Grant writing:�Structures & practices
Bradley Dilger for CIGSA – November 29, 2022
About me: Bradley Dilger
Today’s presentation
What I hope this presentation WILL do
What this presentation WON’T do
What this presentation CAN NOT do
Contents
The seven elements of grant writing
Finding grant opportunities
Reading RFPs
Planning OR One-pagers
Further reading
Discussion
The seven elements of grant writing
Seven elements of grant writing
Seven elements: diagrammed
Every grant
is different.
But you’ll rarely eliminate any of the seven elements completely.
Comparing two grants across the seven elements
Internal start-up grant
External collaborative grant
Research
Research, continued
Once you think you’ve found a good fit…
Networking
Evaluation
Drafting
Drafting, continued
For larger projects, writing a one-page description of your project is an important first step:
Hearing how others see your short description is invaluable!
Reviewing
Submission
Follow-up
Finding grant opportunities
A few key terms
PIVOT help
One of the best ways to find opportunities
Use the built in keywords
Always use advanced search
Set up email alerts
Hopkins funding list
https://research.jhu.edu/rdt/funding-opportunities/
Early career and other divided into filterable spreadsheet
Reading RFPs
Read the RFP!
Over and over again.
RFPs must be read actively and extensively annotated.
Reading RFPs requires two simultaneous movements:
Actively looking�for the following:
Building supporting documents:
Do this work over time — NOT all at once.
Read recursively and repeatedly.
Spread out the work over time.
Ask multiple people to read.
Complete multiple passes through the RFP to identify important content and to build supporting documents.
Let’s break each of these down.
Read for the following (1/3)
Read for the following (2/3)
Read for the following (3/3)
Create supporting documents (1/2)
Create supporting documents (2/2)
Example — PGSG Grants
PGSG Grants, specifically the travel grant. Printable version
Criteria for Description of Research
Grant lifecycles & grant planning
The grant lifecycle, from Singapore Management U
Think long term
Make and use checklists
Make and use calendars
Be methodical
Budget carefully
Other best practices
One-pagers
Lots of different “one pagers”
Dilger’s general rules for differentiating 1-pagers
Comparing executive summaries & abstracts
| Executive summary | Abstract |
Audience: | Decision-makers in an organization | Anyone who might be reading a given document, but usually its principal audience |
Purpose: | Efficient and effective decision-making | Provide summary of entire document to help readers be efficient |
Organization: | Background, problem, solution, impact, recommendation | Varies; usually follows document, but can be one long paragraph or several short ones |
Approach: | Uses descriptive subheads, lists, and other organizers | Varies; can be a single paragraph, or divided into sections |
Length: | Less than 3pp, usually 2pp | Varies; usually 200± words, but structured abstracts can be 500± |
Essential content: | Address financial and/or structural issues related to proposal | Summarizes entire document |
Follow provided guidelines,�or imitate examples
And remember that shorter�is always much more difficult.
NIH Specific Aims
Crow NIHSA example (1/2; see all of it)
The increased use of technology and multimodal writing in the humanities, greater participation of multilingual and multicultural students in U.S. universities, and economic and political pressure on humanities programs—demands new approaches to research, teaching, and mentoring in the field of writing studies. Technology is creating new potentials for translingual and transcultural global communication, particularly as and the increasingly diverse makeup of students in our universities is pressuring traditional modes of inquiry. At the same time, networked and digital media are influencing writing profoundly, sometimes in unexpected ways. It is unclear how developing writers negotiate these new modes and approaches to humanistic inquiry across linguistic and cultural backgrounds.
Hook Known Information Gap in Knowledge Critical Need
Crow NIHSA example (2/2; see all of it)
In preparing a new generation of writers, critical thinkers, and scholars, we need to understand how developing writers create arguments, engage critically with journalistic and scholarly sources, and work to communicate the increasing amounts of information that their future disciplines and careers require. We also need an infrastructure by which writing studies scholars in the humanities and the humanistic social sciences can work together to answer these critical questions.
Hook Known Information Gap in Knowledge Critical Need
Use the format that works for you
The increased use of technology and multimodal writing in the humanities, greater participation of multilingual and multicultural students in U.S. universities, and economic and political pressure on humanities programs—demands new approaches to research, teaching, and mentoring in the field of writing studies. Technology is creating new potentials for translingual and transcultural global communication, particularly as and the increasingly diverse makeup of students in our universities is pressuring traditional modes of inquiry. At the same time, networked and digital media are influencing writing profoundly, sometimes in unexpected ways. It is unclear how developing writers negotiate these new modes and approaches to humanistic inquiry across linguistic and cultural backgrounds. In preparing a new generation of writers, critical thinkers, and scholars, we need to understand how developing writers create arguments, engage critically with journalistic and scholarly sources, and work to communicate the increasing amounts of information that their future disciplines and careers require. We also need an infrastructure by which writing studies scholars in the humanities and the humanistic social sciences can work together to answer these critical questions.
Element | Actual Text (using a table instead of color) |
Hook | Multilingual and multicultural writers are becoming more common in both educational and commercial contexts of writing. |
Known info | This growth is changing how writing works, while pressuring existing methods for studying and teaching writing. |
Gap in knowledge | Even so, tools for studying writing lag behind other areas of studies in the digital humanities. To date, data-driven studies of writing have not successfully integrated the power of large-scale quantitative methods such as corpus linguistics with quantitative approaches that highlight individuals’ writing choices and acknowledge the complexities of contexts. The sites of writing scholarship focus on higher education, especially research universities, too often neglecting important contexts such as community colleges, and leaving out under-represented minorities. |
Critical need | Researchers need digital tools and approaches to collaboration which support not only the mixed-methods study of writing but diversify research sites and provide systematic ways to acknowledge the influence of writing contexts. |
Fill in the blank: AIMS or Stanford questions
Fill in the table above… then copy out the text and edit to create coherent prose.
Fill in the “mad libs,” then delete some of the signal phrases, say the same thing in different ways, and/or invert sentences to create variation.
Hook | |
Known info | |
Gap in knowledge | |
Critical need | |
Further reading
Two grant specific books
O’Neal-McElrath et al, �Winning Grants Step by Step
Karsh & Fox, The Only Grant Writing Book You’ll Ever Need
Books about writing
Questions?
General or specific
Thank you
I’m happy to talk more�with you — just ask.
Bradley Dilger�dilger@purdue.edu�309–259–0328