Seeking funding for research is important, both for the researcher and for the profession. Well-designed studies can be expensive. As the control of variance and the complexity of the design increase, the cost of the study tends to increase. By obtaining funding, the researcher can conduct a complex, well-designed study. Funding also indicates that others have reviewed the study and recognize its scientific and social merit. In fact, the scientific credibility of the profession is related to the quality of studies conducted by its researchers. Thus, scientific credibility and funding for research are interrelated.
The profession of nursing has invested a great deal of energy in increasing the sources of funding and amount of money available for nursing research. Each award of funding enhances the status of the researcher and increases the possibilities of greater funding for later studies. In addition, funding provides practical advantages. For example, funding may reimburse part or all of the researcher’s salary and therefore release the researcher from other responsibilities, allowing the researcher to devote time to conducting the study. Funding provides you with the resources to hire research assistants and study coordinators to facilitate careful data collection and enhance your productivity. Thus, skills in seeking funding for research are as important as skills in the conduct of research.
Two general types of grants are sought in nursing: developmental (or program) grants and research grants. Developmental grant proposals are written to obtain funding for the development of new programs in nursing, such as a program designed to teach nurses to provide a new type of nursing care or to implement a new approach to patient care. Although these programs may involve evaluation, they seldom involve research. For example, the effectiveness of a new approach to patient care may be evaluated, but the findings can seldom be generalized beyond the unit or institution in which the patient care was provided. The emphasis is on implementing the new approach to care, not on conducting research. Research grants provide funding specifically to conduct a study. Although the two types of grant proposals have similarities, they also have important differences in writing techniques and flow of ideas, as well as content. This chapter focuses on seeking funding for research.
The researcher may have one of two purposes for seeking research funding. First, the funding may allow the researcher to conduct a single study that is of immediate concern or interest. This situation is most common among nursing students who are preparing theses and dissertations. However, nurses in clinical practice may also develop an interest in a single study that has emerged from their clinical situation. Except in unusual circumstances, the person seeking funding for a single study, such as a master’s thesis, needs to consider sources of small amounts of money. In most cases, this type of funding will not reimburse for salary and will pay only a portion of the cost of the study. Sources of funding are likely to be those described in the section titled Conducting Research on a Shoestring. These funds may pay for the cost of purchasing or printing instruments, postage, research assistants’ salaries, travel to data collection sites, computer analysis, the services of a statistician, or any combination of these expenses. If the researcher’s experience is a positive one, further studies may be conducted later in his or her career. Thus, these small grants can be steppingstones to larger grants, such as funding for a master’s thesis, predoctoral studies in preparation for the doctoral dissertation or funding for the dissertation research. Graduates from doctoral studies in nursing are now moving into post-doctoral studies that prepare them for a career as a researcher. At this point in their career, they seek funding for their post doctoral research in preparation for developing the skills required to obtain the large federal grants needed to fund a career as a nurse researcher and/or a university professor.
An individual planning to continue research activities throughout a career needs to plan a strategy for progressively seeking more extensive funding of research activities. It is unrealistic, even in a university setting, to expect to obtain the time and money needed to conduct full-time research without external funding. An aspiring career researcher needs to be willing to invest the time and energy to develop grantsmanship skills. The researcher must also develop a goal to obtain funding for that portion of time that it seems desirable to commit to research activities. The researcher should discuss this goal with administrative personnel.
An aspiring career researcher needs to initiate a program of research in a specific area of study and seek funding in this area. For example, if your research interest is to promote health in rural areas, you need to plan a series of studies that focus on promoting rural health. Even more desirable is an interdisciplinary team committed to a research program. Funding agencies are usually more supportive of researchers who focus their efforts in one area of study and are members of an interdisciplinary team. Each study conducted within this area will increase the researcher’s database and familiarity with the area. Research designs can be built on previous studies. This base of previous research and knowledge greatly increases the probability of receiving further funding. Publication of the studies will also increase the credibility of the researcher.
