Presenter: Jude Mikal, PhD UMN School of Public Health
Date: September 24, 2020
Link: PowerPoints and Handout1 and Handout2
Description: So your grant proposal came back with an unenthusiastic response from reviewers. Was it because they found your science lackluster? Maybe. But there's a good chance the problem was important nontechnical questions that you left unanswered in the proposal itself. Questions like: So what? Who cares? Is this project trying to do too much? Or too little? And why is this researcher going it alone? In our hyper-competitive funding climate, it's critical for investigators to write clear, cohesive, compelling proposals that foreground the science and its potential significance. With so much at stake, it's a shame to watch a proposal rejected for something that could have been avoided with a little work upfront. Capitalizing on 15 years of experience working to sharpen grant proposals, the 10 most-common non-scientific errors we see in grant writing are identified - and offer a list of potential solutions to help investigators write clearer proposals for increasingly busy review panelists.