Posted 8/19/2024
By Brendon Bradley and Jack Baker
Obtaining research funding is a top stressor for many early career faculty, who know it is important but have little experience with the process . As with many research tasks, it takes a compelling technical vision and practice to succeed. But there are also a number of mindset issues that can help you develop a healthy philosophical approach to applying for funding:
Writing solidifies your thinking. Formalizing ideas in a proposal will refine your understanding and advance your project planning. Proposal writing is not just an extra hurdle to doing actual work, but a valuable intellectual exercise even if an application is unsuccessful.
Diversify. Write applications to multiple funding agencies and across the full spectrum from basic to applied research. Breadth enables you to be relevant to a wide range of opportunities and mitigate against funding cuts in a particular area. Basic research funders increasingly want to see impact potential, so having applied projects can be a benefit for fundamental proposals.
Persist in applying. Externally, people only see announced funding successes, creating a survivorship bias perception: “some people just get funded all the time.” In reality, those successful people may have similar failure rates but more doggedness in continuing to submit despite rejections!
Read the instructions. Many applications are (nearly) immediately rejected because the author failed to follow basic instructions regarding length limits, budget limits, required proposal sections, or priority research topics. Especially when you are applying to a new program, read the solicitation carefully, ask questions, and see if you can get example proposals from colleagues.
Learn from others. Writing a few proposals with more experienced collaborators lets you observe how they approach proposal writing and get their feedback on your contributions. They can also help teach you about proposal submission logistics, grant management, and project management.
Learn from the inside. For funding agencies that use peer review for proposals, volunteer to serve on review panels. Serving allows you to see inside the process, while also helping the agency. You will collect lots of information on what makes a good or bad proposal. You will also observe that it is much harder as a reader than as an author to understand proposed work, helping you focus on being clear and specific in your own writing.
Develop a unified research direction but multiple complimentary proposals. Divide your long-term research vision into pieces and include some overlap for synergy and risk mitigation. Grants are limited in time and budget, and you rarely resolve a field of inquiry with a single project. So, write a series of proposals on related parts of your vision that will fit together like puzzle pieces.
The best time to apply for funding is when you don’t need it. If you wait for a clear funding gap to write a proposal, you will often be disappointed by funding delays or rejections. For this reason, always be on the lookout for co-funding, even if you don’t need it. Let funders share in your success by increasing the size of your funding pie.
Not all money is the same. Sponsors vary in their oversight of your work, reporting requirements, and outreach or impact mandates. Unique program requirements might be well-aligned with your objectives. But if they aren’t, remember that you will need more time and money to manage those extra activities. Receiving a smaller dollar amount with fewer strings attached may be a preferable outcome.
Start small and build up. For early career researchers, in particular, cut your teeth on winning small grants. These often take less work to prepare and have higher success rates. Small grants help you hone your skills at efficient grant writing and project management, build a track record, and develop research collaborations. These are essential ingredients for your subsequent applications to larger grants.
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