The first rule of writing? “Write to your audience!” For scientific and medical grant proposals, that audience comprises our human scientist and stakeholder peers. Or does it?
Continue reading “Has AI Changed Your Proposal’s Audience?”Tag: NIH grantsmanship
How to Write Strategic Grant Proposals for Research Collaborations
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.
Want to Learn 5 Simple Ways to Win More Grant Funding?
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 Quick Ways to Catch up on Critical Changes to Federal Grant Applications and Processes
The new year is a great time to recommit to your funding pursuit and do some deep work on crafting a funding strategy and drafting some proposals, but that energy will be misspent if you haven’t spent some time catching up with NIH policies effective in the new year. So here are 4 great sources for news everyone applying for funding should know.
Updated 12 December 2017.
Just a quick reminder to everyone to set some time aside over the holidays to review changes to NIH policy (e.g., clinical trials) before drafting a funding strategy for 2018. The new year is a great time to recommit to your funding pursuit and do some deep work on crafting a funding strategy and drafting some proposals, but that energy will be misspent if you haven’t spent some time catching up with NIH policies effective in the new year. So here are 4 great sources for news everyone applying for funding should know. Continue reading “4 Quick Ways to Catch up on Critical Changes to Federal Grant Applications and Processes”
Where to Find Sample Grant Applications (and How to Use Them)
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.
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”
Strategic Grantsmanship 