Category: Grant Writing

Are Businesses Eligible for Research Grants Outside of the SBIR/STTR Program?

Did you know that businesses are eligible for federal research grants too?

Most folks know that government research grant funding powers academic research, but did you know that businesses are eligible for research grants too? Grant funding is non-dilutive, meaning the small business does not have to give the funding agency a share of the business, as it would venture capitalists. While most entrepreneurs are aware of their eligibility for SBIR/STTR funding, many are unaware they qualify for many other agency-funded opportunities as well.

[Read: How to Find Research Funding Opportunities: A Quick Start Guide]

Grant funding has been the coin of the realm in academic research for decades, and most of the funding in the mechanisms traditionally associated with academic research, e.g., the NIH R01, still flows into these institutions. In return for this funding, researchers are required to submit reports on their progress and spending and are expected (or required) to share their final outcomes with their peers and the public as appropriate.

What many small businesses don’t know is that they, too, are often eligible for these funding mechanisms. Today I reviewed the posted grant and cooperative agreement opportunities offered by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the agencies within the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) that support a lot of research—Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Food and Drug Administration (FDA), National Institutes of Health (NIH), and Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). This is not a scientific survey, just a snapshot in time, but it is worth noting that, of the 1,474 total opportunities available, small businesses were eligible for 1,118 (76%) and businesses that don’t qualify as a small business were eligible for 1,022 (69%)! Perhaps most surprising was that in this sample businesses were eligible for more funding opportunities than academic research institutions, and these opportunities ranged from research grants to center grants and cooperative agreements (and, of course, SBIR/STTR funding opportunities).

The upshot here is, if you are a business owner in need of some R&D funding and you haven’t considered the many non-dilutive funding opportunities available to you from government agencies, you should. If you are a global entrepreneur, there are great non-dilutive funding opportunities available to you outside of the US as well.

[Read: Non-Dilutive Funding Opportunities for Global Entrepreneurs]

Updated: 27 June 2019

Like What You See?

This article was published in the March issue of Strategic Grantsmanship News, a newsletter distributed monthly to subscribers to the Strategic Grantsmanship mailing list. If you like what you see and would like to learn more about how to win more grants in less time, then this is the list for you. Click here to join the mailing list!

What Is a Data Management Plan? Do I Need One?

A recent survey revealed that most researchers are not experienced in writing data management plans, nor are they getting institutional support or training on the topic. Never fear—tools and resources are freely available to your research team!

A recent survey revealed that most researchers are not experienced in writing data management plans, nor are they getting institutional support or training on the topic. Never fear—tools and resources are freely available to your research team!

DMPs outline how data from a funded study will be collected, stored, archived, and shared, and they are now required as part of funding applications by funders (public and private) around the globe. Each funder has its own requirements and expectations, and institutions have additional guidelines for their researchers. Some researchers may find they have copyright or ethical issues to consider, and private companies applying for funding will likely have their own guidelines and prohibitions against sharing proprietary data.

In other words, writing a DMP is not, in most cases, a simple matter of filling out a template. Developing and writing a thorough, competitive DMP can be a challenging task, especially for those who are unfamiliar with the process (whether they are a seasoned researcher or a newbie).

If you are applying for research funding, a DMP plan is most likely in your immediate future. If institutions are not providing training and guidance to researchers on how to develop a DMP, what is a research team to do? One tool that will get you started is the DMPTool. The tool includes templates and sample DMP plans, with a wizard that will walk you through the writing process and offer strategic advice as you progress through the process. Importantly, over 200 institutions are working with the DMPTool and integrating their guidelines into the tool, so research teams can develop a plan specific not only to the agency to which they are applying but also to their institution’s guidelines.

Still unsure of how it all fits together? Although there have been many useful articles written on the topic in the past few years, Nature published a great article this month titled Data Management Made Simple (by Quirin Schiermeier), and its 12 tips for writing a DMP plan will provide insight to all but the most veteran DMP writers. I have also posted a page of DMP development resources the DMP writer may find useful (links to data sharing guidance, data sets, data standards, etc.) on the Strategic Grantsmanship blog and will be adding to the list as new resources become available.

