Sep 1511 min read

How to Write a Grant Proposal

Grant writing is a crucial process for several people and institutions — namely, 1. Academic researchers looking for grant funding; 2. State-associated development organizations; and 3. Private nonprofit organizations (or NPOs).

Organizations that rely on grant funding are called non-profits. This means that they only get funding through donations, not through profit-making activities. Without access to grants, these organizations would not be able to run their operations or survive.

Picture of cash and coins lying on a desk

State-associated development organizations may include a wide range of organizations. This includes:

Government departments or ministries responsible for acquiring international funding from International organizations, such as WHO, IMF, the World Bank, and so on.
Special state-established institutions that operate independently from the state
University departments in state-owned universities collaborating with the state in developing countries

Private non-profit organizations are also wide-ranging and may be set up to promote the interests of specific groups of people. They may include:

Feminist organizations promoting the interest of women
Organizations promoting the interest of vulnerable children
Environmentalist organizations
Educational organizations
Organizations promoting economic inclusion for vulnerable groups
Organizations promoting poverty reduction

The same is true for academic researchers. These researchers may work for private or state-owned universities or higher educational institutions (or HEIs). Their career prospects are closely tied to whether or not they’re able to access grant funding.

This grant funding is a long and rigorous process that involves carefully reading RFPs or requests for proposals. This is then followed by the actual writing process that needs to meticulously follow the instructions of the RFP.

The larger the grant number, the larger the grant, and the more prestigious the institution offering the grant, the more the prestige associated with it. Researchers looking for promotions typically highlight their most prestigious grants as part of their application documents.

In short, grant writing is important. Therefore, knowledge of how to write a grant proposal is necessary for many different professionals. In this article, I talk about the various steps to do so effectively.

Preparing to write a grant proposal

Grant writing before and above anything else is the product of teamwork. It’s not simply a matter of writing up a document that meets requests for proposals. Before any writing begins, a significant amount of groundwork needs to be laid.

This includes making sure to find grant prospects that match the values of your organization, studying requests for proposals carefully, and ensuring you have a team of academic experts (for research and development grants) and activists (for non-profit organizations) who are willing and who have the skills and expertise to fulfill the terms of the grant.

Let’s look at step-by-step the process of writing a grant.

1. Find grant prospects that match the scope of your organization

First, you need to establish the goals and values of your organization. Your organization needs to find grant-funding organizations that align with the goals and values of your organization. This will significantly increase the chances of your grant proposal winning.

After this step, you need to identify potential sources of funding. In your quest to do so, it is not enough to wait for announcements from the official bodies or websites.

Dig around. You can ask questions of people who might know grants that others are not familiar with or lesser-known grants. The bigger and more popular grants may be difficult to secure, especially because the demand for them is so high.

Grants with less competition, such as small international grants in very specific niches that might fit your specialty might be more productive. To make sure that you can maximize the chances of having a successful grant application, you can rely on:

Mentors
Colleagues
Internet searches
Databases
Stay vigilant and keep an eye out

Also, just reading RFPs may not be enough. There is nothing wrong with reaching out either via email or even by phone to grant prospects/program officers. These program officers can give you good advice on how to write a grant or what is the likelihood of you meeting the criteria.

You may even get advice on a more appropriate grant to target besides the one you’re interested in. If after doing such research, it turns out that this grant may be a poor match, then seek other sources.

2. Secure examples of successful grants to model your own

It is never a good idea to write a grant purely from RFPs without a sample. If you’re lucky organizations that put out these RFPs may provide grant samples that you can model or base your own grant proposal on.

If these models or samples are not forthcoming, then you should email the grant-making organization for samples. Another alternative is to get in touch with colleagues who may have had a successful grant in the past with that organization.

If none of these are options available, then rely on examples from similar organizations that have similar missions to the organization you’re applying to.

3. Make preparations for the grant by assembling your team/potential team informally

As I said earlier, academic research and grant-making are collaborative efforts. It might take some time before finding out whether or not you win a grant. But even before that process, you should have a kind of informal team of researchers involved.

A major factor that decides whether or not a grant is won is the caliber of the people on the team. The higher the caliber, the higher the chances of winning the grant.

By caliber, I mean senior personnel with a track record of achievements and qualifications. Seniority is not all that is needed. You may also require professional grant writers or junior colleagues who may not be as accomplished but who have experience and ability in the type of technical writing that is required for a grant.

