CHAPTER 4
Agency Funding Decisions are Determined by Values and Needs: Theirs, Not Ours

Funding agencies are charged with dispensing funds to people and organizations; faculty are charged with writing grant proposals to obtain funds to do work. To look at granting from a slightly different vantage: granting agencies need to award grants.
Just imagine poor James Fungistis, former chair of the Division of Correct Spelling in the Department of English and Abused Languages at a small college, best left unnamed. He is now chair of the subcommittee of grant awards for the Benevolent Vigilance Committee of The Middle English Society. James reports to a committee chaired by Lilliforce Brook. Mr. Brook, who is 6 feet 8 inches tall and weighs in at 280 kg, has bad breath, chipped teeth, distasteful tattoos, a low, gruff voice and wears a permanent frown. The surprise is that Mr. Brook commands any human language and dresses himself.
When Lilliforce begins to resemble a volcano, spewing demands to know how it happened that, for the second year in a row, James couldn't find anybody to take the Committee's grant funds, James figures he has a problem. Maybe a couple of problems.


* The first deadly sin: mismatched values

The root problem, of course, is a values issue. People are not interested in resurrecting Middle English. Philosophically, there is an imbalance between the values and needs of the Vigilance Committee and the values and needs of individuals who seek grant funds. A pile of grant money lies fallow.

We need to recognize the special relationship between granting agencies and successful grant proposers. The values and needs of granting agencies come into close alignment with the values and needs of grant awardees, in that the agencies need to award money to people and organizations who can meet the value and needs of the granting agencies.

Let us dwell on values for a few minutes, because we can turn our appreciation of agency values to our advantage.

Understand that granting agencies do not care about faculty, nor about our research, teaching and extension activities. Even while they are awarding us big bucks, these same agencies do not care about faculty, nor about our research, teaching and extension activities. What they do care about is meeting their own needs in a way consistent with their own values. Consistency with an organization's values can be quite important.

* Some examples

As a slightly off-the-subject example, I once was asked to apply for a position at Brigham Young University. It was an attractive position, and I was interested. A bit later I received a lengthy letter outlining some of the institutional values faculty were expected to observe.

As a scientist who lived just outside of Napa Valley, California's wine country, I saw that some of our values were not shared. By bringing me onto the faculty, Brigham Young would not have been able to meet its needs in a way consistent with their values. It was appropriate to break off negotiations because our values were not compatible.

Here's another example.

During my graduate student days at UC Berkeley, one of my housemates, Cathy, was offered an attractive postdoctoral position. She had a problem, however, because the source of her postdoctoral support was a grant from the U.S. Army. The Army was interested in how a poison gas influenced certain enzymes in the human central nervous system. Cathy's problem related to her values, which were incompatible with research on chemical weapons.

These are clear examples of the influence of values on the relationship between granting organizations and individuals. There are subtler ones.

Some agencies hold the value that postdoctoral support should be reserved for American citizens. Some hold part of their total expendable funds for certain categories of individuals, such as women and members of under-represented groups. Some agencies set aside funds for younger scientists, or scientists who are still within a few years of having completed their Ph.D.

What may appear to be nothing more than a list of the interests and policies of any given granting agency is actually a synopsis of the agency's values. By thoughtfully considering our own values, and the values of the agencies we are interested in approaching with a grant proposal, we make two gains.

* The competitive edge

First, we avoid writing proposals that will not come to fruition. Second, we hone our competitive edge by including appropriate statements that show how our values match the values of the agency.

Here is a specific example. It is a policy (read value) of the National Institutes of Health that universities should be delighted to make a considerable financial and human commitment to the sorts of research NIH likes to fund. We can include appropriate statements on this point in our proposals to NIH. One of the following would do nicely:

"The University of Nebraska-Lincoln is highly committed to this research program, as shown by the recent purchase of new phosphor imaging equipment."

