Grant Writing

The EIC Pathfinder Challenges is a funding opportunity supporting innovative and ground-breaking research and development of early-stage game-changing technology which carry the potential to disrupt existing fields and markets. Under this funding scheme, proposals are expected to tackle pre-defined major scientific and technological challenges in different areas. The unique structure and requirements of the EIC Pathfinder Challenges scheme and its dynamic nature are not always straightforward and intuitive. For this reason, we’ve put together this article which outlines the basic guidelines of this funding scheme.

While all grant awardees should demonstrate that services are provided across the period of availability, awardees take varied approaches to budgeting. Some heavily budget for salaries, and others for local implementing agencies; some use cost reimbursement, and others rely on quarterly advances. Many are required to budget on a yearly basis and reflect only what they will use in a calendar year, even if the award's period of availability is longer. Whatever approach they take, all awardees must stick to the budget they propose and closely monitor expenses, making sure that expenditures are properly coded and charged where they were initially budgeted, and that the cost allocation is in the correct year even if expenditures and services are not consistent across the period of availability. Since some grant funds awarded to a recipient for a federal fiscal year remain available through the end of the second succeeding federal fiscal year, using a two-year or multi-year budgeting approach can help awardees with the long-term and strategic aspects of budgeting, and can lead to more consistent priorities from year to year.

Having additional funds from grants to develop programs is a positive event for school districts. The major problem in obtaining grants is the development and writing of the proposal because the current structure of staff duties does not provide time for this activity.  Another issue, for Texas school districts related to grants, is that the current state funding system limits the amount of funds that can be raised locally.  Grants, therefore, are one of the few methods to establish new programs because they are not considered as a part of this state funding formula system.
This qualitative study examined the creation of the grant proposal writer position at seven school districts across the State of Texas to identify the factors that lead to its establishment.  The study employed an autobiographical form of self-study research as a starting point due to the researcher being the grant proposal writer for one of the school districts.  At the remaining six school districts, the individuals who were responsible for the creation of the position were interviewed, along with the grant proposal writer, to develop themes concerning the establishment of the position. 
The following themes were identified: 1) someone developed a vision for what the school district could become; 2) this vision called for programs beyond the current scope of funding; 3) there was an advocate for the creation of the grant proposal writing position as a means for the funding of this vision; 4) the school district perceived grants as a method of providing additional funding; 5) there was a belief that a person associated with the school district could successfully merge grant proposal writing and the vision; and 6) the school district developed a method to write grant proposals.  Thus, a clear vision for what the school district can become, not just a need for increased funding, was found to be the starting point for development of the grant proposal writing position.  The study, because of the autobiographical form of self-study research, also discussed the effects of having a successful program of grant proposal development had on the researcher’s school district.

Multimedia communication capabilities are rapidly expanding, and visual information is easily shared electronically, yet funding bodies still rely on paper grant proposal submissions. Incorporating modern technologies will streamline the granting process by increasing the fidelity of grant communication, improving the efficiency of review, and reducing the cost of the process.

Many grants are innovation-based – and this is certainly the case for the prestigious EU grants: Horizon Europe and ERC. This means that a successful and competitive proposal in the eyes of the reviewers must successfully convey that a novel project is at hand. Unfortunately, this is not such a straightforward and simple task. From experience, many researchers go overboard when attempting to claim the novelty of their research. Some opt to explain that their research project is ‘bleeding-edge’ / ‘highly innovative’ / will have ‘unprecedented outcomes’, or any other fancy declarations to decorate the novelty claim. But, when it comes to highly competitive grants such as Horizon Europe and ERC, fancy words alone are simply not enough. On the contrary, such claims, if not supported well by the described project, may even antagonize reviewers and create a negative feedback cycle about the project at hand. To facilitate positive feedback from the reviewers, it is crucial to support any novelty claim with proper, clear, elaborated (scientific/technological) reasoning and justifications. In this article, we will present the right step-by-step process that constructs such justification to support the innovation claim of your research project.

In responding to conversations on engaged infrastructure,
racial and reparative justice, and transformational WPA
leadership, I call for more writing teachers and writing
programs to take up grantwriting as a way to create much
needed infrastructure for small, struggling grassroots
nonprofits (NPOs). I detail G.I.V.E. (Grantwriting in
Valued Environments), a community writing project at
Towson University in the Baltimore metro area, where
students are a primary, if not the main, source of
research, grantwriting, and grants tracking for partner
organizations via classwork, paid internships, and part-time employment. I problematize and locate this work
within the nonprofit industrial complex and discuss the
structure and functioning of grassroots organizations and
how their particular milieu lends itself to projects like
G.I.V.E. The project views equity as way to “return stolen
resources” (Marcus and Munoz 2018), acknowledges the
legacies of injustice in our communities, places students
of color in leadership roles, and prioritizes work with
under-resourced organizations that are led by folks from
the community itself.

