Today we reblog this piece from the NIH Extramural Nexus blog summarizing recently announced policy changes as a reminder to everyone (administrators, researchers, grant writers and editors, etc.) that substantial changes impacting grant proposals went into effect at the end of last month. Some of these changes can potentially impact your research design, recruitment plan, etc., so be sure to review these changes sooner rather than later… Continue reading “Reminder of Policy Changes — NIH Extramural Nexus”
Category: Grant Writing
Six Easy Online Tools Every Grant Seeker Should Use
Funders proliferate mission and vision statements across their communications, which should, in theory, make it easy for grant seekers to strategically align their applications with funders’ expectations. Often, however, mission and vision statements can be too broad to help individual grant seekers determine the goodness of fit for individual projects, resulting in a waste of time and effort.
Web sites can be useful resources if they are kept current, but they, too, are often formal and fairly general, and research highlighted on web sites provides a glance in the rearview mirror—that research was funded years ago, which doesn’t help you necessarily understand what’s winning awards now.
Here at Strategic Grantsmanship, it’s all about efficiency and how to win more grant money in less time. Time unnecessarily spent on the grants treadmill indiscriminately pursuing every opportunity that comes your way and might be a fit for your project keeps you away from what you really want to be doing, whether that’s working in the field or lab, running your business, or running with your dog. So here are six easy online tools I use to efficiently achieve insight into the current wants, needs, and interests of potential funders and accurately gauge if a funding opportunity is worth pursuing. Continue reading “Six Easy Online Tools Every Grant Seeker Should Use”
New Grant Samples! Get Them While They Are Fresh!
The confidential nature of research grants poses a challenge for new writers and researchers who are unfamiliar with grant proposals. The best way to learn how to write grants—by far—is to start writing grants as part of a team with experienced grant writers. This allows one to learn while doing under the tutelage of those who have honed their skills writing proposals for a variety of projects and funders. And, as I have said before, serving as a peer reviewer should be a required experience for every writer of grants.
For those unable to enter grant writing through these tried and true avenues, or for grant writers seeking to better understand what a funder’s “ideal” proposal looks like, sample grant proposals can prove quite valuable…and extremely hard to come by. For obvious reasons, these proposals are confidential. Getting a mentor or a colleague to share a proposal can seem a major victory, until you start asking yourself some key questions: Was this project funded? What were reviewers’ comments? What worked (and is worthy of emulation), and what did not? How old is this thing?
For all of these reasons and more, vetted samples of funded proposals can be invaluable to new writers of grants. Fortunately, some researchers share their funded proposals via funders’ web sites. After all, funders want applicants to understand what they are looking for so they can receive high-quality proposals.
Continue reading “New Grant Samples! Get Them While They Are Fresh!”