Grant Writing Articles March 2009 Issue
Grant Writing Articles March 2009 Issue
Article1. Writing the Proposal Goals and Objectives
Article2. Strategies for Applying to Long-Standing Grant Programs
Article3. Proposal Scheduling: What You Can and Can’t Control
Article4. Evaluation Resources on the Internet
Article5. Crafting the NIH Specific Aims Proposal Section
Article 1, (Top)
Writing Goals and Objectives
By Lucy Deckard
When writing a proposal to funding agencies, particularly to NSF, one of the first pieces of information about the project that must be discussed are the goals and objectives of the project. Often, however, there is confusion about what, exactly, goals and objectives are, and what the difference is between the two. Unsuccessful proposals often suffer from nebulous or inconsistent goals and objectives.
Goals are the ultimate intention of the project, which may be somewhat general and are not necessarily measurable. Objectives should be specific and measurable, and they should connect clearly to project tasks and activities that will be discussed in the proposal. The project assessment plan should then describe how success in meeting each of the objectives will be measured.
For example, a goal of a project might be to
• increase the diversity of undergraduates majoring in mathematics, or to
• build a stronger scientific foundation for computer graphics and scientific visualization.
Sometimes, proposals put forth an overarching goal and then describe more specific goals. For example, in an education-focused project, the overarching goal might be to increase the diversity of undergraduates majoring in mathematics, and the specific goal might be to improve recruitment and retention of first and second year undergraduates in the mathematics program.
The objectives of the education project mentioned above might be to:
• Increase the number of freshmen from underrepresented groups majoring in mathematics by 10%.
• Improve retention of first-year underrepresented undergraduates majoring in mathematics by 15%.
• Improve retention of second-year underrepresented undergraduates in mathematics by 8%.
To give an example from a research-focused project, the NSF-funded Science and Technology Center lead by the University of Illinois (“The Watercampus”), has an overarching goal to “develop materials, methods, and systems to greatly improve the efficiency of desalination and reclamation of water for human use.” Some of their specific goals are:
• Improve thermal and liquid discharge minimization methods
• Develop pressure-driven and electro membrane water filtration
• Develop membrane bioreactor technology
Some of their research objectives are:
• To understand and quantify the effect of restricted geometries on water and ion transport driven by pressure gradient or electrokinetic forces.
• To increase water permeability in membrane-based systems an order of magnitude, while increasing contaminant rejection and membrane strength and robustness.
• To improve the economics of water desalination and reclamation systems while reducing the liquid discharge for inland desalination to less than 5% of total flux.
Later, when describing the project plan, activities should link clearly to the program objectives. In this way, the PI builds a logical framework for the proposed project: needs inspire overarching goals, which inspire specific goals, which motivate objectives, which then dictate tasks to accomplish those objectives, and the assessment plan is structured to determine how well those objectives are being met. By laying out clear goals and objectives and then connecting to them in the rest of the proposal narrative, reviewers can more easily understand the motivation and structure of your proposed project.
Article 2,(Top)
Strategies for Applying to Long-Standing Grant Programs
By Mike Cronan
Many federal agencies that fund university research and educational programs have long-standing, annual grant cycles in programmatic areas that evolve significantly over the years of funding. Perhaps most notable among these agencies is the National Science Foundation funding for university research and educational initiatives. There are annual grant programs at NSF that have been funded annually for 15 or 20 years, or longer, under the same program title. These include both smaller research and educational initiatives, such as the Course Curriculum and Laboratory Improvement (CCLI) grants, to the large Engineering Research Centers (ERC) grants that began in 1985.
While these grants have been around for a long time, they do not remain static; they continually evolve over time and benefit from a continuous feedback loop of best practices (e.g., http://www.erc-assoc.org/manual/bp_index.htm) from funded initiatives that inform future program announcements and the research and educational objectives they include. The PI on an ERC funded in the late 1980s would not recognize the programmatic goals of the current ERCs in the areas of research integration, diversity, societal impacts, and the like.
There are also, however, long-standing annual grant programs of interest to universities that have remained essentially static over the years, e.g., the U.S. Department of Education’s Graduate Assistance in Areas of National Need (GAANN) has changed relatively little over the past 20 years, except, most notably, the number of fellowships funded has dropped dramatically from the early 1990s, as well as the average dollar amount per award.
