Obtaining research funding is a critical activity for academics. Not only do grants provide financial assistance that can lead to groundbreaking research, but prestigious funding can also be a career booster. Nevertheless, academics are under increasing pressure to obtain research funding in a political climate where higher education funding may be cut substantially, resulting in greater competition for dwindling funds and increased rejection rates. We examine the role of university leadership in supporting funding applications, identify funding opportunities emerging from relationships and networks, and discuss the services provided by research support offices.
University leadership often sets goals to increase research funding and may make successful research funding a tenure or promotion requirement. This prerequisite places great stress on the early-career academic. University or even departmental leadership needs to demonstrate support for this requirement, and reward those academics who successfully achieve significant research funding. Department heads can organize seminars on grant application writing, or how to identify grant foundations that best match one’s research focus. Seminars can play a key role in encouraging academics who have been unsuccessful in grant writing, by presenting strategies on how to develop an idea into a research project, or how to stay motivated during an unsuccessful period. Research seminars can provide exposure to academics from other universities, enabling networking and feedback. More informal brown-bag seminars are a low-risk way for academics to obtain research ideas and advice from peers, which may improve their funding chances.
Beyond seminars, department chairs may set up a committee for research funding, which can provide structure to the funding writing process and help spread information about funding opportunities. The chair of the research funding committee would be responsible for maintaining contact with the university’s research support office and helping the department chair develop a research funding strategy that would meet the department’s research goals; this individual can also establish links with other institutions involved in complementary research. Adequate funding and support should also be provided, for example, allocation of work hours to academics for writing funding applications, and the opportunity to buy out research time if the funding is granted. Additionally, if a research project results in one or more publications in top journals, academics may be rewarded with funding in their research account, earmarked for further funding applications.
Academics can leverage their relationships and networks when writing funding proposals. Departments can set up strategic alliances with outside research institutions that will support quality funding proposals (for example, by inviting top researchers to join the funding proposal, or to identify research programs at other institutions with potential for synergy). Similarly, funding proposal writers themselves can leverage their personal networks (their senior advisers and committee members, or senior faculty at their institution). If the strategic alliance results in cross-disciplinary work, it may attract the attention of government agencies, which may prefer this kind of aggregated research. Some institutions support, and may even provide funding for, cross-disciplinary projects. It may also be feasible to partner with an industry association that wants to fund academic research projects.
“This is a very different writing style from traditional academic writing.”
Academics have some support when building their research networks. For example, some universities have created research institutes, such as the Institute for the Study of Business Markets at Pennsylvania State University. Research institutes such as the Marketing Science Institute identify current priority research topics; research addressing a hot topic is more likely to get funded. It is also a good idea for academics to stretch outside of their comfort zone: interdisciplinary or intersectoral research involves working with colleagues outside one’s field of study but may result in collaborative work that exploits complementarities. For example, a marketing researcher in the innovation area might form a high-payoff collaboration with someone from the engineering or industrial design school.
An important resource for any funding proposal writer is the research support office. This office is staffed by experienced funding proposal writers, who can provide general guidance on finding writing as well as support on specific proposals. Too often, academics turn to these offices as a last resort when finalizing their funding proposal, for example, when they need an authority person to sign off on the proposal. Instead, it is beneficial (especially for early-career academics) to get involved with the research support office early, as the staff can be particularly helpful in many ways throughout the funding writing process. These include: developing a fundraising strategy, arranging for attendance at writing workshops, finding funding writing templates, reading and commenting on early drafts of the proposal, and connecting the researcher with funding agencies, which can provide further advice.
Finally, once the academic has obtained support as described above, and drafted the funding proposal, they should fine-tune it so that it will be read eagerly and (hopefully) assessed positively by the research foundation’s reviewers. The writing style should be persuasive, effectively promoting the research idea; bullet points and key phrases should be used for brevity. This is a very different writing style from traditional academic writing. As always, the writing should be style edited to eliminate grammatical errors and verbose or unclear text. But what is it specifically that these reviewers will be looking for? As a final policy recommendation, we suggest that the grant writer addresses these basic questions in the proposal they submit:
What is the basic research idea? It is a good idea to have a clear and concise abstract, which will boost the reviewer’s excitement and enthusiasm about the funding proposal.
Why is the research important? What is the problem or issue, and what is new or groundbreaking about the proposed research?
How will the proposed research impact science or society, and how will this be accomplished?
Who are the applicants, and what are their strengths and competencies?
Where is the research taking place? What is the research enviroment and infrastructure, and what is the intellectual setting?
Or, academics could just go to the library and do the research instead.