Principles of Effective Grantsmanship, Part 2 of 5:  Finding the Right Opportunity

The first step in any successful grant endeavor is to identify a sponsor or program that fits the investigator’s project objectives. If the fit isn’t right, there is little sense in moving forward.

Find Opportunities

Identifying Opportunities: Most grant awards are offered by either the federal government or private foundations. Types of awards vary from supporting traditional research projects to supporting an investigator’s career development. Career investigator awards differ from traditional research awards in that most research grants are awarded for a specific scope of work. With these, the investigator’s training and career plans are important to the degree that they enable the research outcome. For career-type awards, the investigators and their career are the outcome.

Federal opportunities are listed at grants.gov. Each federal agency also maintains its own grant listings and resources. Private funding opportunities are decentralized. The Foundation Center also maintains a database of foundation grants and giving interests.

CSU and a number of its colleges produce proposal opportunity lists for faculty. Campus-wide resources include the following- all of which are available through the Office of the Vice President for Research’s website.

• Internal funding opportunities
• Limited submissions
• Early Career Investigator RFPs
• Foundation RFPs

Evaluating Opportunities: Quality and not quantity is the advisable tactic in finding grant support. When trying to decide upon the best federal funding mechanism, talk to the program officers that oversee the program with the strongest fit with your intended project. They can give you good advice about the suitability of their program and of others within their agency. Some questions to ask when considering fit:

• Do I meet all of the eligibility requirements?
• What are the odds of success?
• What is the ratio of work to reward?
• How strongly does my project align with the sponsor’s mission, both present and future?
• How do my funding needs align with the sponsor’s timeline?

In Conclusion

Grant seeking is challenging and competitive. But, you can improve your chances considerably by going about it the right way. In sum, this entails:

1. Ensuring that the project is competitive and a good fit with the sponsor;
2. Starting early and reaching out for assistance;
3. Writing a concise, compelling narrative that helps the reviewer to do their job; and
4. Rigorously adhering to all guidelines.

Read more on grantsmanship and proposal development in next week’s blog series “Principles of Effective Grantsmanship: Defining (and Refining) the Request.”