Major proposal blunders and how to avoid them

The ability to attract extramural funding is essential to the efforts of most faculty to build and maintain an internationally recognized research program. However, winning grant support has never been more challenging. Fortunately, proposal-writing is a skill that can be developed and refined. This workshop helped USU researchers hone their grant-writing skills by learning how to avoid common—and painful—proposal blunders from a panel of highly successful and experienced grant writers and reviewers.    

Here’s some of the advice that was given by highly successful and experienced grant writers and reviewers on learning how to avoid common (and painful) proposal blunders.

Think first: While this may seem obvious, people will often dive into writing their proposal before they’ve thought through what they want to communicate. There should be a good idea and a good approach at the center of the proposal. A good proposal should write a story that clearly states the problem and justifies why the research is necessary.

Know your audience: One of the biggest mistakes faculty make in proposal-writing is not knowing who their audience is. Proposals are judged by a panel of peers. The writer should keep in mind that the reviewers are not experts in the field of the proposal. Proposals should be written for the reviewer, not the proposal-writer.
Clearly describe the context: The reviewers often don’t know the context in which the proposal exists. A good proposal must explain previous literature, preliminary data, the situation and the team and the environment that the team will be working.

Know your budget: If the reviewers find the budget unreasonable, they will find the proposal unreasonable. If the proposal-writer doesn’t know how much the research costs, how will they know how to conduct the research? If the research is significant to a relatively small problem or small community the budget should be smaller. A smaller grant can still get chosen, but the budget should be kept to the scale of the research.

Think about resources: A proposal must include time, money and personnel necessary. Considering these early helps avoid an overly ambitious proposal.

Know how the review process works: Each grant will be reviewed and scored by three reviewers. If a grant’s average score is in the lower half, the grant will not be discussed. If it ranks in the top half it will get about 15 minutes of discussion. The proposal needs to be clear, easy to understand and show relevance to get past the first stages of review.

Write the review yourself: The one thing that both the reviewer and the proposal-writer are given is the criteria. A big mistake that faculty make is not specifically answering the criteria in the proposal. A good proposal is written in a way that the criteria is so clearly answered the reviewer doesn’t have to do any work, they could copy and paste from the proposal. If the criteria asks for a summary of significance a clear proposal could say “The proposed research is significant because…” If the criteria asks for a summary of innovation a clear proposal could say “The proposed research is innovative because…”

Revise, revise, revise: Just because there is an idea for research doesn’t mean it’s a really good idea. A good proposal-writer will talk to people they trust to be brutally honest with them. They have to swallow their pride and be willing to accept and fix criticism. The proposal should be reviewed by people with a number of different conceptual and technical outlooks. Proposal- writers should keep trying and refining as much as they can. If possible, they should get more industry representatives and growers involved in the creation and critique of their proposal.