Written by Shea Woodbury
Grant proposal development is the ability to take a point of research and communicate it to funders in a way that is interesting and worth investment. At North Carolina State University, Christy Sandy handles grant proposal development for the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS). Dr. Susan Lankford, the director and program manager of the Science and Technology Development Unit at the North Carolina Biotechnology Center, on the other hand, receives and evaluates grant proposals.
I spoke with both Sandy and Lankford about their roles and the growing importance of having the skill of grant proposal development in the scientific community.
As a tier one research institution, an institution with a high level of research activity per capita, NC State hires people like Sandy to bring interdisciplinary teams together to solve grand challenges and find funding for their proposed solutions. In CALS, such a challenge would be world hunger, and the need to start producing more food with less land without destroying the environment. Sandy helps to increase the capacity of research enterprising within CALS, which maximizes funding to bring about more research. Sandy does this primarily in two functions, by supporting large interdisciplinary proposals, and by training staff to manage grant proposals.
The common thread between people in proposal development, like Sandy, is a background in communication, particularly in communicating the value of projects.
“In my generation, no one went to school to go into grant proposal development. It wasn’t such the sought-after skill it is now. I, personally, went to school for politics and policy,” said Sandy. For 15 years she worked for a congressman in helping local organizations get funding; that’s how Sandy entered proposal development. “Now I teach both new and senior faculty everything from the process of how to strategically write grant proposals to how to manage grants themselves,” she said. “I also help them read and understand grants, coach them on how to talk to program managers, teach them how to pitch ideas, etc. I am their main support within the office.”
Faculty early in their career start with a year’s worth of university funding, so they must immediately start looking for outside sources of money for when their start-up package runs out. Despite this, one of the hardest parts about Sandy’s job is getting faculty members to start learning about grant proposal development early and to be strategic about their funding. Faculty are so busy, so trying to get them to set aside time to learn about strategic grant proposal writing is hard.
“It is my goal to help faculty find the balance between perfectionism and sloppiness of their proposals in a timeline that will allow them to be successful,” Sandy said. She also works with and helps train the academic faculty of CALS on grant proposal developments that will support masters students, postdoc students, and even undergraduate students too. Overall, grant proposal development at NC State deals with a large diversity of problems being tackled by faculty from many unique disciplines.
Given how grant proposal development has grown into something so important, there is a huge need for the skill to write proposals and a need for grant writing programs.
The ability to write grant proposals is such a sought after-skill because funding is becoming increasingly limited.
In the academic world, the main source of funding still comes from the government. In CALS that might include the U.S. Department of Agriculture or the National Science Foundation. Unfortunately, the federal budget for grants is shrinking, so grant faculty are having to look at other sources too, such as foundations and the industry. Often times industry will fund research that they want to be done. People like Sandy help respond to the needs of these funders.
Lankford reviews grant proposals submitted to NCBiotech’s research grant funding programs. Like Sandy, Lankford believes that a strategic approach to grant writing is the best way to get awarded funding.
“To make a successful grant proposal there must be clearly defined objectives, a clear and rational study design, and clearly defined success metrics. I think making sure to include some preliminary data to back up what you are claiming is important too,” Lankford said. Faculty at NC State writing grants to try and get funding to promote their research must “write a compelling proposal that really shows how their needs are in alignment with the grant funding agency’s goals,” she said. “Communicating that your proposals are in alignment is really necessary.”
The people awarding grants, like Lankford, look for different and unique solutions to problems and challenges. At NCBiotech, particularly, they look for research to become a new or viable product for commercialization. They look at how many patents are out there and how likely a new patent will have space in the market to be successful. If that cannot be communicated within the confine of a grant proposal, then funding will not be awarded.
According to both Lankford and Sandy, the ability to write grant proposals, and proposals in general, is a skill that should be taught more. Recognizing that, NC State is moving in that direction as grant proposal development becomes identified more and more as a capacity-building skill that organizations need. The university has put a lot of money into getting that information out there, but it’s still up to the faculty, and to students, to take advantage of it.
Sandy’s best advice was to those looking to develop a skill in grant proposal writing was to take advantage of online resources. At NC State, the Office of Research Development has a huge amount of resources. The university pays consultants and has databases that faculty and students can gain access to using their unity IDs. NC State is also one of the few universities with a dedicated proposal developer. However, most mid- to large-sized universities have proposal development teams. Get to know your team. Know your program manager at the funding agency. Start early.