EIC Pathfinder Open (formerly known as FET-Open) is the new Horizon Europe program supporting the development of early-stage ground-breaking, game-changing technologies. This highly competitive funding scheme aims to realize radical and ambitious ideas for new technologies and is open to applicants from any discipline. In order to write a competitive proposal, it is important to understand the basic conditions and the evaluation process of the new program, which is exactly why we’ve put together this article below. Keep reading to learn more about the basics of the EIC Pathfinder Open grant.

The Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Postdoctoral Fellowships (MSCA PF) funding scheme seeks to support researchers’ career paths through mobility, while also attracting talented researchers to the EU and increasing knowledge and skills’ transfer. The program supports excellent researchers (holding a PhD) who wish to conduct research activities abroad to acquire new skills, gain diverse research experience and further develop their career and capabilities. Continue reading to learn more about the MSCA PF and its unique characteristics.

This Impact Report identifies and summarises the diverse impacts, resulting from the £500m of UK funding of Science and Technology in 2013, using numerous quantitative metrics and short case study extracts.  It shows how the varied impacts of a national science and technology organization and its many funded programmes can be annually identified, captured, tracked, and summarised in a public document.

The report was produced for, and by, the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) -  the UK Research Council responsible for funding: (1) all UK astronomy, particle and nuclear physics research, (2) related UK science and technology facilities (e.g. as Harwell and Daresbury), (3) the UK contribution to international science (e.g. CERN, international telescopes and space missions), (4) innovation and business spin-off programmes, and (5) UK public engagement activities.

The Report was co-researched and co-authored by the STFC Impact Team, including myself while Impact Evaluation Manager in 2013, with Dr. Claire Dougan-McCallie (lead author/Head of Impact) and Jenny Beard, with additional input from senior managers, and many data and case study contributions from other key managers across STFC.

Varied key impacts are identified and reported including:

• Research amongst the best (by citation impact) in astronomy, nuclear and particle physics.
• Supported research of 226 Principal Investigators in 70 universities, led to 1,100 peer-reviewed papers in 2012.
• Facilities (the Diamond Light Source, ISIS and CLF) were used in 2012/13 by over 4,200 unique users , in over 2,400 experiments, producing over 1,000 papers in peer-reviewed journals.

• Technology from CERN benefited the UK economy by over £100 billion every year.
• Funding the development of the UK’s space, internet and computer animation industries, returned over £500 billion to the UK economy per annum.
• Funded Innovation Campuses hosted over 230 enterprises and supported over 5,000 jobs.
• UK industry won £43 million in contracts from the international subscriptions funded, and had accumulated a total of £150 million since 2005.

• Funded research inspired future generations to study STEM subjects, attracting 90% of UK undergraduates to study physics, funded 782 PhD students  and 16,800 student training days.
• Between 2009 to 2012 public engagement programmes engaged people on 58 million occasions, with 2 million people engaged in face-to-face activities in 2013 alone.

The thesis presents a reformative criticism of science funding by peer review. The criticism is
based on epistemological scepticism, regarding the ability of scientific peers, or any other agent, to have access to sufficient information regarding the potential of proposed projects at the time of funding. The scepticism is based on the complexity of factors contributing to the merit of scientific projects, and the rate at which the parameters of this complex system change their values. By constructing models of different science funding mechanisms, a construction supported by historical evidence, computational simulations show that in a significant subset of cases it would be better to select research projects by a lottery mechanism than by selection based on peer review. This last result is used to create a template for an alternative funding mechanism that combines the merits of peer review with the benefits of random allocation, while noting that this alternative is not so far removed from current practice as may first appear.

For my successful Marie Curie EU Individual Fellowship application, my Introduction in the Excellence section on the first page of B1 follows a sort of formula that I developed personally after examining other successful proposals, and which can be adapted for other proposals. My formula is outlined here with comments.

