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Grant Proposals: Best Writing Practices

Mathilda Harris

Good writing is a crucial skill, no matter what type of proposal you’re submitting. Clearly communicating your project or research idea is the only way to win a grant, which is why so many organizations hire professional grant writers. However, doing so can be prohibitively expensive for smaller organizations, and there is the added concern that the hired writer will not understand the subject matter well enough to articulate and compose a winning proposal. The best writing practices listing below will help you hone your writing ability and wow the reviewers, without the cost of a grant writer.

Concision

Most RFPs have firm page limits, and keeping within those limits is paramount to winning the grant. Keep an eye out for sentences that stretch beyond three lines, or words that take up a quarter of a line. Constantly ask yourself whether what you have written can be said with fewer or shorter words without straying from your intended meaning.

Clarity

This is the partner of concision. Simple language can convey your meaning without losing reviewers in a haze of jargon or tangled sentences. Your best safeguard for clarity is to have an educated lay person read your proposal. He or she can point out sections that may be confusing or difficult to follow.

Organization

Even the best writers can lose track of their point while writing a lengthy document. The last thing you want is for reviewers to flip between pages looking for connections and themes. Creating an outline for each section of your written proposal can help keep you on the right track during the writing process.

Conventions

Formal sentences do not always sound natural. You must decide whether an academic style or a slightly casual tone is appropriate, based on your donor. A naïve reader can tell you whether your language reflects the style you want, either casual or formal. Be sure to follow the conventions of your field. If you are seeking federal funding, it’s a safe bet that formal writing is what the reviewers will want to see.

Transitions

One of the most difficult aspects of proposal writing is getting the different sections to transition smoothly. This is where your organizational outline can make a difference. If you can see how the pieces of the puzzle fit together, you can create transitions easily.

Variation

As you read through your proposal, keep an eye on the first word of the sentences. Do you constantly start with “The” or “There”? If so, take a second look at the sentences and try to mix up which initial words you use. Repetition can lull reviewers, causing them to lose interest in your project or research.

Purpose

Each section of your proposal serves a different purpose, and should be written accordingly. For instance, your abstract distills your proposal down to a single page. As such, it will not contain the same explanatory sentences featured in your project narrative or methodology. Your budget section may be further condensed and contain bulleted lists. Keeping the different purposes in mind can help you assess how to write the sections of your proposal.

Passion

Readers know when an author is not invested in the work. Redundancy and heavy use of adjectives are telltale signs of a writer who does not care for the subject matter. Consider why you want to win the grant, then use these reasons as motivation while you write. You must convince the reviewers that the need for this project or research is real and immediate.

Audience

No matter which section you are writing, keep in mind that the reviewers are your ultimate audience. They are the people you must persuade to fund your idea. Keep the evaluation criteria in the back of your head as you write, but also do your best to make their job easy. No reviewer wants to flip back and forth between pages to understand what you are trying to say.

Action

Whenever possible, write with an active voice. The passive voice bores and can sometimes confuse readers, and some reviewers may find it pretentious. When you use action verbs, you create movement within the proposal and convey your enthusiasm for the project or research. The active voice keeps reviewers interested in what you have to say, which increases your chances for success.

Proofreading

Find the person in your office or department who is a stickler for grammar and ask him or her to review your proposal. He or she can address grammar, spelling, and many other small issues that might otherwise go unnoticed. Do not leave this step until the last minute. If the edits suggested alter your page count, you may to write or cut content to comply with the RFP.

Timeliness

The most important aspect of writing your proposal is allowing enough time to finish well ahead of the deadline. If anything changes regarding your project or research, you will have a buffer of time to make the necessary adjustments to your proposal. On the other hand, rushing through your proposal can make the reviewers feel as though you are not well-organized, which can lead to lower chances of success.

Communicating your idea to reviewers that may have different levels of understanding of your field can only be done with excellent writing. I always recommend that you have three sets of eyes read your finished proposal – your colleagues, the lay person, and most importantly, the editor. The latter provides you with concision and clarity, which are key to effective communication. You, on the other hand, are responsible for conveying your persuasive argument with superior writing skills.

Mathilda Harris

Director at Grant Training Center
Over the past 18 years, she has written grants, conducted capital campaigns, developed strategic plans for grant procurement, and assisted individuals and institutions to write winning proposals for various donors.

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One thought on “Grant Proposals: Best Writing Practices”

  1. The PO job is very different betewen NIH and NSF (I’ve been on about a dozen panels for each, and have some professional colleagues who are permanent as well as past NSF rotators).NSF has good POs and bad POs. A subset of the good and the bad know how to manipulate the review process so they have a large say on what gets funded (depending on the division, this subtlety is often lost on the panelists). A subset of NSF program officers think they know a lot about their field but are 20 years out of date, and some are downright crazy and/or have an agenda (NSF doesn’t have a process, as far as I can tell, of seriously evaluating them). Some are excellent, provide great customer service, and take their job seriously. So they’ve got them all. I think that is part of the problem – no standards or quality control. NSF culture, and even the process for reviewing grants and deciding on funding, varies dramatically betewen directorates. Some use panels, some use ad hoc reviewers, some use ad hoc reviewers followed by a panel. At the end of the day, the PO has a degree of discretion in funding decisions within a given classification (Highly Competitive, Competitive, Not Competitive).It is my impression that many NSF POs were not exactly successful academics (but some were). However, the two do not necessarily correlate. I’ve known at least one mediocre academic who became an excellent PO. I’ve seen POs run panels that are stretched well beyond the panelists’ expertise comfort level, I’ve also encountered panelists who were borderline incompetent and had done nothing in a field in 15+ years, but were considered experts on that topic for reviewing those proposals.Some NSF POs are rotators (1-2 years on leave from academia), and others are permanent. Some directorates utilize the rotators as their recruiting ground for the permanent positions. (In general, I think this is a good thing, but I don’t know how common the practice is).I might be sounding cynical about NSF. I believe in their mission, but think they are seriously understaffed, need some clear vision and direction (like NIH did with their Roadmap), and some operationally-minded folks to put processes in place to evaluate programs as well as the performance of program officers.NIH program officers have much less say in what gets funded (the council sets priorities), and you live and die by the score a lot more. However, a good NIH PO will shop a borderline fundable proposal to other institutes and try to get it funded. POs do not run the review process (the SRAs do), but a good PO will attend a panel and give you a briefing of how the discussion went. Sometimes the summary the panel writes does not really convey the weighting of the issues and how they were discussed.It is also my impression that NIH SRAs and POs have much more time for career development, staying on top of their field, and doing a good job, while NSF POs are spread rather thin and don’t have enough hours in their day. I’ve known of good NSF POs who left for NIH and are much happier there.Then there is DoD, where the POs get to basically call all the funding shots. Unlike NSF (as far as I can tell), DoD actually holds POs accountable for the success or failure of their portfolios.Anything I say here could be wrong, and is based on personal observation, experience on panels, and buying people beers.

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