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Writing Winning Proposals for Social Science and Education Graduate Students
Assuming you start writing grants in graduate school, keep going your first year in a new job.
The following are suggestions gained from experience and going to workshops like this:
1: Start applying for grants, small or large, as soon as you can. Plan on writing a grant your first year in your job, even if it is a small internal grant for department of college/university money (e.g. seed money for a summer project).
- Practice writing grants (even internal departmental or institutional ones) will help you write more grants.
- Getting the materials together for a small grant is similar to getting the materials together for a large grant, so once you have it done it is easy to build on it.
2:If you don’t already, start keeping a list of research ideas.
- Pay particular attention important unanswered questions in your area, particularly if data does not exist to answer your question.
- Tell anyone who will listen about your ideas – and listen to what they say to you.
3:Take your list of ideas, and find out if anyone wants to pay for research in any of those areas.
- Do the ones that you can get money for (maybe later you can set the agenda for others).
4:Get exposure to lots of kinds of research and methodologies.
- Try to think about what you really want to know, and don’t let the seeming impossibility of the task get in your way – think big. Sometimes applying a methodology from another area or discipline, or collecting data in a new way, or using existing data in a new way is enough for grant funding.
5:Go to anything at your institution about getting funding (e.g. workshops and events sponsored by the office of research)
- Sometimes “seed” money is only given to those attending – using seed money to pilot a project can give you a huge advantage for external funding in a new area
- Always be thinking about what you could do if you had the collaborators, resources, time, and money – these are funding opportunities.
- It’s unlikely that you’ll get a grant from each one, but you’ll get to know people who are successful at getting grants.
- You might form working relationships or collaborations – this is the best way to get big dollars, to team of with people who have a record of getting grants. Working with successful grant writers is a great what to gain this skill. Try to connect with the best people in your field and collaborate with them.
6:Get help and use help.
- In your new institution, find out who helps prepare grants, find out what is already prepared (budget sheets, budget justifications, descriptions of the resources at your institution) – some of these are “boiler plate”
7:Once you settle on a type of grant, ask to see examples.
- If you’re applying for an internal department or college grant, ask faculty who have earned them to show you their proposal and use it as a model.
8:Talk to the funding agency – ask what they want, what is important to them, pay attention, and write your grant for what they want to fund (if you can’t, find another source)
9:Figure out how much time it will take you to put it together, then double it.
- Break the process into little steps, chart them out on a calendar, then meet those goals.
- Plan on having an experienced, successful grant getter read a draft of your grant at least a month before it is due.
- Plan on revising it at least 10 times (internal) at least 30 times (external funding)
- Use tables, figures, diagrams
- Make sure everything is connected and coherent – you should have one over arching question and everything should be tied to answering that question.
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