Developing a Winning Grant Proposal

Donald Orlich, Nancy Shrope

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781136283185
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

In a world of tightening budgets and increased competition for grant money, Developing a Winning Grant Proposal provides the guidelines, strategies, plans, and techniques to craft a fundable grant proposal. A user-friendly, engaging, and up-to-date guide, this book covers the entire process from the inception of a good idea, to the formulation of a strong proposal, to the next steps once a proposal is funded. Providing a basic overview and helpful tools for busy faculty and researchers, this is a must-have guide for anyone interested in the mechanisms that successful grant writers employ.

Special Features Include:

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• Appendices with a "Model of a Funded Proposal" and a "Basic Toolbox for Grant Seekers"

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• Checklists for self-evaluating the efficacy of each portion of the grant proposal

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• Coverage of complex issues in a concise and clear manner, perfect for grant writers facing tight time constraints.

Chapter 1
Developing a Proposal

CHAPTER SUMMARY

• Some Basic Elements
• Communicating Your Intentions
• Priorities
• Writing Big Proposals
• Checklist for Big Proposal Development

You can be a successful grant proposal writer if you follow three rather simple steps. First, you need a good idea. Second, you locate a source that has already funded similar ideas. Third, you design, craft and develop your idea into a well-written statement. Notice the emphasis is on well written. Successful grant-writers are those persons who carefully prepare their proposals. It is a very time-consuming task, but that effort will reap rewards. And now that we have the basic rudiments established, how do you go about this process in a systematic and business-like manner?

One assumption that underlies this book is that you will write proposals for some time into the future. That is, you will become one of the thousands who write grant proposals as a regular part of your job. The process becomes one of a journey rather than a singular event. Since getting there is half the fun, you need to develop a systematic process of knowing what is being funded, who is willing to fund your proposals and how to find this information.

SOME BASIC ELEMENTS

Virtually all grant-funding agencies, foundations or businesses require the same generic elements in the grant proposal. The exact details may vary, but the basic elements tend to be similar whether it is a multimillion-dollar proposal to the National Science Foundation or a $500 proposal to the local utility company. Below is a list of the basic elements in a proposal.

Basic Elements of a Proposal

• Cover Sheet
• Table of Contents
• Project Summary or Abstract
• Introduction
• Problem Statement or Needs Assessment
• Project Description or Program Design
  • – Goal
  • – Objectives and Significance
  • – Methodology
  • – Evaluation and Assessment
  • – Timeline
• Results from Prior Support
• Broader Impact Statement
• Facilities, Equipment and Resources
• Personnel
• Bibliography
• Biographical Sketches
• Budget
• Budget Justification
• Current and Pending Support
• Supporting Materials

Let us briefly explore these critical elements and then spend the remaining chapters expanding each section and their subcategories.

The Introduction

Begin your proposal with a statement that captures the full attention of the reviewer. An introduction sets the stage for the remainder of the proposal. Remember, you are communicating your ideas through a one-way medium: writing. The best proposals—make that the best-written proposals—get funded in every competition. Therefore, you need to spend a great deal of time and effort in carefully selecting the exact wording. Every word or sentence must carry an explicit connotation and explicit denotation. Vagueness in writing yields only letters of declinations. You will spend a good deal of time developing a proposal, and in most cases you will rewrite sections so explicitly that there can be no mistake in your intent.

A Need or Problem

The second basic element for all proposals is to identify the need being addressed or the problem being solved. If you address a need, you will have to provide data to support it. Chapter 3 provides a systematic approach to identifying needs and how to conduct a needs assessment.

The need statement of a proposal is best concluded with a statement of significance. Just how significant is this proposal to the group on which you are focusing the proposed efforts? Don’t be modest. Keep in mind you will tend to write a proposal to an unknown evaluation panel. Most likely, none of the panel members will know you or your institution. So, you must provide instant rapport in the first two sections of the proposal.

Goals and Objectives

The third basic element contains your goals statement. The current vogue of many funding groups is the requirement to incorporate a vision statement. The goal or vision tends to be broad, global statements. However, they do differ, as you will see later in Chapter 4. A listing of the exact objectives that you intend to accomplish as a consequence of being funded then follows the goals.

Procedures

The fourth major element is the body of the proposal or the narrative section. This element may be called procedures, methodology, activities or the work plan. However the particular guidelines ask you to name them, you label them thusly. This element is about providing details, details and more details. In this section, you elaborate how each objective will be attained. You answer the five Ws—who, what, when, where and why.

Typically, in the procedures section, you will also list how the project is organized and who are the instructional or research team members.

Evaluation

The fifth basic element of a proposal is usually the evaluation model that you will employ. As the proposal writer, you select the most appropriate model of evaluation that coincides with your objectives once your proposal has been funded and the study has been completed. The basic idea of evaluating a project is to determine how well and to what extent you successfully met the project’s objectives. Chapter 5 discusses evaluation and management plans in detail.