Grantsmanship is not an innate skill; it must be learned. Learning the process requires a commitment of both time and energy. However, the rewards can be great. Strategies used to learn grantsmanship are described in the following sections and are listed in order of increasing time commitment, involvement, and level of expertise needed. These strategies are attending grantsmanship courses, developing a reference group, joining research organizations, participating on research committees or review panels, networking, assisting a researcher, and obtaining a mentor.
Some universities offer elective courses on grantsmanship. Continuing education programs or professional conferences sometimes offer topics related to grantsmanship. The content of these sessions may include the process of grant writing, techniques for obtaining grant funds, and sources of grant funds. In some cases, representatives of funding agencies are invited to explain funding procedures. This information is useful for developing skill in writing proposals.
A reference group consists of individuals who share common values, ways of thinking, activities, or any combination of these traits. These individuals become a reference group when a person identifies with the group, takes on group values and behavior, and evaluates his or her own values and behavior in relation to those of the group. A new researcher moving into grantsmanship may therefore need to switch from a reference group that views research and grant writing to be either over their heads or not worth their time to a group that values this activity. From this group will come the support and feedback necessary to develop grant-writing skills.
Research organizations are another source of support and new information for grant writing. Regional nursing research associations, located across the United States and internationally, provide many resources useful to the neophyte researcher.
Eastern Nursing Research Society
Southern Nursing Research Society
e-mail: info@snrs.org
Midwest Nursing Research Society
e-mail: info@mnrs.org
e-mail: win@ohsu.edu
Royal Windsor Society for Nurse Researchers
Australia—National Health and Medical Research Council
Canada—Canadian Institutes of Health Research
France—Association of Nursing Research
Germany—German Nursing Association, Agnes Karll Institute for Nursing Research
Japan—Japanese Nursing Association
The Netherlands—Netherlands Institute for Primary Care
New Zealand—Health Research Council
Norway—Norwegian Nurses Association
Sigma Theta Tau Honor Society of Nursing
International Institute for Qualitative Methodology
Virginia Henderson Library—Registry of Nursing Knowledge
National Institute for Nursing Research
Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ)—Nursing Research
University of Washington Research Funding Service
Winning Grant Proposals Online
The Scientist—How to Wow a Study Section: A Grantsmanship Lesson
The Internet’s Nursing Resource—Nursing Research—Funding Information
By searching these websites, you will find calls for proposals to which you can respond, help in writing grant proposals, nurse researchers who are interested in the same area of research, and information on nursing meetings where you can present your findings and interact with other researchers. There is a strong interest in promoting international interaction among researchers, including sharing research ideas and conducting multisite research projects. In addition to these sources, specialty nursing organizations have research groups for members interested in conducting studies related to a particular nursing specialty.
Research committees and institutional review boards exist in many health care and professional organizations. Through membership on these committees, contacts with researchers can be made. Also, many research committees are involved in reviewing proposals for the funding of small grants or granting approval to collect data in an institution. Reviewing proposals and making decisions about funding help researchers become better able to critique and revise their own proposals before submitting them for review.
Networking is a process of developing channels of communication among people with common interests throughout the country. Contacts may be made by computer networks, mail, telephone, or arrangements to meet in groups. Through this process, nurses interested in a particular area of study can maintain contacts made at meetings by exchanging addresses and telephone numbers. These contacts provide opportunities for brainstorming, sharing ideas and problems, and discussing grant-writing opportunities. In some cases, it is possible to write a grant to include members of a network in various parts of the country. When a proposal is being developed, the network, which may become a reference group, can provide feedback at various stages of development of the proposal.
Volunteering to assist with the activities of another researcher is an excellent way to learn research and grantsmanship. Graduate students can gain this experience by becoming graduate research assistants. Assisting in grant writing and reading proposals that have been funded can be particularly helpful. Examining proposals that have been rejected can also be useful if the comments of the review committee are available. The criticisms of the review committee point out the weaknesses of the study and therefore clarify the reasons why the proposal was rejected. Examining these comments on the proposal can increase your insight as a new grant writer and prepare you for similar experiences. However, some researchers are sensitive about these criticisms and may be reluctant to share them. If an experienced researcher is willing, it is enlightening to hear his or her perceptions and opinions about the criticisms.