Foundation Transparency - Opacity: It’s Complicated
Abstract

Private philanthropy has been referred to as one of the least transparent and accountable social institutions in the United States.  Accordingly, private foundations are being challenged to become more transparent.  Like other charitable institutions, private foundations already disclose extensive information about their activities in federal tax returns, which the public can easily access.  Yet, a widely held presumption is that private foundations remain intensely and uniformly opaque.  Research findings confirmed that private foundations are generally opaque, but also found that they selectively engage in situational transparency, which is not generally observed in the literature.  This article makes three contributions.  First, it uses specific indicators to assess the existence private foundation opaque practice, resulting in important insights regarding the contexts in which each may occur.  Second, it reports findings that, under certain circumstances, private foundations have intentionally relaxed their opaqueness in favor of greater transparency with certain grantees in furtherance of philanthropic objectives.  Third, several questions are posed to help guide foundations in deciding for themselves how and with whom they might wish to engage in greater transparency.  Research findings discovered that the matter of transparent/opaque practice in private philanthropy is less than straightforward.  As it turns out, transparent/opaque practice among private foundations is a nuanced and complicated matter.

We all know that the relationship between foundations and nonprofits is most often a highly unequal one. But not all foundation-nonprofit relationships are the same. A study of 33 private foundations revealed many cases in which foundations engage in highly intimate partnerships with select grantees. These partnerships blur the usual boundaries between foundation and nonprofit and are characterized by heightened expectations regarding transparency, willingness to take risks, commitment to elevated impact, and meaningful value creation.  See posting at: https://nonprofitquarterly.org/2018/09/17/blurred-boundaries-a-new-world-for-some-foundation-grantee-partnerships/.

This is a successful Marie Curie EU Individual Fellowship Proposal Application that I submitted in 2018, the official MC evaluation, and some prefatory comments. I was lucky to have expert training support when I was preparing my IF (Individual Fellowship) proposal, from a workshop led by former Marie Curie grant evaluators and experts. Thus my proposal follows a certain recommended format in terms of total pages and the length of each section and subsection, which can be easily adapted for other proposals. As I've heard from peers across Humanities fields that cases of projects in the Humanities winning the MC are relatively rare (I don't know if this is in fact statistically true), I decided to make accessible my application, because reading other successful proposals was very helpful for me in preparing my own. Please see attached additional comments in this file and keep in mind that my "Introduction" in the "Excellence" section on the first page of B1 follows a sort of formula I developed by examining other successful proposals. I detail the formula in the attached outline in the file posted above, "Marie Curie Successful Proposal B1 Excellence Introduction First Page Formula." Something else to keep in mind: the MC app format undergoes changes from time to time, so the precise details of my own application may no longer be relevant.
I’m happy to be contacted with comments or questions about the MC proposal preparation process by email: ruth.sargent.noyes@natmus.dk

In 2015, I engaged in research on 33 private foundations. One significant area of focus for this research was dedicated to matters related to transparent and opaque foundation practice. This is a hot topic in the philanthropic community presently. Positions typically divide along philosophical lines between transparency and privacy rights advocacy. This research was purposefully agnostic as to such preconceived orientations and the findings resulted in a discovery that many private foundations are more pragmatic than philosophic when it comes to transparency. Unfortunately, much the present debate on foundation transparency is not supported by empirical evidence. The findings from the research underlying an article just published by The Foundation Review may seem counterintuitive within the context of the ongoing transparency debate.

The purpose of this article is to shed light on the differences between the B1 and B2 forms in the ERC application. We will discuss the intended focus for each one of these forms, and what should be emphasized and elaborated in each section.

Among the core conditions that an EIC Pathfinder Open proposal must fulfil – the high-risk/ high-gain “gatekeepers” are the most prominent yet counterintuitive ones. Simply put, the expectation is that the project’s gain will be so high that it is worth the significant risk (and potential failure) taken to obtain expected results. This counterintuitive approach is typically not common in many EU grants (except in the case of the ERC funding scheme). Therefore, in this article, we summarize the important information one needs to know in order to fully realize the requirement for high-risk high-gain in EIC Pathfinder Open.

The Technology Readiness Level (TRL) scale was introduced into the EU funded projects arena in 2014 as part of the Horizon 2020 framework program. If you are planning to submit a Horizon Europe project proposal, even more so if your project is technology oriented – this article is for you. It is important to understand the exact implications of this scale on your project and the ways it is used to present, evaluate and measure the progress of a Horizon Europe or ERC project. In this article, we will discuss exactly that. Let’s start by understanding the fundamentals of the TRL scale and how it works.