While the GAANN is largely a “formulaic proposal” and little changed over time in terms of the strategy needed to be successfully funded under that award program, proposals submitted to long-standing programs at NSF, in order to be competitive, will need to reflect the significant, and continuous, programmatic evolution that occurs at NSF related to the required research and educational objectives.
There are many ways to better define and understand the broader research and educational contexts within which many long-standing NSF programs are embedded, and the transformation of those long-standing programs as they are continuously informed by the best practices of the most recent awards, and to then use that knowledge base to write more competitive proposals. This can be accomplished in several ways, for example:
• A careful reading of the program announcement and all referenced reports and documents;
• Review the program abstracts (http://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/index.jsp) of recently funded awards to determine program elements that may be the common denominators of competitiveness;
• Talk to recently funded PIs, if appropriate, about the review process, review comments, and requirements of annual reports, as well as to those who are responsible for day-to-day project management and those responsible for project evaluation and assessment (competitive proposals are a melding of good ideas and operational detail).
All of this information is important to the writing of any competitive proposal. This is particularly the case at NSF where the development and writing of a proposal needs to be significantly influenced by a knowledge base that is current, substantive, and fluent in understanding how issues related to the integration of research and education, diversity, broader impacts, scientific workforce, societal impacts, and the like motivate the evolution of long-standing programs at that agency over time, and result in evolving models that are seen as best able to achieve those agency objectives.
A competitive proposal is essentially a compelling and persuasive argument sustained over some number of pages, mercifully fewer at NSF than most agencies. How well these arguments are made depends on a knowledge base that the author of the proposal can draw upon while crafting the proposal narrative. The proposal narrative is essentially a collection of words sequenced to make sentences, sentences sequenced to make paragraphs, and paragraphs sequenced to comprise the project description. The competitiveness of the proposal narrative is a function of the order and logic of these elements of the argument. When drafting a proposal narrative, the author is awash in decisions—there is a decision point after every word, after every sentence, and after every paragraph as to how to best craft a compelling narrative. The knowledge base of the author serves as the wellspring of the arguments put forth.
Another way to gather important background information that helps in the writing of a competitive proposal is through the use of well-crafted Google searches. For example, in the case of CCLI (http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2009/nsf09529/nsf09529.html) and other long-standing programs at NSF, a Google search will most often turn up a range of resources published on the web by universities, including NSF program officer presentations given during campus visits, or reports and publications from various academic conferences or journals, that help give greater insight into the current “best practices” related to the structure and operation of a particular program.
A recent request to our Office of Proposal Development for expanded background information on the CCLI by a faculty member preparing for a possible submission later this year was responded to based both on our in-house experience and complemented by information gathered during a Google search as well, including the below examples resulting from that search.
2008 CCLI Conference Presentations
http://www.ccliconference.com/reports.php
Strategies for Successful Proposal Writing
Kathy Alfano and Warren Hein, NSF Program Directors
CCLI PI Meeting, August 2008
http://www.ccliconference.com/2008_Presentations/Alfano_NSFproposalStrategy.ppt
Proposal Writing Strategies, Steve Cooper, NSF Division of Undergraduate Education
http://www.sju.edu/~scooper/NSF/Proposal_Strategy_Slides.ppt
NSF Guide for Proposal Writing (Division of Undergraduate Education)
http://www.research.umd.umich.edu/fileadmin/template/researchsponsored/files/CCLI--NSF-Proposal-Writing-Guide.pdf
Successful CCLI Awards, Carleton College
http://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/earlycareer/research/NSFgrants.html#ccli
CCLI Program Overview
http://www.rit.edu/research/srs/srs/pi_workshop/NSF_CCLI_2007.pdf
Tips on Writing an NSF CCLI Proposal, University of Michigan, Dearborn
http://www.research.umd.umich.edu/264001/
Example CCLI Proposal in Chemistry, UMD
http://www.research.umd.umich.edu/fileadmin/template/researchsponsored/files/CCLI--Funded-Proposal-Chemistry.pdf
Article 3, (Top)
Proposal Scheduling: What You Can and Can’t Control
by Robyn Pearson
Anyone who’s written a proposal knows that TIME is one critical element considered when making the “go” or “no go” decision. Do you have enough time to establish your team? Meet internal and external deadlines? And of course, write the proposal?
One strategy to successful proposal planning is to create a schedule defining dates for specific task completion. When it comes to creating such a schedule and determining whether you have sufficient time, there are some aspects of proposal development that are under your control and other aspects that you have no control over.
