grants come in many flavors, as discussed below, but generally fall into two broad categories: basic and applied. Educational grants come in many flavors as well, and fall into three broad categories: institutional grants, hybrid research/educational grants, and grants made directly to students, e.g., national fellowships, dissertation awards, etc. Some agencies fund research grants with little or no investment in complementary educational initiatives, e.g., National Institutes of Health. Other agencies, most notably the National Science Foundation, fund a broad range of university-based research and educational initiatives, and integrate research and educational objectives into a suite of programmatic areas across the agency. Yet other research agencies fund some educational initiatives that relate in some way to the research mission of the agency. The types of research grants funded at universities will also vary depending on the academic and research mission of the university and the research objectives of the funding agency.
It is these distinctions that must be kept in mind, along with the more fine-grain distinctions made below, when considering whether or not to respond to an agency solicitation, and, if the decision to submit a proposal is made, understanding how these basic distinctions will affect every aspect of the strategic planning for the proposal and the writing of a competitive research and/or educational narrative.
Research Funding in the Humanities
In the humanities and humanities-centered social sciences, research grants are often oriented toward support of scholarly work by providing funding for travel, residency at a research site, research materials, copyright payments, sabbatical salary support, and the like. Results of the research are usually expected to be books or journal articles. Sponsors of this research may include federal agencies such as the National Endowment for the Humanities, National Endowment for the Arts, or the U.S. Department of State through the Fulbright Program, but often are libraries, collections, archives, scholarly associations, museums, or endowed humanities centers.
Research Grants in the Sciences & Engineering
Research grants to universities may be broadly categorized as either basic or applied research, although the boundary between these two types of research may be blurred at times. It is important to understand into which of these categories a particular funding opportunity falls. For example, proposing a basic research project, where the ultimate pay-off might be ten years in the future, will doom a proposal to a funder that is looking for results to address a particular problem within the next few years. Similarly, proposing highly applied research that does not have a theoretical underpinning to a basic research agency will be an equally futile effort. Research projects in some disciplines may also include applications-based research and contract research, most often funded by federal mission agencies.
Basic & Applied Research
Basic research, sometimes called fundamental research, is typically open-ended and longer-term, perhaps three to ten years, with the objective being the creation of new knowledge by advancing the underlying theory at the frontiers of a specific discipline. Applied research may be either a follow-on to basic research or concurrent with it, but it is more short term and focused on defined objectives that use the new knowledge gained from basic research in some way for some specific purpose, e.g., for the development of new technologies.
Applications-based Research
Applications-based research takes the results from applied research, e.g., new technologies or existing technologies, and reconfigures their use for some specific new purpose. This reconfiguration of “off the shelf” technologies, for example, might explore the reconfiguration of existing sensors for a specific new purpose, such as what was done in the homeland security area post 911, or for new uses in environmental monitoring.
Contract research
Contract research is most often funded by a mission-focused federal agency for a specific purpose with pre-defined, near-term deliverables (outcomes of the proposed work that must be delivered to the agency). Example projects might be research on the habitat and ecosystem of a certain species in a coastal estuary that will help guide agency policy and environmental management, or research for a federal or state educational agency to answer specific questions on how well tests assess student learning based on a specific curriculum. An important difference in contract research is that funds may be contingent on receipt of promised deliverables, whereas grants are typically not tied to specific performance outcomes.
Educational Grants
Educational proposals typically focus on achieving an educational objective at the proposing institution or on using resources and knowledge at the proposing institution to achieve an educational objective at partnering institutions such as K-12 schools or community colleges. (Education-related research may be funded as a part of these grants but would, in general, be funded by a research grant, as discussed above.) These types of proposals can be broadly categorized as described below.
Institutional Educational Proposals
Institutional educational proposals achieve some academic objective, typically at the department, college, or university level, and may also involve educational partnerships with community colleges and K-12 schools. For example, increasing student or faculty diversity, increasing the number of degrees granted to women and underrepresented minorities in specific disciplines, partnerships with community colleges to make it easier for their students to continue at the four-year college, or outreach partnerships with K-12 schools, museums, and science centers are all projects that might be funded by educational grants.
Hybrid Research & Education Grants
Hybrid research and education grants use faculty research as the underpinning of an educational initiative; for example, undergraduate research with faculty research mentors, course development that transfers new knowledge from the laboratory to the classroom, or development of new doctoral training programs. Graduate training grants (such as NIH’s T-32 grants) may fall into this category since they generally require that students are involved in research as a significant part of their training. Usually, these types of grants support the educational initiative (e.g., student stipends, enrichment activities, etc.), but expect that the project will build upon on-going research that is already funded; therefore, little or no funds are expected to be spent on the research projects.
