New pharma startups have more non-dilutive funding opportunities than they may realize–they just have to know where to look and open their minds.
Sometimes, US-based small startups find their evolving R&D plan, funding, or business collaborations make them suddenly ineligible for SBIR funding they had targeted. For example, clinical trial costs or even lab work would be cheaper overseas, so, just like that, eligibility slips away.
What to do? Continue reading “The EU’s World-Class R&D Funding and Support for Innovators”
Recently, the question arose as to whether it is appropriate to use emphasis (bold, italic, underline) in an NIH grant abstract. Here is my advice!
Recently, the question arose as to whether it is appropriate to use emphasis (bold, italic, underline) in an NIH grant project summary/abstract. After all, the person pointed out, this section is posted in NIH RePORTER in plain text, without any emphasis. Here is my reply to that query:
Emphasis is a strategy targeting the reviewer audience. More specifically, it assists the reviewers who were not assigned the proposal for primary or secondary review and may be looking at the package for the first time in real time in the review session.
With that audience in mind, my strategy is to emphasize key terms to visually ‘index’ the paragraph to provide multiple easy access points to the material, since usually it’s solid text. You can emphasize the key structural elements of the proposal, like ‘long-term goal,’ ‘rationale,’ ‘specific aims,’ etc. But you can also sparingly emphasize other key words, ‘innovative’ or ‘novel,’ for example, to draw the reader’s eye to that key information.
Just like elsewhere in the application, emphasis should be used sparingly in this section. If everything’s important, nothing’s important. In such a constricted space, restricting emphasis to the key words or phrases creates that ‘indexing’—emphasizing whole sentences as one might in a longer section muddies the waters and undermines the value of the emphasis. (Also, I am more familiar with using underlined italics [rather than, say bold], for this purpose. I tend to reserve bold for section headings and the specific aims.)
So yes, when writing or editing the project summary/abstract section (hereafter let’s use simply “abstract” to keep things succinct) of an NIH grant, it is not only appropriate but strategic to use emphasis to assist reviewers in understanding your proposed project. A fellow editor who agreed with this approach also suggested that sometimes you can take strategic use of emphasis to focus a reader’s attention a step further. If your project is wildly transformative and the other elements of your proposal are not unusual, she advocates limiting the application of emphasis to only the description of the transformative element(s) of the proposal.
Emphasis plays an important role in strategic grantsmanship, not only in the abstract but throughout the proposal. When used consistently and conservatively, emphasis helps the reader distinguish the main points of the proposal. As I alluded to in my initial response, there is an expectation that certain elements of proposals will be emphasized. To elaborate, not meeting those formatting expectations can distract experienced reviewers. Why make it hard for people to give you funding? Meet expectations and let your innovative ideas be what captures their attention.
While most grant writers would prefer to think readers and reviewers are soaking up every word of their proposal, it is important to acknowledge that each proposal has multiple audiences to which the writer must appeal. Strategic use of emphasis provides one of the most useful tools for mastering that complicated task.
A recent bug in the NIH submission system replaced some PDF files with blank pages. It wasn’t because the applicants were people of few words, it was a problem with the portal’s software. So, all those blank proposals were the NIH’s problem to solve, right? Wrong. Continue reading “Always Do This after You Press “Submit””
Everyone can benefit from being more cyber aware! We have partnered with Duke City Consulting to offer our followers a month of cybersecurity tips and tricks.
Everyone–small businesses, large organizations, individuals–can benefit from being more cyber aware, which is why Strategic Grantsmanship is partnering with Duke City Consulting’s Cyber Group (DCC Cyber) for National Cybersecurity Awareness Month (NCSAM). DCC Cyber specializes in plain language cybersecurity for small and emerging businesses, from freelancers and solopreneurs to lean startups and consultancies.
Continue reading “How Safe Is Your Data? Join Us for National Cybersecurity Awareness Month”
Learn about common collaborative models and about how to develop strategic grant proposals that will get your team funded.