In my experience people can be in quite a rush to get their research going and they tend to “black box” the things they don’t understand or want to deal with, like the DMP, for as long as they can in the hope that things will magically work themselves out as the research moves forward. Sometimes it does, but more often researchers find themselves with unhappy biostatisticians and archiving issues. Writing a DMP plan while simultaneously writing a research plan can feel overwhelming, but for research teams that take advantage of the new tools and myriad resources now available for DMP development and writing, the process is faster and easier than ever.

This article originally appeared in the Strategic Grantsmanship blog’s newsletter, Strategic Grantsmanship News (15 March 2017 issue). If you found this article informative, subscribe to Strategic Grantsmanship News by joining the mailing list and receive the latest strategies and information directly to your Inbox.

How to Find Research Funding Opportunities: A Quick Start Guide

01_grant-funding

Source: grants.nih.gov

It’s the first week of the New Year, and the government offices are back up and running. Funding announcements are beginning to trickle out again, and you can see mention of them popping up here and there. But where are the definitive lists of these opportunities posted when they are published? If you are trying to jump start your grant writing in the New Year but don’t know where to start,  this quick start guide will point you in the right direction so you can review the opportunities as soon as they are published.

Continue reading “How to Find Research Funding Opportunities: A Quick Start Guide”

Where to Find Sample Grant Applications (and How to Use Them)

sample
NIH/NIAID

Today, we support your New Year’s resolution to buckle down on grant writing by offering you information about where to find sample applications and how to use them:

When training people to write grants, I use examples and am often asked by my clients for sample proposals. Obviously, my client proposals are confidential, so sharing them is absolutely out of the question. I don’t even talk about my projects with my family, I’m a vault. So the question still stands, where can you find good sample applications?

Some grant writing books have samples, but usually they are discrete sections of the application, and context can be lost. That doesn’t help the new grant writer get the sense of how the sections of the application all fit together. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) web site has a very well thought-out grant preparation section that you should definitely investigate, but it lacks samples as well. However, one of the NIH’s institutes, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), has an application development section with sample applications and summary statements for R01, R03, R21, R21/R33, and F31 opportunities, and sample applications for the SBIR/STTR applications: R41, R42, R43, and R44.

These are samples of well-written applications, or, as NIAID puts it, “sound examples of good grantsmanship.” However, some of these sample applications were written in response to older opportunities, and so they may not reflect the current form sets or requirements. Their value, as the value of any sample of writing should be, is not in detailed “copying” of the approach, but in demonstrating how ideas are articulated in each section and how the sections hang together to form the complete application.

Where can using sample applications go wrong? Seeing these or any other writing examples as “templates” is a mistake. As the saying goes, you do you. Also, reading the sample applications without reading the sample summary statements leaves you with half the story. Take the time to read the feedback on the sample–it will give you great insight into what the reviewers like and dislike in applications.

Other Sample Materials

The page has other samples you will likely find useful, including a sample data sharing plan and sample model organism sharing plans. Links to the NIH’s biographical sketch samples will also be useful to most grant writers, if they haven’t found them already at the NIH site. I review NIH biosketch strategies in several places on this blog.

One Last Thought

Ask your mentor and members of your department who have had success in grant writing if they have any proposals you may review and use as a guide for your own proposals. Of course, keep in mind that under US law each proposal is automatically copyrighted and the academic rules regarding plagiarism apply (of course). And, while you are asking, it wouldn’t hurt to ask if those trusted colleagues would be willing to review your application and offer feedback. Your grant application should have ample internal review by multiple people in and outside of your discipline before submission. But that’s a topic for another blog entry.

 

 

New NIH Post-submission Materials Guidelines

You can update your NIH application post-submission. Read on to learn how (and for what circumstances).

A glacier cave located on the Perito Moreno Glacier in Argentina. (Photo credit: Martin St-Amant – Wikipedia – CC-BY-SA-3.0)

While the focus of my job is the time period before the application deadline, I do spend a considerable amount of time managing clients’ expectations and anxieties in that time between application submission and review. The timescale of grants can seem glacial to those who are new to the grant funding process, and so much can happen in the career of a researcher or to a research project between the time a grant application is submitted and the time it is reviewed. This applies equally to academic researchers and private sector researchers, because, although the SBIR/STTR timeline is shorter than the R01 timeline, for example, small businesses tend to have less of a financial cushion and a tighter timeline than academic research programs. When something good (promotion! publication!) or bad (loss of an animal colony due to natural disaster) happens, what can you do? Most people do presume that they can (and should!) contact the agency in the case of a natural disaster, but are at a loss over the ability to communicate less dramatic happenings, like publication. What many applicants don’t realize is that there is a mechanism by which they may update their applications post-submission. This is the topic of today’s blog, so take a deep cleansing breath, release that anxiety, and read on.