Learning effective means of acquiring funding is difficult. Much of the information needed is transmitted verbally, requires actual participation in grant-writing activities, and is best learned in a mentor relationship. A mentor is a person who is more experienced professionally and willing to “teach the ropes” to a less experienced professional. Modeling is an important part of the mentoring process. This type of relationship requires a willingness by both professionals to invest time and energy. A mentor relationship has characteristics of both a teacher-learner relationship and a close friendship. Each must have an affinity for the other, from which a close working relationship can be developed. The relationship usually continues for a long time period. However, mentorship is not well developed in nursing, and nurses who have this opportunity should consider themselves fortunate. Byrne and Keefe (2002) presented an excellent discussion of the need for mentoring new researchers in their paper “Building Research Competence in Nursing through Mentoring.” They pointed out emphatically that “when scholarly productivity with funded research is the desired outcome, intense involvement of a protégé with an expert researcher is essential” (p. 391).
Many of us, as neophyte researchers, have had the fantasy of writing a grant proposal to the federal government or a large foundation for our first study and suddenly achieving “stardom” (100% of our salary and everything needed to conduct the ultimate study, including a laptop, a secretary, and multiple graduate research assistants). Unfortunately, in reality this scenario seldom occurs for an inexperienced researcher. A new researcher is usually caught in a catch-22 situation: one needs to be an experienced researcher to get funded; however, one needs funding to get the release time needed to conduct research. One way of resolving this dilemma is to design initial studies that can realistically be done without release time and with little or no funding. This approach requires a commitment to put in extra hours of work, which is often unrewarded, monetarily or socially. However, these types of studies, when well carried out and published, will provide the credibility one needs to begin the process toward major grant funding.
The following guidance is included in “Jump Start: What to Do Before Writing a Grant Proposal” (Reif-Lehrer, 1998b):
Ideas for studies often begin in grandiose ways. You envision the ideal study and follow all the rules in the textbooks and in research courses. However, when you determine what is needed in time and money to conduct this wonderful study, you find your resources sadly lacking. This discovery should not lead you to give up the idea of conducting research. Rather, take stock of your resources to determine exactly what can realistically be done and then modify your study to meet existing constraints. The modified study must remain good science but be scaled down to an achievable level. Downscaling might involve studying only one aspect of the original study, decreasing the number of variables examined, or limiting the study to a single site. In many cases, a minimal amount of money is needed to conduct small studies. This project can be the pilot study that is essential to attract larger amounts of research funding.
The next step is to determine potential sources for small amounts of research money. In some cases, management in the employing institution can supply limited funding for research activities if a good case is presented for the usefulness of the study to the institution. In many universities, funds are available for intramural grants, which you can obtain competitively by submitting a brief proposal to a university committee. Some nursing organizations also have money available for research activities. For example, Sigma Theta Tau, the international honor society for nurses, provides small grants for nursing research that can be obtained through submission to international, national, regional, or local review committees. Another source is local agencies, such as the American Cancer Society and the American Heart Association. Although grants from the national offices of these organizations require sophisticated research, local or state levels of the organization may have small amounts of funds available for studies in the organization’s area of interest.
Private individuals who are locally active in philanthropy may be willing to provide financial assistance for a small study in an area appealing to them. You will need to know whom to approach and how and when to make the approach to increase the probability of successful funding. Sometimes this requires knowing someone who knows someone who might be willing to provide financial support. Acquiring funds from private individuals also requires more assertiveness than needed for other approaches to funding.
Requests for funding need not be limited to a single source. If you need a larger amount of money than one source can supply, seek funds from one source for a specific research need and from another source for another research need. Also, one source may be able to provide funds for a small segment of time; you can then approach another source to seek funding for another phase of the study. You can also combine these two strategies.
