As researchers, we all have our specialist subjects. Whether yours is the result of a lifelong passion, a driving motivation to solve a problem, or a happy accident that you fell into, the importance of your research is something that seems obvious…to you. It is often more challenging to convince others about the benefits of your work and, in the case of grant writing, why they should fund your research. This is where being able to describe the impacts of your work becomes critical. 

You are likely reading this because you had a proposal rejected. If so, welcome to the club! The good news is that proposal rejection is just part of the process and provides you with an opportunity to improve your grantsmanship, and write a stronger proposal with a clearer vision.

As our team prepares to support University of California, Davis faculty apply for the 2025 National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER, it's a good time to share what we have planned for our researchers this season!

Our last tip focused on strategies for finding and vetting funding. Most often, we think of federal funders for research, but there are several other sources to support your work that you may not have considered yet!  

One of the most common questions that we get is, “Where do I find funding opportunities?”. For some, the volume of funding agencies and opportunities makes finding a specific call too overwhelming. For others, it may feel like many RFPs don’t quite fit with what you’re looking for. Either way, our team has some tips and tools to help you develop better (and hopefully easier!) strategies for finding funding.

Project scope—how much is too much, or not enough? A proposal deemed “too ambitious” may read as overly broad, too high-risk, or outside the skills and resources of the proposers. Alternatively, grants described as “not ambitious enough” may show limited impact or innovation. The challenge for grant writers lies in developing a competitive proposal that strikes a balance between the two. 

When learning about best practices for grant writing, you will often hear that you need to ease reviewer fatigue. But what does this actually mean? Think about how you feel after reading 20 student papers. Some are great and make it easy to award points; others make it very, very challenging. Perhaps those challenging papers are so poorly organized or presented that you cannot find the key talking points. Maybe critical components are missing altogether, or the student may have tried to fill the required pages with overly complicated words and long sentences.

When developing objective statements for your proposal, it’s important to think SMART. If you haven’t heard of SMART goal statements, the concept was originally published by George Doran in his 1981 article in Management Review. His concept provided managers with a way to “frame a statement of results to be achieved” by writing objectives that provide a clear, effective plan. The SMART framework translates very well to writing research objectives in your grant proposal.

There are many names for the document that informs applicants how to apply for specific funding opportunities: Request for Proposals (RFP), Request for Applications (RFA), Notice of Funding Opportunities (NOFO), Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA), and Broad Agency Announcement (BAA), are just a few. Regardless of what the agency calls it, this document will be critical to your grant writing process.