Bob Hone
Designer/Grant Writer
Grant Writing
My approach for developing a successful grant proposal combines the skills of insightful research on funder priorities and unmet needs, creative program ideation that proposes novel solutions, and effective project management that maximizes the efforts of team members and collaborators. Managing a "pipeline" of promising proposals demands long-range vision and strategies for leveraging an organization's key strengths.
Please see my LinkedIn Article series, Jumpstart Your Next Phase, which reveals the secrets of creating effective NIH SBIR grant proposals.
Grant Proposal Development Process
Every grant opportunity has unique features that require custom elements in your proposal development process. However, I've found that the following tactics and strategies help increase the chances of receiving a grant award.
-
Uncover Funder Priorities
Funders fund projects that address their priorities, which you can discern through a careful review of their recent grant awards. This can provide valuable insights into not only the funder's actions, which can sometimes be different from their stated goals, but also the priorities of the review committee that recommends awards.
-
Identify Unmet Need
The competitive nature of the granting world means that lots of smart, creative people are developing their own ideas and proposals. Deep research into the unmet needs of a particular target audience is essential. As a former journalist, I rely on a diverse set of sources that include government reports, think tank analyses, expert interviews, news reports, and interviews with stakeholders and members of the target audience.
-
Thoroughly Review Prior Art
Knowing what has been previously attempted (and didn't meet the need or solve the problem) insures that you're not repeating a failed approach. Acknowledging related projects that succeeded not only demonstrates the depth of your research and can inform your concept but can also prevents you from making the often fatal error of not citing an influential reviewer's work!
-
Identify Synergistic Collaborators
Nearly all of my large grants (>$1M) have involved collaborations with organizations that provided related and synergistic expertise different from my organization's key strengths. The combined efforts can identify a novel innovative approach that individual efforts might not have revealed. The larger budget for a collaborative effort is rarely a drawback if the strengths are truly complementary and many funders encourage such joint efforts.
-
Start Proposal Development Early
My preference is to start detailed work on a proposal at least three months before the proposal submission deadline–particularly for collaborative projects (preliminary research starts earlier). Effective deep research takes time and several brainstorming meetings may be required to identify a new and promising approach. I aim to complete a rough first draft of a proposal narrative at least one month before the deadline to allow time for collaborators to refine and improve it. Budgeting, scheduling, justifying the budget, and other supporting activities take time–often requiring input and approval from other organizational groups–and can't really start until the draft narrative is done.
-
Manage Proposal Development Like A Project
Maybe because I'm also a producer, I view writing a proposal as a media development project with a set of standard tasks and timelines. In one strenuous period, I wrote and completed three grants proposals over four months by staging the proposals sequentially (Proposal A-Draft, Proposal B-Draft, Proposal C-Draft, Proposal A-Final, Proposal B-Final, Proposal C-Final). I almost decided not to complete Proposal C due to exhaustion but I'm glad I didn't. That was the one that was funded!
Managing a Grant Proposal Pipeline
Successful grant writers typically receive one grant for every three proposals they write. My per proposal success rate is 40%–with resubmissions it's 52% per project seeking funding. Surviving on grants, therefore, requires a steady stream of promising, well-researched and polished proposals. At my former company, Red Hill Studios, and at the American University Game Lab, I designed and implemented a grant proposal tracking system that allowed me to coordinate the activities of staff, faculty members, and collaborators on overlapping proposal development projects. A key system feature are the estimates of the "fundability" of each project (the likelihood of success), which enable rough estimates of future aggregate funding. The base acceptance rate for each funder is used unless other data indicate a custom estimate (e.g. history with funder, resubmitted proposal, etc.). All projects fall into one of four main groups based on their phase of proposal development.
-
In Development
These projects are at the earliest stage of development. They may be reactions to a new funding announcement or the identification of a promising collaborator. They typically include a target audience and a specified need but often do not include a specified principal investigator (PI), submission deadline, or identified proposed approach. Tasks include: preliminary research, preliminary prior art, collaborator discussions, and exploratory brainstorming. Roughly 1/3 to 1/2 of these projects will proceed to the next phase..
-
Active Proposals
These projects have a defined PI, target audience, target budget, submission deadline, and collaborator (if one is involved). This is when the bulk of detailed proposal development described above takes place. Typically, this phase starts at least three months before the proposal submission deadline.