Seeking funding from local sources is less demanding in terms of formality and length of the proposal than is the case with other types of grants. Often, the process is informal and may require only a two-or three-page description of the study. The important thing is to know what funds are available and how to apply for them. Some of these funds go unused each year because nurses are not aware of their existence or think that they are unlikely to be successful in obtaining the money. This unused money leads granting agencies or potential granting agencies to conclude that nurses do not need more money for research.
Small grants are also available nationally. The American Nurses’ Foundation and Sigma Theta Tau award a number of grants for less than $5000 on a yearly basis. The grants are competitive and awarded to new investigators with promising ideas, and receiving funding from these organizations is held in high regard. Information regarding these grants is available from the American Nurses’ Foundation. Several federal granting agencies also provide small grants through the Public Health Service. These grants usually limit the amount of money requested to $50,000 to $75,000. Information regarding small grants can be obtained from the Federal Register, which is available in local libraries and online at www.gpoaccess.gov/fr/index.html.
Small grants do more than just provide the funds necessary to conduct the research. They are the first step in being recognized as a credible researcher and in being considered for more substantial grants for later studies. Receipt of these grants and your role in the grant need to be listed on curricula vitae or biographical sketches as an indication of first-level recognition as a researcher.
Many of the specialty practice nursing organizations provide support for studies relevant to their specialty, including nurse practitioner groups. These organizations often provide guidance to budding new researchers who need assistance in beginning the process of planning and seeking funding for research. To determine the resources provided by a particular nursing organization, search their website or contact the organization by e-mail, letter, or phone.
Industries are becoming a good source of funding for nursing studies, particularly if one of their products is involved in the study. For example, if a particular type of equipment is being used during an experimental treatment, the industry that developed the equipment might be willing to provide equipment for the study or may be willing to partially fund the study. If a comparison study examining outcomes of one type of dressing versus another is to be conducted, the company that produces one of the products might provide the product and/or fund the study. Some industries are particular supportive of nurses, or recognize that it is nurses who use their products and perhaps influence decisions related to selection of particular brands of products. The ethics of seeking such funding should be carefully considered, since there is sometimes a risk that the researcher might not be unbiased in interpreting study results.
Identifying Potentially Interested Foundations
Many foundations in the United States provide funding for research, but the problem is to determine which foundations have interests in a particular field of study. Priorities for funding tend to change annually. Once you have identified these foundations, you must determine the characteristics of the foundation, select the appropriate foundations, send query letters, prepare a proposal, and, if possible, make a personal visit to the foundation. Several publications list foundations and their interests. A computerized information system, the Sponsored Programs Information Network (SPIN), can also assist you in locating the most appropriate funding sources to support your research interests. The database contains approximately 2000 programs that provide information on federal agencies, private foundations, and corporate foundations. Many universities and research institutions have access to SPIN.
After you have identified these foundations, gather funding information from each one. A foundation might fund only studies by female researchers, or it may be interested only in studies of low-income groups. A foundation may fund only studies being conducted in a specific geographical region. The average amount of money awarded for a single grant and the ranges of awards need to be determined for each foundation. If the average award of a particular foundation is $2500 and if $30,000 is needed, that foundation is not the most desirable source of funds. However, if you have never been funded previously and the project could be conducted with less money, you could combine an application to that foundation with applications to other foundations to obtain the funds needed. The book most useful in determining this information is The Foundation Directory, which is available online at http://fconline.fdncenter.org.
Grant awards are most commonly made to institutions rather than to individuals. Therefore, it is important to determine the willingness of the institution to receive the grant and support the study. This willingness needs to be documented in the proposal. Supporting the study involves appropriateness of the study topic; adequacy of facilities and services; availability of space needed for the study; contributions that the institution is willing to make to the study, such as staff time, equipment, or data processing; and provision for overseeing the rights of human subjects.