Obviously you are bound by the due date established by a funding program. However, faculty with less experience in submitting a proposal may not realize that their institutional proposal administration office has an even earlier internal deadline. Internal deadlines are often established to allow proposal administrators the opportunity to complete a quality check or to make sure that all required forms and supplemental documents have been prepared. An internal deadline preceding the agency deadline may also be required to circumvent possible delays caused by a high volume of traffic on the uploading website.
Younger faculty may also be unaware that their institution’s proposal administration office requires a rough draft or abstract of the proposal and a budget for routing purposes. Routing is the process by which a proposal is approved at various administrative levels – typically from the department head, to the dean, and then to appropriate institutional officials above the dean. Even prior to routing, however, proposal administrators often require advance notice when there is a proposal in the pipeline. This might include an online pre-proposal notification or setting up an appointment with the appropriate proposal personnel. These types of institutional deadlines are beyond your control; it’s important to plan accordingly and allocate enough time in your proposal scheduling process to meet such internal deadlines.
Another situation that may take junior faculty by surprise involves collaborations with faculty at other institutions. In these cases, there are often subcontracts or other funding arrangements or agreements that must be completed prior to proposal submission. Here, too, it is critical to learn what the other institution requires and when it is required. Similarly, when you have a partner from your own institution, the internal routing process will have to be completed for that person as well.
Competitive proposals may require use of data from institutional sources. For example, funding programs to promote student recruitment or retention may call for baseline data on current student enrollment or graduation rates. It is standard practice for universities to track these kinds of data; what isn’t standard, however, is the process of retrieving such information. There may be an online data request form that specifies a two-week turnaround before results are sent, and then there may be unavoidable delays in that process. These issues are beyond your control; not only should you schedule accordingly, but it may also be wise to allow some “cushion” time as well.
What parts of proposal scheduling can you control? Sometimes letters of support or commitment are required for a proposal. Send your requests for such letters as early as possible, and be sure to include a requested return date. If you have a team of investigators on your project, you can garner some control over their responsibilities to the project by having regularly scheduled meetings or phone conferences, perhaps establishing writing responsibilities and a timeline for completion of particular proposal sections. You can control gathering of biosketches or current-and-pending forms by sending your partners a template or a link, if available, and asking for return of their data within a realistic timeframe. Also, if you send a draft of your proposal to a colleague or mentor, it’s good advice to specify a reasonable time to get their comments back to you. Allow yourself enough time to incorporate their suggestions, particularly if they are more experienced researchers or have expertise in an area pertinent to your research. By scheduling your own deadlines for some of these typical tasks in proposal development, you can maintain better control and ultimately submit a more competitive proposal.
Article 4, (Top)
Evaluation Resources on the Internet
by Robyn Pearson
Most federal agencies and many private foundations expect that a competitive grant proposal will include some form of program assessment or evaluation. Depending upon the type of grant program, the quality of the proposed evaluation is given considerable attention during the review process, particularly when a project includes a significant educational or outreach component in addition to research. Not only can evaluation help investigators measure programmatic impacts, but it can also provide feedback on what’s working and what’s not, allowing programmatic activities to be redirected or changed as needed. Program assessment may also be used to demonstrate accountability or to show that goals and expected outcomes have been met.
Understanding how to develop a rigorous program evaluation may be a challenge for faculty new to grant writing, especially when there is an educational component embedded within the proposed research program. New faculty may be able to learn about various approaches to evaluation from their mentors, but there are also many materials available on the internet that offer useful overviews of the process, as well as online courses, templates, and examples. Some of these resources are listed below:
The 2002 User Friendly Handbook for Project Evaluation
National Science Foundation
http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2002/nsf02057/start.htm
This Handbook provides principal investigators with basic guidelines for the evaluation of NSF educational programs. It targets people who need to learn more about what evaluation can do and how to do an evaluation, rather than investigators with evaluation experience who already have expertise in the field. The Handbook discusses quantitative and qualitative evaluation methods, suggesting ways in which both methods can be used as complements in an evaluation strategy.
User-Friendly Handbook for Mixed Method Evaluations
National Science Foundation
http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/1997/nsf97153/start.htm
Experienced evaluators find that the best results are often achieved through the use of mixed method evaluations, combining quantitative and qualitative techniques. Whereas the handbook described above provides an overview of the collection and analysis of qualitative data, this handbook provides more information on qualitative techniques and discusses how qualitative data can be effectively combined with quantitative measures.