"UNL's commitment to this work is shown by two UNL-supported GRA's who will work on this project."

"UNL will directly contribute to the success of this project by funding a technician who will devote full time to this project."

We can put specific language into our grant proposals with the overt goal of showing how our research programs fit into the value systems of granting agencies.
To summarize:
1. Values held by a granting agency influence the selection of grant proposals that will be funded.
2. Our values can influence what funding we are willing to accept.
3. Thoughtful attention to values can be a competitive tool because we can indicate how our values and the agency's values are compatible. Ask yourself:
A. What values does this agency hold?
B. How does this proposal support those values?

It is a fact of virtually all granting arenas: granting agencies award funds to achieve the goals of the granting agencies in a way consistent with their values..

* The second deadly sin: mismatched needs

Agencies award grants to individuals and organizations who will carry out work that meets the needs of the agency. Here, it is important to focus on the idea of needs. We need to match our needs with a granting agency's needs for much the same reason we carefully match socks when we pull them from the dryer—appearing in public with a mismatched pair can be downright embarrassing, and long remembered.

In selecting from a number of proposals, agencies tend to view with suspicion words such as interesting, thought-provoking, stimulating, exciting, spellbinding, tingling, electrifying, novel, important, significant and ground-breaking. These modifiers may accurately represent our projects, but the agencies do not care.

From the perspective of an agency, the only real question is: Does the project address our needs?

It does not matter that we believe our project is important, novel, and thought-provoking. What we believe is not the point to a granting agency. The agency does not care how much we enjoy our work.

* Matchmaking: designing our proposals

While it is not generally true, faculty in some institutions can eventually lose their positions because they are not successful in attracting federal research funds. It happened to a friend of mine. The situation can become desperate, because we need to have a grant funded, or we could wind up teaching Algebra I in remedial college programs. Or we will lose a position or two. Or we will not be able to accept a promising graduate student. Or we will have to sell gun-cleaning kits all summer.

It does not speak badly of granting agencies to emphasize that our needs do not figure prominently in their granting decisions. It is a fact of virtually all granting arenas: granting agencies award funds to achieve the goals of the granting agencies in a way consistent with their values. Recognizing this point can help us design grant proposals.

It does not do to address the intellectual curiosity of grant reviewers: they do not have time or energy to be curious and they do not care about our interests.

* Meet their needs

It does not do to describe what we need; the proposal reviewers do not have the time to care what other people and organizations need. Reviewers are charged with selecting proposals that meet the agency's needs in a manner consistent with the agency's values.

There is an inexorable logic to this: The only way we are going to get our proposals close to or over the funding lines is to ensure that the work we propose meets the needs of an agency in a way consistent with the agency's values. This puts the responsibility on us to look carefully at the work we want to do and to look carefully at the agencies we want to approach with proposals.

* Match their needs

If we know what we really want to do, and we know the needs of one or more agencies, we can work to match what we want to do with an agency's needs.

There are a couple ways to work to achieve the match in needs and values that result in successful grant proposals. One is to consider a number of granting agencies, determine what they need, then select the agencies whose needs match our interests. The other is to develop our proposals so that it becomes plain that what we wanted to do all along fits perfectly with an agency's needs.

Very often the first part leads into the second.

* The first path

Taking the first path, we scan grant proposal guidelines from all appropriate agencies, National Science Foundation, USDA, National Institutes of Health, Department of Energy, The National Cancer Institute, Environmental Protection Agency, all of the military research programs, the Education Department, the National Institute of Mental Health, the local Research Council, the Center for Biotechnology, and state and regional commodity boards, to name a few. Materials of this sort are available in the library or most sponsored programs offices.

* Eliminate some agencies

It doesn't take long to eliminate certain agencies because there is no possibility of matching our interests and their needs. For example, the Office of Naval Research does not invest a great deal of money in agricultural extension activities. On the other hand, some extension programming may well suit the needs of agencies interested in adult education.