The next step is to send a query letter to foundations that might be interested in the planned study. Address the letter to the director or head of the appropriate office by name rather than to an impersonal title such as “Dear Director.” Names of directors are available in a number of reference books, on the organization’s website, or can be obtained by calling the organization’s switchboard. Your letter needs to reflect spontaneity and enthusiasm for the study, and the opening paragraph should explain why you are sending the letter to that particular foundation. Your query letter should include a succinct description of your proposed study, an explanation of why the study is important, an indication of who will conduct the study, a description of the required facilities, and the estimated duration and cost of the study. Your qualifications for conducting the study need to be made clear. This is no time to be modest about credentials or past achievements. Inquire about the foundation’s interest in the topic and information regarding how to apply for funds. If a personal visit is possible, close your letter with a request for an appointment.
When preparing the proposal, carefully follow the foundation’s guidelines for an application. In some cases, funding is sought from several sources. For example, funding requests may be submitted to an agency of the federal government, a nonprofit volunteer agency, and several private foundations. You may be tempted to send each source the same proposal rather than rewriting it to meet specific guidelines. However, this tactic can be counterproductive because your proposal will not focus on the interests of each foundation and will not be in the format requested by the foundation, which may lead to it being rejected. Developing a proposal is described in Chapter 28.
The foundation may agree to grant you a personal visit. Although the visit may be informal in a social context, foundation representatives will tend to ask hard, searching questions about the study and planned use of the funding. In a way, this interaction is similar to talking to a banker about a loan. Representatives of the foundation will ask questions geared to helping them to determine the following: Is the study feasible? Is the institution willing to provide sufficient support to permit the study to be completed? Is the researcher using all available resources? Have other sources of funding been sought? Has the researcher examined anticipated costs in detail and been realistic? What are the benefits of conducting the study? Who will benefit, and how? Is the researcher likely to complete the study? Are the findings likely to be published? If the written proposal has not been submitted, the visit is an appropriate time to submit it. Additional information or notes prepared for the visit can be left with foundation representatives for consideration as the decision is made.
The largest source of grant monies is the federal government—so much so that, in effect, the federal government influences what is studied and what is not. Funding can be requested from multiple divisions of the government. Information on funding agencies can be obtained from a document compiled by the federal government, The Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance, which is available online at www.cfda.gov. The National Institutes of Health (NIH), particularly the National Institute for Nursing Research, are particularly interested in receiving nursing proposals, as is the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). Each agency has areas of focus and priorities for funding that change yearly. It is important to know this information and prepare proposals within these areas to obtain funding. This information is available online at www.grants.gov, a searchable listing of all federal research funding opportunities.
Two approaches can be used to seek federal funding for research. As the researcher, you can identify a significant problem, develop a study to examine it, and submit a proposal for the study to the appropriate federal funding agency. Alternatively, an agency within the federal government can identify a significant problem, develop a plan by which the problem can be studied, and publish a request for proposals (RFP) or a request for applications (RFA) from researchers.
Reif-Lehrer (1998b) provided excellent guidance for researchers who are seeking federal funding:
To get funding from a major government agency today you need a reasonable amount of good preliminary data. These data must indicate to the reviewers that you can wisely and expediently carry out the project, that the experiments are feasible, and that the data obtained are likely to move the field ahead in some substantive way. (Reif-Lehrer, 1998b, p. 4)
If the study is researcher initiated, it is useful for the researcher to contact an official within the government agency early in the planning process to inform the agency of the intent to submit a proposal. Each agency has established dates, usually three times a year, when proposals are reviewed. You will need to start preparing your proposal months ahead of this deadline, and some agencies are willing to provide assistance and feedback to the researcher during development of the proposal. This assistance may occur through e-mail, telephone conversations, or feedback on a draft of the proposal.
Early in the process of planning a study for which you intend to seek federal funding, it is wise to determine what studies on your topic of interest have previously been funded and what funded studies are currently in process. This information is available on CRISP (Computer Retrieval of Information on Scientific Products). This information is available at the following government website: http://crisp.cit.nih.gov.According to the website information: “The database, maintained by the Office of Extramural Research at the National Institutes of Health, includes projects funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services (SAMHSA), Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDCP), Agency for Health Care Research and Quality (AHRQ), and Office of Assistant Secretary of Health (OASH). Users, including the public, can use the CRISP interface to search for scientific concepts, emerging trends and techniques, or identify specific projects and/or investigators.”