In assembling your team, make sure that your people can meet the demands of the grant. Your team, whether it be a research team or workers in a non-profit, should have the skills and ability to carry out the project.

Make sure that you have a group with diverse skills. You might need team members with experience on the ground. In addition, you might also need others with administrative experience or experience writing grants, and so on.

4. Write the grant proposal according to the terms of reference or RFPs

Grant proposals are many things, but they are first and foremost academic writing documents. This means that they fall into the category of academic writing, and it can be among some of the most formal types of academic writing at that. Here is a list of what a grant proposal should look or read like:

Grant proposals should always be written in a formal and professional tone
Proposals should avoid excessive jargon even while being formal and academic in tone
They should follow a rigid and formal structure similar to research papers
Grants should tell a compelling story that matches your organization’s values with those of the funder or funders
Grant proposals should be concise

For these reasons, entrusting a professional with the task of writing your grant would save time and money and increase efficiency.

Parts of a grant proposal

The structure of a grant proposal will vary according to the organization putting out the RFP. Always carefully read instructions and follow the templates provided. However, generally speaking, grants have a general outline that you should adhere to.

This outline would be familiar to anyone with experience writing research papers or other forms of academic writing. The first part of the grant proposal is the Abstract or Executive summary that provides a concise description of the grant proposal.

This is followed by the Introduction with gives the background and scope of the problem. The other parts of the grant are the Aims and Objectives and the Methods. Below we describe each section and provide an example from a grant proposal for a hypothetical RFP from the NIH.

Click on the link below to download the grant example

1. Executive summary

The executive summary serves as the abstract of the grant proposal. It is about 200 to 300 words long and provides a concise description of your grant proposal in terms of its aims and methods. You should state what the problem is. Describe your organization briefly and how it can uniquely solve the problem. Lastly, briefly describe how your organization or team plans to solve the problem.

The executive summary is one of the most important parts of your grant proposal. Grant-making institutions may end up being flooded with proposals. Grant applicants who write sloppy summaries make it easy for these institutions.

Frankly, your entire proposal may be judged based in how well you write your summary. Grant reviewers may decide to qualify grant proposals for further review based on how well the summary is written and aligns with the values of the organization.

Therefore, much care should be taken with writing your summary. It should be written clearly and concisely. You should also make sure that the contents of your summary matches what is in the body. If not, you may not survive the second round of review.

Below is an example of an executive summary for a hypothetical NIH grant.

Example of summary

Organic foods remain popular as a result of their perceived health benefits; however, there is sparse scientific evidence to back the supposition that they are healthier than conventional foods. We propose comparing fatty acid (FA) ratios in organic milk samples with conventional milk samples as a means of verifying the difference in fatty acid composition between organic milk and conventional milk. Omega-3 FAs are widely acknowledged as promoting human health, while Omega-6 FAs are seen as less desirable. It is expected that the omega-6/omega-3 (ω-6/ω-3) FA ratio in the two types of milk would differ significantly as a result of the different feeding strategies employed. In addition, we expect organic milk to have a higher content of ω-3 FAs and thus a lower and healthier ratio. Lastly, we aim to establish proper dietary recommendations based on the potential benefits of switching from conventional dairy products to organic dairy products.

2. Introduction or background

The introduction or background is where you give the background or context to the problem you are investigating or trying to find a solution for. Remember, you should take into account the people that you are appealing to.

Grant reviewers may not always be professional academics or researchers. Therefore, think of your background as an opportunity to appeal to those who may not have a technical background. This is especially true if you have to present your grant proposal.

Use language that ties your specific objectives to a problem that the ordinary person without a technical background can recognize. At the back of your mind, you should think of your target audience as educated and intellectually curious laymen.

3. Problem statement and aims

After providing the scope and background, you should clearly state what the problem is and your aims or objectives in terms of solving it. You should leave no doubt in the mind of your reader the nature of the problem that you are trying to solve or investigate. Think of including a separate subheading titled “Problem Statement” or something similar.