-
Pending Proposals
Projects in this group have been submitted and we're waiting to receive notice of funding decision. Data tracked on these proposals include requested budget, expected decision date, fundability, and expected date of funding of successful grants.
-
Active Projects
These are funded projects currently in some phase of development: research, design, production, evaluation, implementation, report preparation, etc. Data tracked on these projects include remaining funding and expected project end date.
Aggregate Future Funding Estimate
The final component of the grant proposal tracking system is the rough estimate of potential future funding revenues. Each proposal's contribution is based on its budget times its fundability estimate. For example, an Active Proposal with proposed budget of $100K and a fundability estimate of 25% would contribute only $25K to the aggregate estimate. This feature factors in the inherent risk of seeking grant funding while also properly accounting for overlapping proposals. Yearly reviews of the accuracy of "fundability" estimates, per funder, help improve the overall accuracy of the aggregate estimate.
Recent Grant and Project Proposals
As Asst. Professor-Research at the American University Game Lab, I not only developed several success grant and project proposals, I also managed a "grant proposal pipeline" that coordinated the efforts of AU faculty members and external collaborators.
-
National Forum on Games and Libraries (Institute of Museum and Library Services, $99K)
I was assigned to the PI role four weeks before the proposal submission deadline when the previous PI left AU. After quickly getting up to speed on an unfamiliar market and audience by leveraging my journalism background, I crafted a successful proposal to IMLS. I then managed the development of a conference program, recruited speakers and session moderators, promoted the event, and moderated one panel session while trouble-shooting day-of issues. As the PI, I wrote the final report to IMLS on the very successful event.
-
Seeing the Good Side (National Institute of Mental Health, $65K)
Dr. Daniel Pine of the NIMH sought out assistance from the AU Game Lab to develop a game to support his promising therapy for children with severe anxiety. I crafted the internal NIMH proposal (ghost-writing for Dr. Pine) to secure the inter-mural funds to support the game project. I then designed and produced a hidden number game that closely mimicked Dr. Pine's therapy.
-
NOVA Survival Island (WGBH-NOVA, $55K)
David Condon of the NOVA team contacted the Game Lab for help on a game intended to help high school students explore the balance between competition and cooperation. After a lengthy initial phone call to discuss his goals for the project, I quickly created a preliminary proposal including a draft budget, which I sent for David's review 3 days later! Once the project contract was completed, we then designed and created a proof-of-concept prototype that WGBH is currently using to seek completion funding.
-
These Walls Can Talk (National Science Foundation, Highly Rated-Competitive)
This proposal to the NSF STEM+Computing program sought funding to host a series of game coding camps at the AU Game Lab for students from a low-income district in Washington DC (Anacostia). Students would learn how to build Pokemon Go style games that would explore the fascinating history of their neighborhood.
-
Do I See What You See? Explorations of Subjective Perception (NSF, Highly Rated-Competitive)
This proposal to the NSF Advancing Informal STEM Learning program sought funding to create a stimulating educational web experience that would engage students in interactive mysteries, in which they would explore project-produced subjective perception examples similar to the white/brown vs. blue/black dress phenomenon. Additional educational components would explore the interconnections between memory, attention, and perception and how they can produce implicit biases.
Prior Grants (Red Hill Studios)
At my interactive design and production company, Red Hill Studios, I wrote 10 successful proposals for grants that generated total funding of $8.2 million (out of 18 projects seeking funding). Several of these were large grants (>$1M) for which I served as the primary grant writer even if a collaborator was the applicant organization.
For example, I developed the concept for a 5,000 sq. ft. traveling museum exhibition, Playing with Time, based on a previous NSF award to my company, which I brought to the Science Museum of Minnesota (SMM) as a potential collaborator. To increase our chance of funding, SMM was the applicant organization and I was a full co-PI with J. Newlin of SMM, even though the original concept was mine and I wrote nearly all of the grant proposal (with J.'s input).
Red Hill Studios collaborated with the School of Nursing at UCSF on several STTR NIH grants totaling $1.3M, with Red Hill Studios serving as the applicant organization. I was the primary grant writer and PI (Glenna Dowling of UCSF was co-PI).
My company was included as a collaborator on many other large, successful grant proposals to provide program input and interactive design and production services. And although I contributed entire sections of the proposals related to our contributions, I have not included these proposals and grants in the $8.2M total because I was not the lead writer on those efforts.