Reviewing proposals that have been funded by that agency can be helpful. Although the agency cannot provide these proposals, researchers can sometimes obtain them by contacting the principal investigator (PI) of the study personally. In some cases, the researcher may travel to Washington to meet with an agency representative. This type of contact allows the researcher to modify the proposal to fit more closely within agency guidelines, thus increasing the probability of funding. In many cases, proposals will fit within the interests of more than one government agency at the time of submission. It is permissible and perhaps desirable to request that the proposal be assigned to two agencies within the Public Health Service.
An RFP is published in the Federal Register and usually has a deadline date that is only a few weeks after publication. Therefore, the researcher needs to have a good background in the field of study and be able to write a proposal quickly. Because a number of researchers will be responding to the same RFP and only one or a few proposals will be approved, these proposals are competitive. The agency staff will not be able to provide the same type of feedback as occurs in researcher-initiated proposals. The agency needs to be informed that a proposal is being submitted. Some questions that require clarification about elements of the RFP can be answered; however, other questions cannot be answered because the proposals are competitive and answering might give one researcher an advantage over others. An RFP allows a wide range of creativity in developing a study design to examine the problem of concern.
An RFA is similar to an RFP except that with an RFA, the government agency not only identifies the problem of concern but also describes the design of the study. An RFA is a contract for which researchers bid. A carefully written proposal is still required and needs to follow the RFA in detail. After funding, federal agency staff maintains much more control and supervision over the process of the study than is the case with an RFP.
One of the quickest ways to get help in writing a research proposal is to do a Google search using the terms “Writing Research Grants” and “Writing Research Proposals.” Many of the universities have Web-based assistance available, as do the government agencies. Another strategy is to do an electronic search of bookstores for the most recent sources. One recent book of interest is Writing the NIH Grant Proposal: A Step-by-Step Guide by William Gerin (2006). Others include Research Proposals: A Guide by Success by Thomas E. Ogden and Israel A. Goldberg (2002), Proposal Writing by Soraya M. Coley and Cynthia A. Scheinberg (2000), and Developing Effective Research Proposals by Keith F. Punch (2006). A book that has received rave reviews is Susan Golden’s (1997) Secrets of Successful Grantsmanship: A Guerrilla Guide to Raising Money. Another book useful for the beginner is Beverly Browning’s (2005) Grant Writing for Dummies. A considerable number of books on grantsmanship are available in libraries and bookstores to fit the needs of researchers in various stages of their career.
Set aside sufficient time to carefully develop your proposal, including rewriting the text several times. Writing your first proposal on a tight deadline is not wise. We recommend that you plan on 6 to 12 months for proposal development from the point of early development of your research ideas. Contact the agency to obtain written guidelines, and follow them rigidly. Strictly adhere to the page limitations and type sizes requested. Reif-Lehrer (1998a) pointed out that
the best writing can’t turn a bad idea into a good grant proposal, but bad writing can turn a good idea into an unfunded proposal.… A good proposal idea must also tweak the reviewers’ imagination.… Investigators must energetically convey their enthusiasm and sense of excitement about their work and the new research directions they are planning. If the researcher can concretely and clearly describe what is known, and then present a logical leap forward into the unknown, there is great potential for capturing the reviewers’ interest. (pp. 1–2)
Input from colleagues can be invaluable in refining your ideas. You need individuals whose opinions you trust and who will go beyond telling you globally how magnificent your proposal is. Seek individuals who have experience in grant writing and are willing to critique your proposal thoroughly and point out its flaws. After you have used their feedback to revise the proposal, contact a nationally known expert in your research field who will agree to examine your proposal critically. Be prepared to pay a consultant fee for this service.