Online Evaluation Resource Library
http://oerl.sri.com/
The Online Evaluation Resource Library, funded by NSF, was developed to collect and make available evaluation plans, instruments, and reports for NSF projects that can be used as examples by Principal Investigators, project evaluators, and others outside the NSF community as they design proposals and projects.
The Program Manager's Guide to Evaluation
Department of Health & Human Services, Administration on Children, Youth, & Families
http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/opre/other_resrch/pm_guide_eval/reports/pmguide/pmguide_toc.html
This informative guide explains program evaluation – what it is, how to understand it, and how to do it. It answers questions about evaluation and explains how to use evaluation to improve programs and benefit staff and families.
CDC Evaluation Working Group
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
http://www.cdc.gov/eval/resources.htm
This site is an excellent resource organized around the following topics for further information about evaluation or assistance in conducting an evaluation project. Resources are divided into the following groups (with hotlinks):
• Ethics, Principles, and Standards
• Organizations, Societies, Foundations, Associations
• Journals and On-Line Publications
• Step-by-Step Manuals
• Logic Model Resources
• Planning and Performance Improvement Tools
• Reports and Publications: General
• Reports and Publications: GPRA
• Suggestions
W.K. Kellogg Foundation Evaluation Handbook *
http://www.wkkf.org/Pubs/Tools/Evaluation/Pub770.pdf
For those with evaluation experience, or for those inexperienced in evaluation but with the time and resources to learn more, this handbook provides enough basic information to allow project staff to conduct an evaluation without the assistance of an external evaluator.
W.K. Kellogg Foundation Logic Model Development Guide *
http://www.wkkf.org/Pubs/Tools/Evaluation/Pub3669.pdf
This guide provides a discussion of the program logic model and its importance for program planning and evaluation planning. It includes templates and other tools to help develop a logic model and identify evaluation questions.
* Note: both of these resources are available on CD from the Kellogg Foundation:
http://www.wkkf.org/default.aspx?tabid=1172&NID=331&ItemID=2813742&LanguageID=0
Planning an Effective Program Evaluation
American Physiological Society
http://www.the-aps.org/education/promote/promote.html
This website offers an interactive online short course that includes six lessons about evaluation basics, questions raised by program directors, and resources available both on and off line. Each lesson includes an interactive component designed for the user to develop an evaluation planning document.
The Evaluation Center, Western Michigan University
http://ec.wmich.edu/resources/
The Center’s role is to provide national and international leadership for advancing the theory and practice of evaluation, as applied to education and human services. Note: as of 2/23/09, this page is temporarily unavailable, possibly under reconstruction.
Evaluation Resources, University of Wisconsin – Extension
http://www.uwex.edu/ces/pdande/evaluation/index.html
This site provides key resources for evaluation, most notably:
• The "Planning a Program Evaluation" booklet and worksheet ( PDF files)
The worksheet is also available as a Word document that can be saved and used to enter text.
• The "Enhancing Program Performace with Logic Models" on-line course
Field-tested Learning Assessment Guide (FLAG) for Science, Math, Engineering, and Technology Instructors
http://www.flaguide.org/
FLAG offers broadly applicable, self-contained modular classroom assessment techniques and discipline-specific tools for STEM instructors interested in new approaches to evaluating student learning, attitudes, and performance.
Tips on Assessment, Evaluation and Dissemination
http://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/biocomplexity/assessment.html
This site provides a summary of program evaluation and lists hotlinks to other web resources, divided into the categories “From NSF,” “Organizations,” “Disciplinary Examples,” and “Suggested Readings.” It also includes information on project dissemination.
American Evaluation Association’s Online Handbooks and Texts
http://www.eval.org/Resources/onlinehbtxt.asp
The above URL links to handbooks and texts that are availably in their entirety online. Most are multi-chapter documents focusing on the “how-to’s” of evaluation-related subjects.
Article 5, (Top)
Crafting the NIH Specific Aims Proposal Section
By John Ivy
In research proposals submitted to the National Institutes of Health, the Research Plan consists of four sections: Specific Aims, Background and Significance, Preliminary Studies (or Progress Report for renewal applications), and Research Design and Methods. These sections describe the current status of your scientific field, the research questions you plan to answer, your experimental approach and methods, the rationale for your approach, the expected outcomes, and the significance of the proposed research. In your effort to convince reviewers that your proposal has merit, the Specific Aims section is critical because it presents your entire proposal in a nutshell and every reviewer will either read or skim it.
