The art of grant writing.

How many scientists, while writing a grant proposal, realize that they are producing a marketing document? The answer is, not enough, but the ones who do understand that they are selling their ideas and skills to the grant reviewers are the well-funded ones. The ability to market your ideas is the most critical feature of the art of grant writing.Marketing your research plan of course requires that you have a good idea, one that is creative, innovative, exciting and do-able. In clinical medicine or engineering, ideas might also be judged on their potential to lead to a pragmatic application. And, from the grant giver's standpoint, a good idea has another important attribute. The grant giver's goal is to fund work that furthers their mission. A good idea is one that's in line with that mission. It came as a surprise to me several years ago when I realized that the main aim of the National Institutes of Health or the Medical Research Council is to not fund my research. Thus, the most important homework you can do, before writing the first word of a grant application, is to match your priorities with those of one or more grant givers.One of the most important things you can do to ensure that your writing is clear and focused is to get experienced grant writers to review drafts of your proposal. These should include an expert in your field, a good scientific editor (especially important if you're writing in a language other than your mother tongue) and an intelligent non-specialist. A grant-savvy scientist in another discipline is best qualified to catch fuzzy writing and jargon. Finally, choose reviewers who have the time and who care enough about you and your career to do a careful review. Your department chairman might have the inclination but does he or she have the time?After 20 years of grant writing, I can still produce wordy, unfocused first draftsUnderstanding what reviewers look for is critical to writing a successful grant application. Try to put yourself in the reviewer's shoes. The typical member of a review panel for a government granting agency is a 40-something full professor, faced with his or her own grants, teaching, committees, editorial responsibilities, graduate students, mortgage payments, rebelling teenagers, aging parents, mildewed roses, and so on. These reviewers, always pressed for time and possibly not experts in your field, want to see your main ideas or points at the beginning of the grant application and also near the front of each section.It's worth thinking about the way most of us read a scientific paper when you write a grant. Most people read the abstract first, to get an overview of the whole, and the discussion next, to get to the main ideas and conclusions. Reviewers read grant applications with this same attitude. Meet their expectations by providing an abstract or summary that answers the key questions: what are you going to do? why is it worth doing? where will it lead? and (briefly) how are you going to do it?Preparing a grant application differs in several important ways from writing a scientific paper, although we often subconsciously adopt the same style for our grant applications. If you are asked to write a background or rationale section, begin with an overview of the questions or problems you will address and why they are important. The experimental methods section should start with an overview of the experimental design or plan, followed by the details of the methods or techniques. Jumping directly into the methods suggests you care more about techniques than ideas.Choosing the right grant giver, having a good idea that you develop in a clear, focused proposal, and understanding the grant review process enhance your chances but do not guarantee funding. What happens if you don't succeed the first time? I find encouragement in the saying ‘The only people who don't make mistakes are the ones who don't do anything’. The best scientists occasionally write unfunded proposals, and sometimes dramatically new ideas are harder to get funded than ‘pretty good’ ones. If your grant fails to get funded the first time, don't quit. Revise and resubmit.