When Your Research Needs $$$: Grant Writing Tips

Research is an exciting endeavour! Through a research team’s collective efforts and expertise (or your efforts and your supervisor’s expertise), your project has the potential to benefit many people and contribute to scientific knowledge. There’s just one problem: research is an expensive process, so you’ll want someone else to fund it.

This is where grants come in. A grant is funding provided from an institution with the purpose of generating a result that can benefit the public without any expectation of direct recompensation—i.e., free money. To receive a grant, you’ll first need to write a proposal to convince people why your project deserves it.

Here’s some advice to keep in mind during the writing process:

• Audience

It’s important to research the mission statement and values of the institution offering the grant. Emphasizing how your project aligns with these will make the institution more likely to fund it. Beyond the mission statement and values, it’s also important to consider where the institution is coming from. How familiar will it be with your project? How much background should you provide, and how simplified should it be? What will appeal best—statistics, anecdotes, referrals, or precedents? A grant proposal is essentially an argument for why your project should be funded, and a good argument requires understanding your audience.

• Expectations

Follow the institution’s requirements the way you’d follow a professor’s instructions on an assignment—even better than that, actually. Even if it means scrapping everything on this article. To get a better sense of an institution’s expectations, especially if they aren’t explicitly posted, find proposals in your field that received the grant you’re applying for. One of the best ways to be the best is to learn from the best.

• Establish Credibility

Show that you are a competent, capable researcher who will make good use of the funding you’ll receive. Describe your research project thoroughly and with intention—your project has been well thought-out, is valuable, and will generate important findings. Write like all of that is true. You know what you’re doing—you and your colleagues are experts in this field, have deep knowledge of what has already been done, and know what needs to be done to fill in gaps in knowledge. Write like all of that is true too. Bragging may not earn you likability points in person, but showing off your past accomplishments and current working relations with other researchers and organizations looks amazing on paper.

• Structure

Write your proposal using predictable, logical sections labelled with clear headings. Use simple, direct wording and clear, concise sentences. Understanding and clarity are key here. Numbered lists can also help establish clarity.

Conclusion

Grant writing is both a science and an art; these tips will hopefully help, but ultimately, it’s up to you to write in a way that compels your institution to give you free money. :)