Neophytes are least willing to request a critique by colleagues and experts. There is almost a desire to write the proposal in secrecy, submit it quietly, and wait for the letter from the funding agency. That way, if you fail, no one will know about it. If others do know that a proposal is being developed, another strategy is often used. The author furiously writes up to the very last possible deadline and then, in exhaustion, proclaims that there is no time for review before it is submitted. Both these strategies almost guarantee that the proposal will be rejected. Remember, the critiques of your friends and the expert you have sought are unlikely to be as devastating as that of reviewers at the funding agency. Moreover, you have a chance to make changes after your friends review it. Most, if not all, proposals to the federal government must be submitted online.
The National Institutes of Health Office of Extramural Research provides a Grants website (http://grants.nih.gov/grants/grants_process.htm) that provides a detailed explanation of their electronic grant application process. They provide step-by-step instructions: planning your application, writing your application, how to apply, receipt and referral, peer review process, grant award, and award management. You use an electronic form to write your proposal, submit your proposal electronically, communicate with the agency by e-mail, and the results of the review are sent to you by e-mail. The time required to complete the process is a minimum of one year. The AHRQ electronic process is described at their website: www.ahrq.gov/path/egrants.htm.
After submission, a grant is assigned to a study section for scientific evaluation. The study sections have no alignment with the funding agency. Thus, staff in the agencies have no influence on the committee’s work of judging the scientific merit of the proposal. The proposal is given to two or more researchers from the study section who are considered qualified to evaluate the proposal. These scientists prepare a written critique of the study. The proposal is then sent to all the members of the study section. Each member may have 50 to 100 proposals to read in a 1- to 2-month period. A meeting of the full study section is then held. Those who critiqued the proposal discuss each application, and other members comment or ask questions. A majority vote determines whether the proposal is approved, disapproved, or deferred.
Approved proposals are assigned a numerical score used to develop a priority rating. A study that is approved is not necessarily funded. The PI will be notified at this point whether the study was approved. At a later time, approved studies are further examined to determine actual funding. Funding begins with the proposal that has the highest rank order and continues until available funds are depleted. This process can take 6 months or longer. Because of this process, researchers may not receive the money to initiate a grant for up to a year after submitting the proposal.
Often, researcher-initiated proposals are rejected (or approved but not funded) after the first submission. The critique of the scientific committee, called a summary statement, is available to the researcher via his or her eCommons account. Frequently, the agency staff will encourage the researcher to rewrite the proposal with guidance from comments and resubmit it to the same agency. The probability of funding is often greater the second time if the researcher has followed the suggestions.
Review of RFPs or RFAs is slightly different. These applications first go through technical (scientific) evaluation. Proposals that pass the technical review are then evaluated from the standpoint of cost. After the financial review, the contracting officer may negotiate levels of funding with the proposal writers. Funding decisions are based on the identification of well-designed proposals that offer the best financial advantage to the government (White, 1975).
The researcher’s reaction to a rejected proposal is usually anger and then depression. The frustrated researcher may abandon the proposal, stuff it in a bottom drawer somewhere, and forgot it. There seems to be no way to avoid the anger and depression after a rejection because of the amount of emotion and time invested in writing it. However, after a few weeks it is advisable to examine the rejection letter again. The comments can be useful in rewriting the proposal for resubmission. The learning experience of rewriting the proposal and evaluating the comments will also provide a background for seeking funding for another study.
A skilled grant writer will have approximately one proposal funded for every five submitted. The average is far less than this. Thus, the researcher needs to be committed to submitting proposals repeatedly to achieve grant funding.
Receiving notice that a grant proposal has been funded is one of the highlights in a researcher’s career and warrants a celebration. However, when the euphoria begins to fade and reality sets in, you will need to make careful plans for implementing the study. To avoid problems, you need to consider managing the budget, hiring and training research personnel, maintaining the promised timetable, and coordinating activities of the study. In addition to the suggestions given in the following sections, Selby-Harrington, Donat, and Hibbard (1994) provided some excellent guidance in grant management from their experience as PIs of a federally funded grant.
Although the supporting institution is ultimately responsible for dispensing and controlling grant monies, the PI is also responsible for keeping track of budget expenditures and making decisions about how the money is to be spent. If this grant is the first one received, a PI who has no previous administrative experience may need some initial guidance in how to keep records and make reasonable budget decisions. If funding is through a federal agency, the PI will be required to provide interim reports, as well as updates on the progress of the study.