Budget

The sixth element of our generic model is the budget. This section provides a general expenditure (investment) plan and is followed by specific details on how the general costs were determined. The latter are known as “budget justifications” and are not equivalent to the budget figures or numbers.

Basically, that is all that there is to it. In nearly all cases, the funder provides a general set of guidelines that specifies the order in which these basic elements will be written. Always follow the guidelines! No matter how redundant or even silly you may think a set of guidelines may be, you must follow them. Reviewers of your proposal will. If you deviate from the guidelines, then you’ll be penalized and, more than likely, not funded. It is their money, so follow their directions with the utmost care.

COMMUNICATING YOUR INTENTIONS

By now you are probably thinking, “The authors are really over-stressing the theme of carefully writing a proposal.” When writing, crafting, developing, preparing a grant proposal, you must communicate your intentions in such a manner that they cannot be misinterpreted by any of the proposal reviewers. For the most part, review panels are composed of people just like you. They are typically selected to provide a wide spectrum of experiences and backgrounds. You should write so carefully that they do not have to interpret your intentions. The more explicit your writing, the easier it is for the review panel members to understand your intentions.

How do you state a problem? That element needs to be expanded.

Using the Problem as a Guide

The careful crafting of the problem statement is most essential, for it will be one of the first sections to be read by a reviewer. If the problem is to eliminate illiteracy in North America, then you’ll need billions of dollars. If the problem relates to inadequate reading skills for children in a specific elementary school, then $20,000 might be adequate to fund a pilot project. The key point is not the statement of the problem, per se, but stating a problem that is manageable and solvable.

A problem is a condition that requires some extra effort to fix. A problem can be a brief statement of an observation. For example, a common problem that is frequently observed is that preadolescent girls do not achieve as well as expected in science. The problem is not that all girls do not achieve as expected. It is a condition focused on a specific group, under a specific context. So, we might write a statement such as the following:

Teachers in our middle school are often unaware that they may be biased against young female students in science classes. As a consequence, girls report being more negatively inclined toward science than are young males. In actual classroom observations, we have found that teachers reward boys more than girls in science classes and that girl-initiated science interactions decline during middle school years. Finally, teacher expectations tend to favor boys. From these observations come two distinct, but related, problems: (1) How can science teachers be made aware of the bias toward girls; and (2) What types of training intervention can eliminate sexual bias in middle school science classes?

Reread the above statement. Observe how the problem begins with a rather broadly stated issue and then culminates with a very specific, but solvable problem statement. This is called “V” writing. By giving some general background, the reader or reviewer in the case of grant proposals, is given enough information to make a smooth transition into a specific condition. You will also observe that the statement is specific and explicit.

In contrast, read the following statement in Exhibit “P” that described a problem.

EXHIBIT “P”: The Problem

Home weatherization is not the sole determinant of household energy usage. People’s habits can, and do, have serious implications for environmental sustainability. To be effective, conservation education programs must be holistic. Typically, such programs focus on adult consumers with little or no consideration given to the youth who are the future consumer.

Cheap electricity has been one of the key factors that has defined the economic opportunities, environment and quality of life in the state of … As a result of the increased consumption of electricity, the decade-long surplus of electric energy has disappeared.

To meet this challenge, the state has developed a broad base energy strategy. An important goal of this strategy is to educate not only the adult consumer, but children as well. As the future consumers of energy, they need to be aware of its monetary and environmental costs. Today it is known that stretching electricity supplies by improving efficiency not only reduces the need for new power plants, but it is also less expensive, less polluting, and avoids the environmental impact of new power plants.

Energy conservation education is a component of the … Project. The Project includes educational and support groups which enhance the knowledge of home energy conservation, resource allocation and other pertinent management issues for low-income families.

Developing an energy literate consumer who will make the right choices regarding their energy needs can only be brought about through conservation education. This, in turn, will contribute to the achievement of the conservation goals. By combining energy education with low-income weatherization and budget management … helps their clients to decrease their energy usage and increase both their ability to pay and their personal comfort.

How many times did you have to reread either part or all of that statement? The statement is confusing. You are not exactly certain what the problem might be or what parts of the problem will be addressed. Needless to say, the proposal that contained this description was not funded.

A problem needs to be written so that it is clear and concise. As was illustrated previously, the section containing the problem should be carefully prepared to lead a reviewer from a point of knowing little or nothing about a specific condition to a rather informed state. Listed below are a few problem statements that illustrate a straightforward approach.

• Children who attend schools in lower socio-economic neighborhoods have very limited access to personal computers in their classrooms.
• Volunteers for mathematics tutoring need additional training in the use of math manipulatives.
• The “Reading Recovery Program” is addressing only 40 percent of those needing the service.
• The history program lacks the instructional resources required to meet the “Expectations of Excellence” of the National Council for the Social Studies.
• Teacher education programs find it increasingly difficult to provide student teachers and interns with ethnic and multicultural experiences.
• Science teaching in grades K-6 focuses on f...