đź’ˇ Grantsmanship Tips

💡 Grant Writing Tip: Developing a pitch 

In grant writing, the One-pager is your proposal pitch. It’s what you would send to a program officer, colleague, and/or potential collaborator to get feedback and check scope, and it is a critical step in the proposal development process. Crafting a One-pager requires you to crystallize the framework and rationale of your proposed idea, outline the objectives and activities of your project, and match your goals to the funding opportunity and sponsor. All of which needs to be done in a clear, concise, jargon-free way.

đź’ˇ Grant Writing Tip: Making the case for your research impact

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. 

đź’ˇ Grant Writing Tip: Finding Funding

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.

đź’ˇ Grant Writing Tip: Determining Project Scope

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. 

đź’ˇ Grant Writing Tip: Easing Reviewer Fatigue

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.