Tag: grantsmanship

Post-submission Strategy, Revisited

Last week, the NIH Office of Extramural Research posted a brief blog entry about the submission of patent citations post-submission. However, I found the blog entry left out a key bit of strategy that I share with you here.

Last week, the NIH Office of Extramural Research (the office that handles funding for researchers external to the NIH, which has its own intramural scientists and funding opportunities as well) posted a brief blog entry about the submission of patent citations post-submission (meaning, after the application has already been submitted) in its Extramural Nexus blog. However, I found the blog entry left out a key bit of strategy that I thought I would share with you here. Continue reading “Post-submission Strategy, Revisited”

Want to Learn 5 Simple Ways to Win More Grant Funding?

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Sure! you say—if getting grant funding were simple, we would all be rolling in research funding! Winning grant funding is challenging, but if you consistently follow these 5 simple rules for grant writing, you will find your grant writing becomes more efficient and successful.

 

4 Submission Strategies (Easy!)

“The submission process is the culmination of weeks and months of hard work by you and your team. Although you may feel “so done” with it all, submission is not the point at which to get careless and leave things to the quiddities of fate. Follow the simple rules outlined here and you will find submissions less likely to induce anxiety.”

For some, grant submission induces more anxiety than the writing of the proposal itself. I am sympathetic. I have been writing, editing, and consulting on grants for many years, but before pressing “submit” I compulsively check fonts, measure margins, and scrutinize PDFs for possible errors caused by document conversion. These are the things that keep me up at night, so today I have some brief grant submission strategies based on questions I have recently been asked.

Continue reading “4 Submission Strategies (Easy!)”

Updating Your Business Plan–Whether You Are a Small Business or a Researcher

The business and funding climate constantly changes, so updating your business plan allows you to identify the key elements of success and objectively assess the current state of those elements in your business.

Around this time every year, I update my business plan and encourage my collaborators–whether business or scientific–to do the same. The business and funding climate constantly changes, so updating your business plan allows you to identify the key elements of success and objectively assess the current state of those elements in your business. This topic has gotten a little more traction than usual this autumn with the buzz around the proposed changes to the US federal tax code (which look to have a number of direct and indirect impacts on independent consultants and remote employees), so I thought I would write a brief post of encouragement with some tips and resources. Continue reading “Updating Your Business Plan–Whether You Are a Small Business or a Researcher”

Grants Are Business


Those of you who follow my blog have probably noticed a lack of blogging of late–I am finishing my MBA, and there is quite a bit to do in these last weeks of the program. My first graduate degree was in biology, and the final weeks were actually much more relaxing than the months of research and writing that had preceded them. I am currently in a scramble to get things done, and to get done. So I will be brief.

In the MBA theme, I will share the key thesis of my grantsmanship strategy: A grant proposal is a business proposal. Boom. Pretty simple. But I am always amazed by how academicians want to resist the concept that they are, fundamentally, selling an idea and their team’s labor. There is some feeling among academics that the grant proposal is somehow more intellectual, more precious, than a business proposal. I’m here to tell you it is not. Rant, yell, cry, go through the five stages of grief, but at some point arrive to the realization that you are asking for money for your idea and a plan to create the end product . . . which is a business proposal.

Once you come to grips with the realization that a grant proposal is nothing more than a business proposal, you will be liberated and more efficient. At the highest level, if you are a strategic, efficient person, you will research the needs and perspective of the funder and have a much better understanding of the direction your proposal should take. That is, if you are strategic, you will do your research into what the funder is looking for and give it to them. This effect will ripple through all aspects of the development of your project and proposal, and you will produce a more competitive, fundable proposal. Boom.

Biographical Sketches Brief

Although called different things by different agencies and foundations, a biographical sketch by any other name is still a biographical sketch, and it is an important part of your grant application. One very important purpose of the biographical sketch is to indicate to the funding entity that the assembled project team has the expertise to perform the proposed project from start to finish. I have seen solid grant proposals rejected by reviewers because it was unclear that the project team had the expertise required to complete the project. In some cases, the teams did have the expertise, but their biographical sketches did not reflect it.

The good news is that the solution is straightforward: simply allot some time during the proposal development process to carefully comb through the proposal and identify the tasks required by the project and who is responsible for each task. Then, assemble the team’s biographical sketches and compare them to this list of responsibilities. The biographical sketches should clearly indicate that the appropriate team members have the experience and expertise necessary to successfully complete the tasks at hand.

If you complete this exercise early enough in the development process, you will have enough time to address any gaps. In some cases, a biographical sketch may simply be incomplete, but in others you may need to acquire the requisite training or add a collaborator with the training and expertise to your team. In the end, time spent reviewing your team’s biographical sketches is time very well spent in this time of declining funding, low success rates, and increased competition.

The Golden Rule

The field of strategic communication encompasses many elements, including military and business communications, internal and external communications, public relations, marketing, and advertising, just to name a few. My interest has been in identifying and defining the key elements of strategic communication and developing scalable writing techniques professionals can apply to their specific area of interest. There are many sources for learning more about strategic communication theory, since it is a field of academic study; however, my approach in this blog is to offer practical, accessible strategic communication techniques developed during my career as a professional, strategic writer.

Today, we will start with The Golden Rule. There are many elements to strategic communication in business, but perhaps the most important one is The Golden Rule. This isn’t the rule about doing unto others as you’d have them do unto you. That’s nice and all, but remember we’re talking business here. The Golden Rule to which I’m referring is the one that goes something like this: He who has the gold makes the rules. This idea will thread through my entries as we go along, because so many elements of strategic communication support the alignment of your content and how it is presented to meet the expectations, desires, and abilities of your audience (your readers). The Golden Rule asks you to identify not just the message you want to impart, but to define exactly what information your audience expects and how this information is best presented to the audience.

A good example of The Golden Rule in action can be found in grant writing, in part because there actually is gold involved (i.e., funding). If you are writing a grant proposal for a large Federal agency like the National Institutes of Health (NIH), for example, no matter how great a research idea you may have, it will only be funded if your research question and the proposed outcomes of your research align with the mission of the NIH. Identifying the underlying mechanism of a disease process that affects millions of people annually is something likely to be funded, because the NIH has an interest public health and basic research. Although research into the history of chytrid fungus in museum specimens would be a great research idea for a herpetologist interested in identifying the role of chytrid fungus over time in the decline of amphibian species, the research does not align with the mission of the NIH, and so would not be fundable by that agency. Applying The Golden Rule, you would ask yourself, then, with whose mission does my question about chytrid fungus align? Perhaps the National Science Foundation (NSF), a private foundation with a conservation mission or an interest in herpetology, or even a natural science museum with a large herp collection would be appropriate audiences for your message.

The Golden Rule, even when money is not directly at stake, simply reminds strategic communicators to identify and define the audience for a message before determining the content and the means of the communication. By identifying and defining your audience, you are more likely to understand the expectations and needs of your readers and provide them with the information they need in a medium that is most effective for communication of your message.

So, you may ask, that’s fine and good, but what is the end game? Most strategic communication, whether it is a business plan for a start up in need of venture capital or an advertisement for a product, has an effective call to action as a goal. What do you want your audience to do as a result of your strategically, effectively imparted message? Fund your business, support your research, or buy your product? Defining your call to action is as important as defining your message and identifying your audience.

For this blog entry, my call to action is this: Think of a message you would like to communicate and what you would like to result from your message (your call to action). Then identify the audience for your message and apply The Golden Rule, reshaping your communication to align with the motivation of its audience. By doing so, you have established the foundation for building an effective, strategic communication.