The best way to proceed is to give careful consideration to the donor’s critiques and decide whether you should reapply or not. Before you decide what to do, you need to determine whether the application is fixable.

How to Decide What to Do

• Contact the Program Officer for feedback. Ask him/her: (1) what his/her assessment of your proposal is; (2) whether the panel reviewers were enthusiastic about your idea; (3) if there are additional problems not addressed in the reviewer’s summary document sent to you; and (4) what your options may be.
• If the reviewers noted many fixable problems, it is good news, as it demonstrates that they are interested in your idea and that the application is worth fixing.
• If you have to revise more than 50% of your proposal, it is best to rewrite it altogether. If the revisions required are less extensive, then it is best to follow the rules for an amended application.
• If the scores of your proposal are strong, consider amending and resubmitting as soon as possible.

How You Should Proceed

• If your decision is to revise the original application, you should retain most of what you submitted, while addressing the reviewers’ concerns. That way, the next review group will look at the application in the context of the previous critiques and how you addressed them.
• In the resubmission, capitalize on your strengths and eliminate or revise the noted weaknesses.
• Respond to all reviewers’ comments and suggestions, even if you disagree with some. If you disagree, explain why and, if possible, provide additional information.
• Add new findings and make adjustments that you believe will strengthen your proposal.
• Address all items mentioned in the summary statement sent to you; however, remember that you are not limited to those.
• There is always the possibility of not resubmitting right away. The reasons might be: (1) you need to wait until you have the strongest possible application; and (2) you need time to polish your application.

Ultimately, the decision to resubmit depends on the various factors mentioned above. If the application has flaws outside of the idea itself, you should fix them and proceed with a resubmission. If, on the other hand, the idea is flawed, weak or not innovative, you should go back to the drawing board.

Most importantly, you should not be discouraged, as success rates for first submissions can be as low as 12%; thus, you are not alone. The encouraging news is that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has anecdotal evidence that applicants who resubmit have as much as 50% greater chance of being funded.

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Before You Begin

• Assume that it does not take long to write the proposal, and that you can quickly gather what is needed to submit the grant in a few days.
• The Request for Application (RFA) is not meant for you to review carefully. It is just gibberish that some office at your institution will figure out and just let you know what is important for you to follow. This is secretarial work, and you received your doctorate, which makes you above all of these beside-the-point particulars.
• Don’t bother to ask the opinions of your colleagues about your project. They may steal your good idea and then you will not be able to be promoted and get tenure. Be certain to keep your ideas to yourself. The more you share, the more vulnerable you will be.

Writing the Proposal

• Don’t bother stating a goal, hypotheses and objectives. Just assume that the reviewers are smart enough to understand what these are via your methodology.
• Remember to use specific aims and objectives that are all dependent on each other. This way you can use the experiments over and over again.
• It is important to speak about innovation and transformative ideas, especially if you are writing to the National Science Foundation (NSF) or the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Just tell the reviewers that your proposal is transformative and that it constitutes “out of the box” thinking. If you say it enough times, they will understand and believe that it is transformative. After all, if you say so, it must be so. It would be good if you bold and underline these words because the reviewers want them to stand out.
• Since you have done this research so many times, why not cut and paste from other grants, so you can prove that you have worked on your proposal before? Really, do not be concerned about formatting. Reviewers will understand that busy people do not have time to pay attention to such irrelevant details. They will know you are too important to be bothered by such immaterial minutiae.
• Don’t forget to use lots of jargon and acronyms and don’t bother to define them. If, on the other hand, you want to help the reviewers, who in your opinion should know what you are talking about, just define your jargon somewhere in the middle of the proposal. Be certain to write in long paragraphs, and include your definitions somewhere in that narrative. After all, the reviewers need to work for the money they receive to review your proposal. Serving as a reviewer is not a vacation, and your proposal will give them something to do.
• It is important that you talk about things that all good scholars talk about, such as publications and conference presentations. Just let the reviewers know that when the time comes, you will publish in important journals and give many presentations.
• Don’t bother with such miniscule fine points as discussing what you will do if your data does not turn out the way you expect. After all, things always go as planned.
• If your project involves work that you have done before, don’t bother to mention your preliminary data because you will just be repeating yourself. Everyone should assume that the difficult design you are presenting is justified.
• Impress upon reviewers your concern for global warming by using all the space on each page. Leaving white space on a page is just wasteful. If you are a good steward of the environment, you should abide by this rule at all times.
• Don’t bother with grammar, spelling, transitions, and uniformity. A good idea is a good idea, and a nice informal writing style will make reviewers feel like they are reading an email from an old friend.