Wondering how to write a strategic and compelling collaborative research grant proposal? Mark your calendars! I will be presenting on this topic with my colleague, Damiana Chiavolini (from UT Southwestern) in San Diego this November. Join us!
AMWA Conference 2019
Sheraton San Diego Hotel & Marina
November 8, 2019, 9:00 – 10:30 am
San Diego, CA
Whether a research question will be explored at the bench, in the clinic, or in the community, funders allow or, increasingly, expect funding proposals to involve shared leadership. Sometimes, an interdisciplinary approach to a question demands team science involving the collaboration of multiple research teams across institutions and countries, while other questions require researchers to combine forces with community stakeholders to perform patient-centered outcomes research or other community-engaged research. The savvy funding seeker realizes that the collaborative and shared-leadership models that support the execution of this research introduce an element of perceived risk not found in the lone-researcher model, and reviewers need assurance that the benefits of the proposed approach outweigh the risks. Learn about common collaborative models and about how to develop strategic grant proposals that will get your team funded. Funding opportunities discussed will include NIH, PCORI, and CPRIT MIRA.
Presented by Kelly Byram, MS, MBA, ELS of Duke City Consulting with Damiana Chiavolini, MS, PhD, of UT Southwestern Medical Center. For details about this session and more information about the American Medical Writers Association Conference 2019, visit the conference web site.
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”
All business is global, so your funding should be too! Consider global non-dilutive funding options–here’s how to start.
If you are a start-up entrepreneur in search of non-dilutive funding for your business, you know that to be successful you need to go big or go home. Searching for funding beyond the Four Fs (Family, Founders, Friends, and Fools)—whether through venture capitalists or government programs—requires the same amount of vision you invested in developing your initial business idea. Increasingly, businesses in many industries benefit from having a global reach, not just in sales and supply chain, but in financing as well.
In the last issue of Strategic Grantsmanship News (March 2018), I wrote about how many businesses (large and small) are eligible for non-dilutive funding through US government grants and contracts. In fact, in my snapshot of available funding on the day I wrote that piece last month, businesses were eligible for more R&D non-dilutive funding opportunities than were academic institutions, which are typically considered the prime beneficiaries of research grants.
That is all great news for businesses, but the US government is not the only non-dilutive game in town. In fact, it may not be the best option for your business. In addition to incredibly low success rates, the lengthy process and the limitations on investment and personnel in some programs can be prohibitive for some start-ups with global scope in industries with rapid development paradigms.
I encourage businesses to consider non-dilutive opportunities from other countries, either in addition to or in lieu of the US government funding (depending on individual circumstances). I recommend considering countries that have multiple opportunities and commercialization support programs. One country that fits the bill is Ireland. The Irish workforce is ample and well educated, and, in the past decade or so, Ireland has made great strides in developing an ecosystem of innovation for global multinationals, R&D centers, and start-ups to take advantage of this talented workforce. Today, Ireland, with a population just under 5M, is the 7th largest exporter of pharmaceuticals with a GDP in 2016 of €238.2B ($294.1B). As a member of the European Union (EU), Ireland offers companies access to the EU market. It is also worth noting that, post-Brexit, Ireland is the only English-speaking country in the Eurozone.
6 Strategies for Pursuing Global Non-Dilutive Funding Opportunities
Interested in exploring your non-dilutive funding opportunities? Here are six strategies for pursuing these opportunities:
Resources
Where do you start? Two organizations that offer funding and other support for businesses in Ireland include:
Our group at Duke City Consulting is experienced in international funding and can help your team identify and pursue global opportunities. For more information, please visit our web site or contact us at (505)750-9272.
Seasoned PIs know that resubmissions generally have a much higher success rate than new submissions.
Seasoned grant seekers know that thick skin and abundant tenacity often separate the funded from the unfunded, and resubmission is just part of the process. Of course, getting comfortable with the concept of the sunk cost fallacy and being willing to walk away from untenable (read: unfundable) proposals is also a skill that will optimize your return on your valuable time.
Continue reading “Should I Resubmit?”
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
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