[Okgrantsmanship] What do you think? Please respond

[Mason, Linda]

Grant Proposal Library

 

I have wanted to host a library of successful proposals for writers to
access. Here is a stream of conversations from Offices of Sponsored
Programs and Research Development across the country about accomplishing
a library collection of proposals. What do you think? Can we do such a
thing? It would not be accessible to the public, just to the faculty who
want models for their own writing. 

 

Linda Mason, Ed.D.

Coordinator of Grant Writing 

Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education

655 Research Parkway, Suite 200

Oklahoma City, OK 73104

405-225-9486 desk

405-706-8757 cell

405-225-9230 FAX

lmason at osrhe.edu

www.okhighered.org/grant-opps/

 

 

Case Western Reserve University

I'm looking for a little information on proposal sharing within an
institution.  I've been trying to encourage faculty that sharing funded
proposals would float all boats, as it would improve skills across the
board/help the university as a whole.  I've run into some challenges and
some encouragement -- while proposal sharing wasn't even heard of years
ago, some faculty here see it happening more and more, albeit still as
one-offs. We've actually thought about creating a central proposal
archive.  Here, any faculty member could check in and find funded
examples from the past. My question to you: does anyone know of examples
of this, which I could share as encouragement?  Or perhaps literature of
this as a best practice/rough numbers on how many research institutions
do the same?

 

Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center 

Here at MSKCC we have a Successful Grant Library on our internal Grants
& Contracts website. It actually came as a request from our senior
leadership. The library is still expanding, but we have at least one
example of almost every NIH mechanism and ASCO CDAs and YIAs. We also
offer renewal and resubmission applications. We are selective in which
investigators we ask to share their proposals so our track record of
getting a positive response is pretty high. Like others we redact all
names, and budget information. It has been very well received but
definitely took some work to get the project off the ground. 

 

Northwestern University - Chicago

Let's face it, investigators are working in one of the most competitive
research environments ever and their IP, which most certainly includes
funded and unfunded proposals, is their currency-and the very thing that
gets them essential research funding, salary increases, recognized, and
promoted/tenured.  That said, in my experience, investigators are
incredibly collegial and willing to share.  But the reasons are not all
altruistic, investigators often look for new opportunities when they
agree to share their IP, thus my approach has been one of active broker
toward relationship building.

 

When Investigator A wants a proposal from Investigator B, I will make a
blind request.  That is, I ask Investigator B if s/he will share with
Investigator A.  This way, B doesn't need to worrying about asking for
something from someone s/he has never met before and/or personal
rejection, and A can consider saying "no" without worry about losing
face.  I'm very specific about which part(s) of the proposal and reviews
I'd like to share, and I always promise not to share individual salary
info from the budgets (offering to modify budget sections if necessary
so that sharing can be possible).  100% of the time (many requests over
many years), B has said "yes" to sharing with A-and 100% of the time A
thanks B directly (I know because I harangue A until s/he sends a thank
you note or tells me s/he has made a call).  It's the latter personal
communication that makes it all work great.  Investigator A feels a
sense of appreciation for a colleague's willingness to share, and
Investigator B knows s/he is being recognized for both her/his IP and
collegiality.  I also ask A to commit to sharing her/his proposals in
the future, and have often seen the commitment fulfilled.  Not only
that, but a few times an additional aspect of the relationship forms
between investigators-occasionally A & B have started a collaboration,
sometimes B has written a letter of support for A, sometimes B offers to
review the proposal for A, and sometimes B agrees to serve in a
formal/informal adviser for the project/research/grant mechanism.  My
favorite brokered request to date: one between two investigators who
happen to be married!  Research development and marriage counseling all
rolled up into one!!

 

Tufts University

Since we have three campuses and a history of not a tremendous amount of
cross-campus collaboration, a lot of times faculty don't know one
another particularly well. My office is part of central administration,
and we're the one office that is strictly a service for faculty (we
don't deal with compliance-related issues at all, except by default as
we help faculty follow university and funding agency guidelines as they
develop their proposals). Faculty tend to see us as honest brokers
because of that, and if we ask investigator B on behalf of investigator
A for a sample proposal, then almost always we get a "yes" answer.

 

The other thing we do to make some of the
infrastructure/education/diversity/training grants a little less
cumbersome is to maintain a searchable wiki of "standard" text that we
mine from previous grants we've worked on. It's a clunky solution, but
the only people who have access to the text are those of us who work in
my office, and so we're able to curate the text and help the faculty
member tailor it to their particular proposal. We considered at one
point making the text available to all Tufts faculty and staff, but we
were worried about the potential for plagiarism (people copying and
pasting the same text into multiple proposals) and poor grantsmanship
(not altering the text to make sure that it actually supports the goals
of the RFA).

 

Purdue

We keep a library of sample proposals at Purdue with funded proposals
from both Purdue PIs and outside Purdue.  Usually it's not as helpful as
you might since solicitations change from year to year even in the same
program, and unfortunately sometimes proposals are funded in spite of
how they are written/organized and not because of it.  Inexperienced
readers could make wrong assumptions if they are not careful.

 

University of Toledo

At the University of Toledo, we are building a public "war chest" of
sample proposals. The process was quite simple-I just asked various
faculty if they would be willing to allow us to post the abstract and
project narrative for successful proposals. Most have agreed. The only
ones who have not are concerned about IP and patent information. Our
goal is to let more inexperienced faculty see what a successful proposal
looks like from the perspective of formatting, language, grammar, etc.
Additionally, all NSF awards are public, although it is definitely
recommended to approach the PI and get his or her agreement to use them
in such a manner. We are also collecting data sharing plans, mentoring
plans and other "standard" supplementary documents.

 

Resources 

"Why Academics Have a Hard Time Writing Good Grant Proposals" published
in The Journal of Research Administration Volume XXXVIII, Number 2,2007.


Copies of top-ranked, funded proposals are available
www.tgcigrantproposals.com: 

*         in multiple-proposal CD sets
<http://www.tgcigrantproposals.com/search/cdlist.asp>  for $99 

*         on a custom-made CD
<http://www.tgcigrantproposals.com/search/subjects.asp> : the first
proposal of your choice is $29 and each additional proposal is $20 

 

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