Continue reading “New NIH Post-submission Materials Guidelines”

What the New NIH Guidelines for Appendices Means for You

The NIH Application Guide has been updated again, this time to introduce two changes to submission guidelines (effective on and after 25 January 2017). The first (NOT-OD-16-129) further restricts what may be included in the application’s appendix, while the second (NOT-OD-16-130) simplifies and consolidates guidelines for post-submission materials. This post reviews the appendix guidelines. The new post-submission materials guidelines will be discussed in a later post. Continue reading “What the New NIH Guidelines for Appendices Means for You”

Strategies for the New NIH Biosketch Format (Part 4)

This is the last part in the series of posts explaining the new NIH biosketch format and elucidating some strategies writers may want to consider when developing this part of the application.

I think this will be my last post about the NIH biosketch form for a while. It’s dry stuff, even for the topic of grants. It’s hard to blog about grants, mostly because there is so much understandable anxiety out there around the topic of grants and research funding. In my in-person training sessions and consulting, I lighten the mood with a little dry humor, and usually all of the interaction in the sessions keeps the mood lighter, too. In my blog, however, I do keep the tone more serious overall, mostly because people can be really stressed about funding, and I want this space to be a resource they feel they can trust. That squeezes humor out the door a bit. Even so, dealing with the trauma investigators feel as a result of the new biosketch form has really bummed me out, so I really just need to finish up this series and move on. As usual, though, I welcome any questions folks may have! I don’t have all the answers, but I do have some strategies and some good questions to think about. Usually that’s what people need more than a stock answer, anyway. Continue reading “Strategies for the New NIH Biosketch Format (Part 4)”

How to Explain Gaps in Your NIH Biosketch

You have the opportunity in the NIH biosketch to explain any gaps in your research productivity. Usually the question is, will saying I took time off for family obligations affect the perception of me? The answer is it shouldn’t, but it might. Here’s how you handle it.

You have the opportunity in the NIH biosketch to explain any gaps in your research productivity. Military service, family obligations, illness, and disability are the main reasons for gaps that quickly come to mind, but those are not the only reasons one may have for a gap. Explanation of any gap is not required, and many female researchers with whom I have discussed this topic have viscerally negative reactions to this part of the Personal Statement (PS) section of the biosketch. Usually the question is, will saying I took time off for family obligations affect the perception of me? The answer is it shouldn’t, but it might. Here’s how you handle it. Continue reading “How to Explain Gaps in Your NIH Biosketch”

Strategies for the New NIH Biosketch Format (Part 2)

The new Contribution to Science section of the new NIH biosketch format is what seems to be exercising researchers the most. While comments in response to the initial announcement about these changes on Dr. Sally Rockey’s blog cover a wide range of anxieties pertaining to this change, the angst seems to boil down in many (but not all) cases to questions about length and motivation. Length is what it is, but regarding motivation: How do position yourself and phrase your descriptions if you don’t understand the motivation of the audience to which you are writing? In this post, I discuss the likely motivation behind this change and strategies for writing an effective, competitive Contribution to Science section.

Yesterday’s post discussed how the new NIH biosketch format is raising the anxiety levels of many researchers. I stick with my assertion that the change is likely inevitable, so the strategic researcher will channel that energy currently fueling the anxiety into developing a new, strategic, biosketch in the new format. Yesterday I reviewed some basic strategic concepts behind the biosketch in general, and today I will discuss some strategies specific to the new format of the NIH biosketch.

Continue reading “Strategies for the New NIH Biosketch Format (Part 2)”

NIH Announces Genomic Data Sharing Policy

Today, Dr. Sally Rockey, Deputy Director for Extramural Research at the NIH, announced in her blog that the NIH has published the final NIH Genomic Data Sharing Policy. This policy requires that researchers proposing research that will result in “large-scale human or non-human genomic data” provide a genomic data sharing plan in their application for NIH funding (unless otherwise explicitly stated in the funding announcement). Continue reading “NIH Announces Genomic Data Sharing Policy”