Reading Requests for Proposals, Grant Solicitations, Applications, and Guides
The first rule of research grant proposal preparation is: Read the Request for Proposal (RFP). Then read it again. In fact, as a principal investigator or project director, you should probably read it three or more times and refer to it regularly throughout the proposal writing process.
Q: Why should you read it multiple times and regularly refer to it?
A: These documents are full of details. The devil is in the details. You don’t want to miss any bit of critical information.
Telling Science Stories in Research Grants: Lessons from the Nonprofits
Nonprofit stories are about meeting a need. Scientific or research stories ask a question. Nonprofits use storytelling in grant proposals, marketing materials, annual campaigns, appeals, and other promotional documents. They do this so well that storytelling recently became a major theme of grant writing training opportunities. Similarities exist between the nonprofit world and the research university. Whether we like to admit it or not, an individual researcher, a laboratory group, or a larger collaborative effort are really nonprofit centers that function within the larger nonprofit that is the university.
So why not harness the power of story in research and scientific grant proposals?
Academic Grantsmanship: Writing, Acadecmic Writing, and Story
Academics are professional writers. We write all the time. We write books and scholarly articles about our research interests. We write a variety of proposals (grant, book, curriculum etc.). We write teaching materials for our classes. We write internal reports as a service to the university. We write reviews of our colleague’s work. Sometimes we get paid for it. The bad news is that academics and scientists are not always the best communicators. Steven Pinker’s talk at MIT on The Sense of Style: Scientific Communication for the 21st Century is long, but full of great examples and excellent advice.