Grant Writing

Lloyd Douglas has been at the National Science Foundation since 1984. Though he hasn't ever written a grant, this past year alone he read 418 proposals and close to two thousand reviews.

Inspiration: Finding what grants exist

• The grant proposal guide NSF 99-2
• The guide to programs NSF 99-4
• Program announcements and solicitations

• Start well in advance.
• Share the proposal with your colleagues. People will see the grant after it's sent in. One may as well get a critique beforehand.
• Look at NSF abstracts. These contain the name, institution, dollar amount, and abstract of funded grants.

• Know your audience. Except for the crosscutting programs, your audience will be mainly comprised of mathematicians. However, these people may or may not be in your discipline. To find out more about your audience, contact your program officer. He or she will also be able to tell you if the proposal will have a panel review (a panel meets to decide on funding) or a mail review (the proposal is sent to reviewers, who mail back their reviews).
• Follow the guidelines. If you do not follow the guidelines, the proposal may be rejected. This means that it never reaches the reviewal stage.
• Grants are not contracts. It is okay if you propose to prove a certain result and then don't succeed. What is important is to do something. When you file the report, the NSF will find out what you were able to do.

• Sign up for custom news service and find out just the information you want to know.
• Check out the Department of Mathematical Sciences homepage at http://www.nsf.gov/mps/dms/.
• When e-mailing NSF officials, use firstinitialconcatenatelastname@ed.gov.

Carole LaCampagne is at the US Department of Education in the Office of Educational Research and Improvement. Her e-mail address is Carole_LaCampagne@ed.gov.

Proposal Structure

• What are you trying to solve? State the problem you are working on.
• Why should this project be funded?
  • Explain the national significance of the project.
  • Give relevant history and background.
  • Mention previous work and related papers.
  Doing these things indicates that you know what you are talking about.
• Carefully state your plan
  • Give your methodology.
  • Say with whom you will work. Discuss staffing.
  • Delineate your plan. Be sure to have a section on evaluation of the work and its significance.
  • Include a timetable.
  • Give information about yourself and your institution. This information can help to convince the reviewers that you will be able to complete the project.
• Address the items listed in the applications package. Make it easy for the reviewers to locate this information by using section headings.
• It is important that your budget is not inflated, but is big enough to accomplish the proposed goals.

• Your proposal will usually be reviewed by a panel.
• These grants are often not specifically targeted towards mathematics, so be careful not to use jargon or abbreviations, such as AMS, MAA, or NExT.
• Show the proposal to colleagues to get feedback before submission. Be sure to show it to at least one person who has not been talking to you about the project. It will be easier for that person to find what's missing from the proposal.
• One way to see a lot of grant proposals it to get involved as a reviewer. The exposure to many grant proposals helps in writing one. Though the pay is minimal, one gets to meet interesting people and gain an understanding of grant writing. To apply send Carole LaCampagne a vitae by e-mail. You may then be contacted in the future to serve as a reviewer.
• For more information, consult http://www.ed.gov/pubs/KnowAbtGrants.

1. Read with a purpose.
2. Focus on information related to the criteria.
3. Skim over nonessential information.
4. Concentrate on key words/phrases.
5. Read critically.
6. Read quickly.
7. Don't try to memorize.
8. Take notes, if necessary.
9. Relax and clear your mind of personal concerns.
10. Minimize distraction.

• (FIS) The Field Initiated Studies Program is for research on educational issues initiated from the field. The proposal must be for educational research. It is important to indicate your methodology--whether your data will require statistical analysis or whether the study will be qualitative. The award is up to $35,000 for each of 3 years.
• (FIPSE) Fund for the Improvement of Post-Secondary Education
• America Counts is a program to support the use of work-study money for tutoring. At each university implementing the program, someone will need to be in charge of training and hiring.
• Eisenhower State Grants are given to schools and universities. Individual researchers may apply or may hook up with a school and apply together. The grants are intended for high school--college interface projects. Bridge and head start programs are often included.

Billy Rundell is an experienced grant writer and professor at Texas A&M.
He suggests reading Advice and Good Living to New PhDs by John Ewing.

Advice

• Research
  • Conduct research of interest to others.
  • Choose projects that are substantial, but tenable.
  • Don't write so much that you end up making errors.
  • If you get stuck on a problem, write up a summary of your work for future use in a grant proposal.
• Other People
  • Go to meetings.
  • Talk to colleagues.
  • Find a mentor you can trust.
  • Network.
  • Get advice and feedback from senior colleagues.
• The Proposal
  • Show at least the first two pages of the proposal to at least 5 or 6 people before submitting it.
  • Write so that your closest colleagues can understand 100% and the next larger circle of mathematicians can understand at least 50-60% of the proposal.
  • If you are having to adjust the point-size of the type in order to use no more than the allotted space and you have time, then start over. Be clear, but brief.
  • Don't be too technical. Details bore everyone.
  • Be sure to reference other work, but don't have 100 references.
  • Never speculate without checking. Make sure the answers to your questions are not well known.
  • Find out who has funding and show the proposal to these people before submission. They are likely to be the reviewers.

Jean Taylor is president-elect of the AWM (Association for Women in Mathematics).

Advice

• When to start
  • For a research grant with a September or October due date, start by the end of August.
• Who should ready your grant before your send it in
  • Someone supportive, yet honest who will pay attention to the details and will tell you what you are doing well and what you are not doing well.
  • It must be someone you trust because of the aspect of intellectual nakedness involved.
  • She had her husband (also a mathematician) read her grants.
  • She suggests fellow Project NExTers as possible readers.

• Set the stage, give details and heuristics. Tell your plan. Back up your intuition.
• You don't have to accomplish what you proposed to do, but you must do something.
• Spell and grammar check!
• Check to make sure other people who are helping are doing what they are supposed to be doing.
• Trumpet what you have done, even though this may be uncomfortable. You can't count on the reviewers to know your record.
• Be enthusiastic about your work. If you aren't, it will show.

• AWM Workshops pay your way to meetings and give an opportunity for you to present your work.
• There are grants to support Sonya Kovalevsky days.
• Travel Grants are for both foreign and domestic conferences. You are more likely to get one if you are giving a talk.
• Mentoring Grants support you to go to work with someone for one month.
• Post-docs and graduate students can get funding to attend the Olga Taussky-Todd Conference.
• There are also awards, such as the Louise Hay award for excellence in math education and the Alice Schafer Prize for undergraduate excellence in mathematics.

Elaine Terry is a project NExT silver dot at St. Joseph's University who has applied for two grants and has been funded.

Grant #1: AWM Sonya Kovalevsky Day Grant
Elaine found out about the grant from the AWM newsletter. It was easy for her to write, because it was short. It took about 10 days to write the 5 page proposal. The program proposed included a follow-up questionaire. Because the grant is a reimbursement grant, it was necessary to locate and work with an office at St. Joseph's that would front the money.

Grant #2: St. Joseph's University College of Arts and Sciences
This grant allows $2,500 to be placed in the department's budget for use in infusing diversity into the department. The 5 page grant took 10-14 days to write, and contained four sections: introduction, goals, budget, and expected outcomes.

Grants should include:

• a title and an abbreviation.
• a cover letter.
• an introduction.
• a section on the goals.
• a budget.
• an explanation of anticipated outcomes.