Six Easy Pieces Basic Grantsmanship

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Six Easy PiecesBasic Grantsmanship
www.colostate.edu/Depts/Entomology/sixeasypieces.p
pt
Lou Bjostad Professor of Entomology Colorado
State University Fort Collins, Colorado louis.bjos
tad_at_colostate.edu
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Square Pegs and Round Holes

• Government grant programs really do want to give
  money away, and try hard (e.g., workshops) to
  remove obstacles
• The saddest rejections are those due to simple
  misunderstandings about the mechanics of
  decision-making by grant panels

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Mechanics of Grant Decisions

• SPEED
• Discussion and ranking is thorough but VERY FAST
• The fast pace tends to punish vague or bland
  writing styles

• RANKING
• All the 100 proposals discussed by a grant panel
  are ranked from 1 to 100 by the last day of the
  panel meeting
• Only the top 15-20 of the proposals are given
  funding

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Pre-Game

• A grant panel has about 12 panelists, who are
  invited about 6 months before the grant panel
  meets
• About 100 proposals in all are reviewed by the
  panel, but to keep the workload reasonable for
  each person, only 30 proposals are assigned to
  each panelist
• Each proposal is about 30 pages in all, a total
  of about 1000 pages of difficult reading for each
  panelist
• Dirty little secret - some panelists are still
  reading some of their 30 proposals at the last
  minute, struggling to understand them
• Panelists can be pretty tired and cranky by the
  time they climb on the airplane to fly to
  Washington

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Psychopathology of Grant Panels

• Everyone on the panel is excited to do the work,
  but often tired from weeks of difficult reading
• The panel is under pressure to discuss and rank
  35 proposals every day, to finish by the end of
  the week
• Each proposal can receive no more than 10 minutes
  discussion, to allow 35 proposals a day to be
  done
• Take home lesson - things are happening very fast

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Ranking Your Proposal

• The entire wall in front of the room is covered
  with yellow sticky notes, a flexible way to rank
  proposals
• Each yellow sticky note represents one proposal
• Only 3 people on the panel have read your
  proposal, but they also summarize 3 ad hoc
  reviews
• After your proposal has been discussed for its 10
  minutes of fame, panel manager stands up
• Panelist leading the discussion for your proposal
  suggests a position for your yellow sticky note
• The 2 other readers suggest moving it up or down,
  reaching consensus usually within one minute

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1. Get a copy of a grant proposal that was
recently funded

• BY FAR THE GREATEST PRIORITY
• Much easier to write a successful grant proposal
  if you have examples of all details
• Graduate students who join lab groups with a long
  history of successful grants have an enormous
  advantage in learning this
• The most important thing in life is to choose
  your parents wisely

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2. The one-page Project Summary should be a work
of art

• Your one-page Project Summary must be exciting
  and also specific about the new things you plan
  to show
• Panel members fight polite but very quick little
  battles to move your proposal up or down a ranked
  list of 100
• If it is difficult for a panelist to find or
  remember your main points, it is difficult for
  them to fight those battles
• Your one-page Project Summary is the only part of
  your proposal that every panel member gets to
  read, yet all panel members participate in
  ranking all the proposals

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3. Clarity is everything

• Panelists are very enthusiastic about the best
  proposals they read, and eagerly fight to get
  them a high ranking
• Even an enthusiastic panelist eventually has to
  compare your proposal to all the other proposals,
  apples oranges
• If your proposal is well-organized, your
  supporters can more quickly think of arguments to
  move you up the list
• Clarity is everything for the success of your
  proposal, because panelists make ranking
  decisions in seconds
• Use journalistic style, presenting your main
  points first and your lesser points later
• If your main point doesnt appear until page 3,
  you run a great risk that a reviewer may miss it
  altogether

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4. Who am I allowed to pester?

• Program Director for your grant area
• Permanent USDA employee, mainly office decisions
• Email is best, but brief phone calls are OK
• Is this panel the best choice for my interests?

• Panel Manager for the year that you submit
• University professor or USDA-ARS scientist
• Chooses about 12 panel members (and ad hocs)
• Please choose inorganic chemists as reviewers?

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5. Send a list of suggested reviewers

• Include the name and area of expertise (in one
  sentence) of each suggested reviewer (and
  address, phone, email)
• Perfectly acceptable for you to do, and helps the
  panel manager and the program director with a
  major difficulty
• One of the most time-consuming jobs they do is to
  find enough ad hoc reviewers for all the
  proposals, considering each reviewer carefully
  for integrity and expertise
• They need 6 prospective reviewers for each
  proposal, and 100 proposals require 600 names
  (fewer are actually needed, because one reviewer
  can be sent up to 3 grants)
• Many of the reviewers they think of cannot be
  used, because those people are on your Conflict
  of Interest list

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6. What if I get rejected?

• Rejected proposals are often funded the next
  year, and are not considered tainted somehow
• Extremely important to respond carefully to every
  criticism of every reviewer when you resubmit
• Panels have 30 overlap of panel members from one
  year to the next, to promote fairness to
  resubmittals
• Perseverance - even well-known scientists get
  rejected occasionally, but they keep submitting
• However, if a grant has been rejected by the same
  program 3 times, very unlikely it will be funded

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A Simple Game Plan

• Let the Project Summary be the part that sells
  the proposal, with clear and exciting claims
• Let the body of the proposal justify in detail
  each claim in the Project Summary
• Include a list of suggested reviewers with your
  proposal

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Is the grant panel rigged?

• The agency says its all done fairly, but isnt
  it really an old boy network that only gives
  money to veteran scientists and their friends?
• No, Ive been on 7 NRI grant panels, and they are
  the fairest (and fastest) decision-making groups
  I know
• Best proposals are funded, even if PI is
  completely unknown to all the panel members
• Removing conflict of interest reviewers is a
  main job for Program Director and Panel Manager
• Panel members must physically leave the room
  during discussion of any proposal from their own
  institution

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The Grant PanelWho are those guys?

• University professors or USDA-ARS scientists
  (occasionally corporate scientists)
• With rare exception, the panelists have
  previously had proposals of their own funded by
  NRI, NSF, or NIH
• However, most panelists have been rejected for
  funding at one time or another, and will be
  rejected again
• Panelists know exactly how much it hurts to put
  months of work into writing a proposal, and get
  rejected
• The panelists mantra is Help us to help you