Tips on Writing Grant Proposals

Your basic goal in writing a proposal is to convince the funding agency that their philanthropic interests are best served by awarding you a grant. Not only is your project vital to society and the world of academia, but you are the best and most qualified researcher to do the job. Simple.

A successful proposal must clearly articulate:

A statement of need or hole in the body of scholastic knowledge
Why it is important to satisfy this need
What methods you plan to use to fulfill the need
How you will evaluate the success of your project
Why you are the best researcher to do the project
How much it will cost

The better case you can make for each one of these points, the better your chance of a successful grant application. If the funding agency to which you are applying has a set of guidelines on proposal format, then you must follow those guidelines to the letter.

There are numerous sites on the internet that give detailed instructions for writing a grant proposal. For more information, see:

http://foundationcenter.org/getstarted/tutorials/shortcourse/index.html

http://www.research.umich.edu/proposals/pwg/pwgcontents.HTML

Internal Grants and Travel

IRB