Illustrations

• Using illustrations and graphs is a waste of good space. Use them as little as possible, and just include them on some pages without references. After all, the reviewers can get some good exercise by moving their fingers from page to page.
• In your illustrations use as many extra boxes and arrows as you can to demonstrate how well you can draw complex ideas. Try to stay clear of narratives that explain these visuals. The more complex a visual is, the more it will impress the reviewers.

Second Submissions

• If your proposal is a second submission, tell the reviewers off. They just did not get the point, and this will be your chance to let them know that they do not know what they are doing, especially since they have turned down a proposal that you said was transformative.

Reviewers

• Since panelists want to prove how smart they are, don’t bother speaking about experiments and tests. The smart ones will figure these out and tell the group, so they can shine with their remarks.
• Use interesting subheadings and label your objectives. Then label your methodology in a way that does not relate to the objectives. This will be an important challenge for reviewers. It will even further confirm their intelligence.
• When it comes to citations from your literature, use them from as many sources as possible, whether they pertain to your project or not. You want to demonstrate that you are a well-read scholar and can use citations from everyone. Your reviewers will be impressed by the Renaissance researcher that you are.

Submitting the Proposal

• When submitting through Grants.gov, wait until everyone else has submitted, so that you have an easy time with the process that others think is so difficult. A good time to start this is somewhere between 3:30 to 4:00 p.m., the day that it is due.

One would not think that the above offenses are routinely committed by proposal writers. It is however a given that grantees are often rushed, not quite prepared, overestimate their abilities and underestimate the complexity of the process. The above 20 faulty approaches will guarantee the rejection of your proposal.

The post 20 Ways to Fail at Grant Proposal Writing appeared first on Grant Training Center Blog.

1. Failure to follow submission guidelines

Many Federal agencies, including the NSF, will return proposals without review. The simple reason given is that the guidelines were not followed. Few events are as frustrating as losing a grant competition because the margins on your proposal were a quarter-inch too wide or a mandatory section was missing. This is perhaps the easiest flaw to address in a rejected proposal. Researchers must become students of the Request for Application (RFA) to ensure their applications do not stop at this stage.

2. Poorly written proposals

Proposals that make the reviewers question the author’s credibility as a researcher are fatal. Poorly written proposals, including mistakes such as poor grammar and misspellings, can detract from your idea. If you have a good idea, you must present it in the best possible light to beat the competition. Ideally you can have your proposal professionally reviewed and edited. Alternatively, you should send it to a naïve reader and a grammarian. Each will provide necessary information that pertains to the readability and communication of your ideas to the reviewers.

3. Failure to immediately address the purpose of the proposal

The first sentence of the first paragraph should be what the proposal is about. Unfortunately, it is not unusual to not see the purpose of the research until several sentences into the first paragraph. Since the ratings of your proposal often depend on the ease of finding the information about your request, you must be obvious and direct. It is imperative that you begin the first paragraph with: “The research objective of this proposal is…”

4. The scientific investigation is not methodical, repeatable and verifiable

The probability of reaching your objectives depends on your methodology. You must be able to clearly state how your project will unfold, and describe how you will conduct your research. Success also depends on your project being repeatable by other researchers. With the wave of rescinded grants and questionable research results making their way into mainstream news, accountability and complete objectivity are absolute necessities. Your research must be verifiable. In other words, can you show that the results you claim are true?

5. Not stating the research objectives appropriately

The statement of your research objective should lead you directly to your methodology. If it does not, you don’t have a clear statement of your research objective. To quote the NSF, the acceptable ways to state a research objective are:

1. The research objective of this proposal is to test the hypothesis H.
2. The research objective of this proposal is to measure parameter P with accuracy A.
3. The research objective of this proposal is to prove the conjecture C.
4. The research objective of this proposal is to apply method M from disciplinary area D to solve problem P in disciplinary area E.

At the end of the day, it is important to understand that a research proposal submitted for funding is not a manuscript, a paper for publication, nor a novel. It is a request with clear objectives and methodology. Also, adhering to the RFA guidelines may require sections that are not directly related to your research, such as Broader Impacts and the inclusion of underrepresented groups. Selling your idea depends on remembering that you have to convince the reviewers of the need for your research in the clearest, most understandable, and logical manner. As the NIH asks us to remember: “Think of yourself as a used car salesman, selling a used car to a group of seasoned used car salesmen.”

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