challenges

Proposal Rejection – Next Steps

You submit a grant proposal that you think has an excellent chance of success. Several weeks or months later you receive an email from the donor saying that it was not funded. Rejections can be difficult to swallow, especially since some reviewer comments might seem unjust. The best way to proceed is to give careful… read more

fail

20 Ways to Fail at Grant Proposal Writing

I have seen numerous proposals fail during my grant reviewing career. The reasons for this vary greatly. Some grantees fail due to a lack of understanding of the purpose of the grant, others due to time constraints. Although the following directions are of course meant ironically, it is not uncommon to see them in practice…. read more

NSF

Why Did My Research Proposal Fail?

The success rate for research proposals submitted to the National Science Foundation (NSF) is in the teens. So why do more than 80% of submissions fail? The reasons vary from poor writing, to not following directions, to a lack of examples. The major cause, however, is that many submissions are not research projects at all. For those that are,… read more