In some cases, the problem statement does not have to be stated as such. Sometimes, a statement of the aims is enough to explain what the problem is. This is an example from a grant proposal designed according to the standards of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

Example of statement of aims and objectives

Organic milk is one of the more popular organic food products. These products fetch premium ‎prices due to consumers’ perceptions that organic foods are healthier. However, there exists ‎sparse scientific evidence to support the supposition that organic foods are healthier. Omega FA ‎ratios (ω-6/ω-3) have been established as a standard to measure the nutritive value of foods, ‎with ω-3 FAs being recognized as being healthier than ω-6 FAs; consequently, lower ratios (ω-‎‎6/ω-3) are deemed more desirable (with 2.3 being suggested as optimal). We aim with this ‎research to clarify the difference in terms of FA ratios between milk from cows raised under ‎organic agricultural systems and milk from cows raised under conventional agricultural systems ‎in Taiwan. This new knowledge or information would provide consumers with a scientific basis ‎to make informed decisions in regard to purchasing organic foods and creating effective diets. ‎Based on our well-established and ongoing collaborations with experts in organic farming and ‎dairy farming in Taiwan, we will do the following: ‎

Aim 1: Discover the omega fatty acid ratio (ω-6/ω-3) of organic milk compared to conventional milk.

Aim 2: To discover the specific quantities of the various ω-6 and ω-3 FAs in the two different milk types and see which one has the healthier ratio.

Aim 3: Determine the impact on dietary ω-6/ω-3 ratios of switching from conventional dairy products to organic dairy products.

4. Methods

You should briefly describe your methodology. This means giving details on the location where the project will be carried out. Other things that should be described include:

The number of people or objects that will be involved
The timeline or timeframe involved
The processes and procedures that will be involved

If possible, make use of illustrations and figures to clarify your methods. For example, you should think of including Gannt charts to give a good idea of the timeframe of the project from start to finish.

Gannt charts can show the dates for specific milestones to be achieved. They work by giving grant reviewers a sense of concreteness to your plans.

Below is an example of a methodology section from the same grant proposal that has been already quoted.

Example of Methods

In order to carry out this research, milk from two farms will be used. One of the farms to be targeted would be the NCHU organic farm. This farm is a certified organic farm, which produces popular dairy products for consumption both by students and the general public in Taichung. In addition to the NCHU farm, a non-organic dairy farm will also be used to measure their product. Boxed milk from the NCHU dairy farm as sold in the NCHU organic mart will be compared with ordinary or conventional milk from retail outlets. This is seen as a more effective approach than securing milk directly from the farms. Since, the purpose of the study is to measure whether or not there are any practical health benefits to consume organic milk to the average consumer of this milk.

A sample of milk from both these two sources will be secured. For conventional milk, the milk will be sourced from Uni President, Wei Chuan, and Kuan Chuan, the three largest producers of conventional milk in Taiwan. This milk will be compared with that from NCHU and a second organic farm.

From each processor, we will obtain one fresh, whole-milk sample nominally every month for 6 months, November 2018 through April 2019. In total, 30 samples of milk will be used, with 12 of them being organic and the remaining 18 being conventional milk. The milk after being taken from half-gallon retail containers, will be transferred to sterile plastic bottles, refrigerated and shipped using ice packs overnight to our animal science lab in NCHU to be tested. Please see Figure 4 for a timeline of our planned experiment.

Analyses for Fatty acids and total fat will be carried out using Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy. We decided to use FTIR instead of the alternatives because of its wide applicability and cost-effectiveness.

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Hiring a professional grant writer

Now that you are ready to write your grant, how do you go about it? First, you need to decide who will write the grant. If you work in a university or other research institution, it would be easy to assume that grant writing is just another form of academic writing, similar to the research papers that you have written and that you are just the right person for the job. That may well be true.

However, efficiency based on the appropriate division of labor should be considered. Besides some researchers or leaders taking on the responsibility themselves, there is also the tendency to assign grant-writing responsibility to those who may not be qualified but are nonetheless convenient to access and of course “cheaper” than a professional alternative.

Although it might be tempting to assign this responsibility to Jane, “who has a knack for writing,” or to James, who took a course in literature, this would be a mistake. Considering that grants for most non-profit organizations determine whether or not the lights stay on, it would be best to treat the whole affair as a business decision.

Cite this EminentEdit article

Antoine, M. (2024, September 15). How to Write a Grant Paper. https://www.eminentediting.com/post/how-to-write-a-grant-proposal

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