When a new grant is initiated, set aside time to interview, hire, and train grant personnel. The personnel who will be involved in data collection need to learn the process, and then data collection needs to be refined to ensure that each data collector is consistent with the other data collectors. This process helps ensure interrater reliability. The PI needs to set aside time to oversee the work of personnel hired for the grant.
The timetable submitted with the proposal needs to be adhered to whenever possible, which requires careful planning. Otherwise, other work activities are likely to take precedence and delay the grant work. Unexpected events do happen; however, careful planning can minimize their impact. The PI needs to constantly refer back to the timetable to evaluate progress. If the project falls behind schedule, action needs to be taken to return to the original schedule or to readjust the timetable. Keeping on schedule will be a plus when it is time to apply for the next grant.
During a large study with several investigators and other grant personnel, coordinating activities can be a problem. Arrange meetings of all grant workers at intervals to share ideas and solve problems. Keep records of the discussions at these meetings. These actions can lead to a more smoothly functioning team.
Federal grants require the submission of interim reports according to preset deadlines. The notice of grant award sent as a PDF (Portable Document Format) document via e-mail will include guidelines for the content of the reports, which will consist of a description of grant activities. Set aside time to prepare the report, which usually requires compiling figures and tables. In addition to the written reports, it is often useful to maintain contact with the appropriate staff at the federal agency.
The researcher should not wait until funding from the first grant has ended to begin seeking funds for a second study because of the length of time required to obtain funding. In fact, it may be wise to have several ongoing studies in various stages of implementation. For example, you could be planning a study, collecting data on a second study, analyzing data on a third study, and writing papers for publication on a fourth study. A full-time researcher could have completed one funded study, be in the last year of funding for a second study, be in the first year of funding for a third study, and be seeking funding for a fourth study. This scenario may sound unrealistic, but with planning, it is not. This strategy not only provides continuous funding for research activities but also facilitates a rhythm of research that prevents time pressures and makes use of lulls in activity in a particular study. To increase the ease of obtaining funding, the studies need to be within the same area of research, each building on previous studies.
• To receive funding, researchers need to learn grantsmanship skills.
• Writing a grant proposal for funding requires a commitment to putting in extra hours of work.
• The first studies are usually conducted on a shoestring budget. Researchers can seek larger sums of money by writing for foundation grants.
• The largest source of grant monies is the federal government.
• The researcher can identify a significant problem, develop a study to examine it, and submit a proposal for the study to an appropriate federal funding agency.
• Alternatively, someone within the federal government can identify a significant problem, develop a plan through which the problem can be studied, and publish an RFP or an RFA from researchers.
• When a grant proposal is funded, it is a time for the researcher to celebrate. However, the researcher then needs to make careful plans for implementing the study.
• The PI is responsible for keeping up with the budget, training research personnel, maintaining the schedule, and coordinating activities.
• Federal grants also require the submission of interim reports.
• A researcher should not wait until funding from the first grant has ended to begin seeking funds for a second study (and then a third and then a fourth).
Browning, B.A. Grant writing for dummies. Somerset, NJ: Wiley, 2005.
Byrne, M.W., Keefe, M.R. Building research competence in nursing through mentoring. Journal of Nursing Scholarship. 2002;34(4):391–396.
Reif-Lehrer, L., Going for the gold. HMS Beagle (online), issue 29, 1998, May 1. Retrieved May 26, 2008, from www.indiana.edu/~gradgrnt/pubs/Going%20For%20The%20Gold.pdf, 1998, May 1.
Reif-Lehrer, L., Jump start: What to do before writing a grant proposal. HMS Beagle, issue 33, 1998, June 26.
Selby-Harrington, M.L., Donat, P.L.M., Hibbard, H.D. Research grant implementation: Staff development as a tool to accomplish research activities. Applied Nursing Research. 1994;7(1):38–46.