This chapter examines the challenges of grant writing faced by new non-Anglophone academics who have taken positions in English North American universities. Drawing on a case study, which includes a discourse analysis of proposal drafts and interviews with a new non-Anglophone scientist, the chapter illustrates how the academic practice of grant writing in the “fiercely competitive” Anglophone academia (Hyland 2007) may be challenging for non-Anglophone scholars to master. The chapter explains how discursive practices of different national academic systems shape and require different scholarly identities. The chapter concludes by providing possible ways in which new non-Anglophone academics can be assisted in understanding the genre system of the grant proposal.

For grad students who are new to academia and are as befuddled by grant-writing as I was, I have written a Guide to Graduate School Funding that includes my NSF, NSEP, and AAUW proposals. During the course of research and writing for my Ph.D., I raised approximately $80,000 in funding from various sources. There is money out there for all kinds of projects. The key is to market your project accordingly.

If you decide to use this free product, please support this work by joining the FB group page: http://bit.ly/bbs8H2

This pedagogical article presents an example of how one can teach novice students to build and to work with their own digital editions of ancient sources. It discusses modern approaches to digital editions and promotes teaching SQL databases in ancient studies programs. It provides a detailed guide on how one can structure a student database that will be beneficial to students of all levels and disciplines.

Hermann, David and Shufro, Nick (Editors) (Solís, Patricia contributor). 2006. Mobilizing Resources: A Primer of Practical Ideas on How to Improve the Effectiveness of Public-Private Partnership Financial and Other Resource Requests. And Movilizando Recursos: Un Manual de Ideas Prácticas sober Cómo Mejorar la Efectivad de las Solicitudes de Finaciamiento y de otros Recursos de las Alianzas Público-Privadas. Published by the White Water to Blue Water Partnership, Secretariat United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) Caribbean Environment Programme. ISBN: 978-0-89291-001-4.

This is a successful application I submitted in 2018 for the Novo Nordisk Fonden Mads Øvlisen Art History Postdoctoral Grant for approximately 1,500,000 DKK. I've included here my project proposal and budget as submitted, and the current 2019 applications guidelines from Novo Nordisk. I'm happy to be contacted with questions regarding my experience preparing the Novo application: rno@natmus.dk

Research is a deliberate and systematic inquiry or investigation to establish a fact. Research could focus on any desired discipline like science, education, economy, administration, etc. Resources (e.g. humans, funds, equipment etc) are essential in any research, especially impactful research. Research forms an essential part of development for interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary application of new technologies and procedures. Progress and comfort of human beings are due to success in research outcomes in the society. In the modern world, every sector, like medical, engineering, and basic sciences improves daily and has achieved new horizons because of support from research funding. For comprehensive research and its utility for better progress and output, proper funding is required. This article highlights various research funding opportunities, sources, agencies, and their significance. The fundamental objective is to create awareness through the global involvement of a collaborative team of experts across the world to foster interdisciplinary research collaboration and joint funding applications for economic development. The authors in this paper are open to joint research and collaboration.

The presentation argues that university's corporate social responsibility related to teaching is to produce employable graduates and responsible citizens. Regarding research it has a unique responsibility to produce new knowledge. In developing countries the relevance of this new knowledge is an important issue. A small survey among university staff in the Netherlands showed that decentralized and specialised support for research grant applications produces maximum benefits.

Although expert and student citation behaviors have been explored in different genres,
doctoral students' citation behaviors in grant proposal writing have so far not been subject
to investigation. This paper reports on an exploratory study involving six doctoral students
in education at a research-intensive Canadian university. The participants commented on
the citations they used in their grant proposals submitted to a federal funding agency. The
qualitative data analysis yielded five citation functions (to claim knowledge, to seek support,
to claim importance, to establish a territory, and to claim competence), which are akin to the
rhetorical moves identified in previous research on scholars' grant writing. These five
citation functions are predominantly accompanied with three strategies (to emulate other
writers, to follow professors' suggestions, and to mask unfamiliarity with the topic), which are
indices of a student identity underlying the above five rhetorical acts. We discuss how the
doctoral students in the study deployed these rhetorical functions and strategies as
gambits to project a scholarly identity in their grant proposal writing, and conclude with
implications for teaching and further research.

This paper represents a programmatic evaluation of a popular grant-funded program sponsored by the Boys and Girls Clubs of America.  This evaluation found that objectives were largely met, but the issue of self-report bias casts serious doubt regarding the choice of self-reporting as a measure of program effectiveness.  It is acknowledged; however, that programs of this nature provide meaningful developmental experiences regardless of survey method.