Writing a Grant Proposal

Generating an idea and identifying a potential funding source (or sources) is the hard part. Writing a proposal is relatively straight forward. The Office of Sponsored Programs can provide assistance in a variety of ways:
The earlier you involve us in the process, the more help we can provide.

Many funding sources will provide an outline for you to follow, or a series of questons for you to address. If the source does not, then follow a scheme like this:
  1. The Problem. First, establish the need for your project. What problem exists that cries out for a solution? Who is affected by this burning problem? What is the cost we pay for leaving this problem unsolved? Be as forceful and dramatic as you can without stooping to purple prose.
  2. The Solution. Second, show how you will solve this problem. Describe your project step by step, taking pains to demonstrate how each step will address the problem and promote a solution. Provide whatever information the reader will need to be persuaded, and no more.
  3. Evaluation. Third, describe how you will evaluate whether or not your solution solves the problem. Most sources require an extensive evaluation section. For those that don't include it anyway; the readers will be impressed that you are thinking that far ahead. Evaluations can be formal or informal, formative or summative, internal or external, depending on the project and the funding source. Make sure that your system of evaluation will, in fact demonstrate that the need described in the first part was addressed by the solution you propose in the second.
  4. Budget. Many reviewers look at the budget first, before they read the narrative. They assume that the budget shows what the proposal is all about in just a few pages. Consequently, your budget should serve as a brief summary of your project: detailed enough to give a clear idea, but concise enough to hold the reviewer's attention. The various items in the budget should follow the same order as the activities you propose in the narrative. If your project will receive funds from several sources (e.g. from UW-P match as well as from the funding source) make that clear in your budget. The Office of Sponsored Programs can help you prepare your budget, can tell you the correct fringe benefit and indirect cost rates, and can check your math.
There should be a clear, easily discernible relationship between these four parts. The problem section should focus on a particular need, the solution section should outline a specific series of activities which will address that need, the evaluation section should outline a method of evaluating how the solution met the problem, and the budget should show how much each element of the solution will cost and where the money will come from.

Remember to consider your audience when writing grant proposals. Most federal agencies recruit working faculty and researchers to review proposals; thus the readers are likely to be folks just like you, in a similar or related field. Therefore, you need not explain every technical term you use, but you should provide enough information to allow the educated layperson to make a judgement. Foundations and corporations frequently use in-house staff who are well-educated, but perhaps not in your field. Assume that these readers are educated laypersons who need a little more background information.

And remember that the point of your grant proposal is to get the grant. Many faculty become used to writing journal articles, monographs, reviews, etc., where the point is to reach a true and defensible conclusion. With that sort of writing you must consider all points of view, balance your judgement, and temper your enthusiasm. In many of the sciences, you use the passive voice to imply objectivity and conceal the passion you (presumably) felt when generating your ideas. But in grant proposals, you should not consider other points of view, you need not balance your judgement, you should not temper your enthusiasm. Enthusiasm, even passion, get the reviewer's attention. Except for proposals that will be reviewed by scientists, use the active voice. Don't conceal any relevant information, but don't include anything that is irrelevant to your argument just because it is the truth.

Finally, ask several people to read your proposal as if they were reviewers. Ask them to mark every place in the narrative where they were puzzled and had to page backwards for information, or had to look ahead to see where you were headed. Those places need work. Your narrative should provide the reviewers with every piece of information they need as they read along, so they never have to look backward or forward. The Office of Sponsored Programs will be delighted to read your proposal, of course, but you should also ask a colleague who has not seen it before to review it for you.

 

Budgets

Most government agencies put severe constraints on what can be included in your budget, on the maximum amount you can apply for, on indirect costs, etc. Pay attention to these specifications they provide. Foundations are usually less constrictive. But for both public and private sources, your budget should clearly and concisely state both where the money is going and where it is coming from. Most of the budgets I write follow a format something like this:

Requested of UWP Total (funding contribution source)
  1. Personnel - (list all the personnel who will work on the project, their rates of pay, and the percentage of their time they will contribute to the project)
  2. Fringe benefits - (list categories of personnel--faculty and academic staff, classified, LTE--and their respective FB rates)
  3. Travel - (list all travel by trip, with cost breakdowns)
  4. Equipment, material, supplies - (list by item or category)
  5. Consultants or contracts - (list any consultants to be hired, or subcontracts to be let)
  6. Other
  7. Total direct costs - (the sum of 1-6)
  8. Indirect costs
  9. Total
Writing a budget on a spreadsheet makes life easier. When you change figures or add items (and you will--no budget is correct the first time it is written), the spreadsheet will recalculate percentages and totals automatically. The Office of Sponsored Programs can write your budget for you, can help you set it up, or can review your figures.

 

Final Steps

In order to submit an application for external funding, you must obtain an institutional signature from an authorized university administrator: The Chancellor, the Vice Chancellor, or the Associate Vice Chancellor. No one else can commit UW-P to a grant proposal. In order to get that signature, you must fill out the Transmittal Form for Sponsored Projects form and the Financial Disclosure Statement for Federal Proposals. Copies are available in the Office of Sponsored Programs, 321 Brigham.

The financial disclosure statement is imposed on us by some federal funding agencies. Each investigator involved with the project should sign a financial disclosure statement (photocopy as necessary). Completed forms may contain sensitive information; consequently they come directly to the Director of the Office of Sponsored Programs.

The Transmittal Form for Sponsored Programs must be signed by co-investigators, your department chair, your dean, the Director of Sponosred Programs and the Vice Chancellor.

These requirements are not bureaucratic roadblocks designed to make the lives of faculty and staff more difficult. Federal, UW System, and UWP policies require the financial disclosure information. Department chairs and deans want to know what is being applied for so that they can allocate resources appropriately; the Accounting Office wants to know that the correct rates were used for fringe benefits and indirect costs; the Office of Sponsored Programs wants to be able to brag about applications and successes; the Vice Chancellor wants to know what wonderful things the faculty is up to. No one wants these requirements to get in the way of applying for or winning a grant.

Filling out the forms and chasing down the signatures takes time. Remember that you must carry out these steps before the proposal leaves campus; therefore you must allow enough time before the deadline. In order to make this onerous process as easy as possible, the Office of Sponsored Programs will obtain the last two signatures on the approval form if you bring us a completed proposal, signed financial disclosure forms, and a Transmittal form signed by the chair and the dean. Not only that, we'll make the required copies and we'll mail or ship the proposal by whatever means are necessary to get it there under the deadline--all at our expense. The Office of Sponsored Programs requests that all proposals be submitted to our office 10 days before the due date, this gives our office time to review the proposal, check the budget and to give the grant writer time to make revisions.

Our favorite way to help you with grant proposals is to work with you from the beginning of the process: generating an idea, searching for a funding source, serving as a sounding board while you develop your proposal, responding to and editing your narrative, writing the budget, and so on. When we are that involved, it is easy for us to help you clear the final hurdles. When we only hear about a proposal on the day it is due, it is more difficult to obtain signatures, make copies, etc. But we do the best we can.