The three reviewers to which your proposal is assigned will read the full proposal thoroughly, while the other members of a study section, all of whom will score the impact of the proposal, will at least skim the Abstract, Specific Aims, and Background and Significance. In this context, the Specific Aims must be capable of standing alone and must present the critical need for the research, the research goals, the hypothesis to be tested, the aims to test the hypothesis, and the method and approach in concise, crisp language using well-constructed, persuasive arguments.
Instructions given by NIH for writing the Specific Aims are minimal and read, “List the broad, long-term objectives and the goal of the specific research proposed, for example, to test a stated hypothesis, create a novel design, solve a specific problem, challenge an existing paradigm or clinical practice, address a critical barrier to progress in the field, or develop new technology. One page is recommended.” In order to convince the reviewer of the merit and the overall impact (i.e., the reviewer’s “assessment of the likelihood for the project to exert a sustained, powerful influence on the research field(s) involved,” Enhancing Peer Review, NIH Notice NOT-OD-09-025) of the proposed research, the writer typically must provide more than that specified in the instructions. Since all reviewers will read or skim the Specific Aims, this section affords the proposer the opportunity to communicate to every reviewer a strong rationale and compelling argument for why the proposed research will have impact on the field.
In putting together that compelling argument, we recommend that you begin with broad, general concepts and proceed to the more specific. Describe broadly what is known about the field and the state of the art. Using each sentence as a spring board to proceed to the next sentence, follow the brief summary of the current state of the field with an identification of the gap in knowledge or, alternatively, a critical need in the field. Identify your long-range research objectives as they relate to this field, and identify the relevance of your line of inquiry to the mission of the Institute or Center (IC) that will fund your research. Then, present your goal for the proposed research project in the context of your long-range research objectives. Finally, as a prelude to the specific aims themselves, identify your central hypothesis. A good hypothesis is one that is focused, relevant to the IC’s mission, and has testable predictions.
Statement of your central hypothesis provides the context for the specific aims of your proposed research. The aims are not the same as your research goal; in contrast, successful completion of your aims should enable you to reach the project goal. Enumerate your aims in a numbered or bulleted list. Your specific aims should be designed to test the predictions presented by your central hypothesis or to test a concept or working hypothesis. Avoid aims that are descriptive—no exploring, no studying, no fishing expeditions. Instead, it is better that you describe a new method or new phenomenon prior to writing your proposal and include those results in your Preliminary Studies. Avoid dependent aims; if a subsequent aim is dependent on a prior aim and the prior aim fails, you lose the basis for pursuing your subsequent aim (often a fatal flaw for a proposal). Instead, your aims should be independent of each other. State your aims using concise, unambiguous declarative statements. Amplify the statement of an aim by describing, for example, a working hypothesis and the research methods and analyses required for that aim. Craft your aims to have clear measurable outcomes or clearly defined endpoints. Do not be overly ambitious, a common criticism of proposals from junior investigators.
To conclude your Specific Aims section, briefly summarize the Significance of the research (a review criterion that you will elaborate more fully in the Background and Significance) and identify your project’s Innovation (another review criterion). Take the initiative to identify for your reviewers what you understand to be the Significance and Innovation of your research. To not do so runs the risk of the reviewers overlooking or incorrectly inferring those critical aspects of your proposal. Also, identify your expected outcomes and describe how your successful results will advance the field and position you to pursue the next step toward your long-range research objectives. Once your Specific Aims are drafted, it is always advisable to have colleagues and mentors review the draft to provide critique and feedback.
In crafting your Specific Aims and other sections of your proposal, use formatting that makes it easy to visually identify at a glance the elements that are important for the reviewers to read. By using bold font, white space, and bulleted lists, the formatting should direct the reviewers’ eyes to critical elements—such as relevance to the IC’s mission, your central hypothesis, aims, significance, and innovation—of the Specific Aims.
Finally, the Specific Aims section is a great place to start writing your proposal. After all, this section identifies the gap in knowledge, presents the central hypothesis, and states the aims of your research project. Only after these elements have been identified, developed, and drafted is the writer in a position to write the Research Design and Methods and to identify the appropriate Background material to support the aims. And as writing the other sections progresses, take that opportunity to review and revise your specific aims as necessary.