In this process of considering the guidelines of granting agencies, it may take a little more thought and time to eliminate some agencies that may or may not have needs in our interest areas. If often have looked at proposal notices, at proposal requests and at journal advertisements and wondered, "Would my interests address their needs?" Here is where a letter of inquiry, describing our interest, can help. The response helps us decide whether and if we should add the agency to our list of possibilities, or eliminate it without further work.

Awarding funds for work is as much a process of elimination as one of selection.

* The second path

With luck, there will be one or more granting organizations whose needs would potentially match our lines of work. Now we take the second path toward creating a good match between the agencies and ourselves.

The overall idea is to first determine the needs of the organization, then to develop our proposals in such a way that it is plain that our interests match their needs. Historically, this was not always as important to writing competitive grant proposals as it is in the current economic and political environments.

In the bad old days, when granting agencies had buckets of sputnik-fearing money to dole out, and there were fewer faculty members in search of grant funds, the needs of agencies often were interpreted in more flexible language.

In my post-doctoral days, I was funded by the National Institute of Mental Health to work on biochemical aspects of the reproductive behavior in a cricket. By the mid-1980s, the Institutes were looking at their own missions very closely, and the needs of the Institutes were expressed in tightly defined terms. In the contemporary funding climate, work on comparative behavior would not easily fit into the narrow mission statement of the National Institute of Mental Health.

* Look more closely

Let us look at the needs of granting agencies more closely. We all know that most granting agencies receive many more grant proposals than they can ever hope to fund. Individuals or panels who review grant proposals find themselves asking, "Which of these five impressive proposals BEST addresses our needs?"

Awarding funds for work is as much a process of elimination as one of selection. Simply stating that our work will help meet an agency's needs may not be sufficiently convincing. If the proposal is not convincing on this point, it is relatively easy to dismiss it. We do not want our proposals to be easily dismissed.

* What do they need?

The aim here is to plan what we need to do to make our proposal successful by asking ourselves, "What do these people need?"

Let us consider some of the smaller grants available through various channels in UNL. One Monday afternoon you find yourself in a particularly creative mood, and reaching—without conscience awareness—for your project planning notebook.

Now, you think, this project down here, near the bottom, could be really interesting, if couched in the right language. The only real stumbling block is that you would need a bit of preliminary data to convert this idea into a competitive proposal, and you need to perform Western blots to get the preliminary data. You already have a power supply that would work, and all you really need to get some pretty attractive preliminary data is a blotting apparatus.

About $1,500, plus $500 for chemicals, and you could be rolling.

At this point, recognize that we have identified your need.

* Seed money

This need is a spot of seed money. Seed money is usually meant to help get some preliminary data to support a larger, external grant proposal.

The UNL Research Council provides small grants to faculty who need a bit of seed money. We might fire off a proposal that says something like: "I need about $2,000 to purchase a piece of biochemical gear (we would, of course, be specific) to help me get some preliminary data. The preliminary data will help me with a grant proposal." This may be followed by several detailed paragraphs on the theory and operation of the equipment, and on how the data from the equipment is interpreted.

Now. Let's think about the Research Council's needs.

First of all, the Research Council is comprised of relatively few scientists, and even fewer scientists who relate to biochemistry. Second, the Council does not need to award seed money.

The Council's goal is to encourage the development of external, competitive grant proposals. The Council awards seed money to attain its goal of encouraging research and other creative activities.

A proposal for seed money from the Research Council becomes more convincing when it contains a title for the larger proposal, and details precisely where the proposal will be submitted, the amount of money the proposal will request, and some information on how the equipment requested in the seed money proposal will make the larger proposal more competitive.

That same need for details applies to a number of small grant opportunities in our University. Granting elements in the University do not need to award seed money—they need to encourage competitive proposals aimed at national funding agencies. If we want to speak to the needs of University small grant programs, we should address, in convincing detail, how the small grant will help us generate competitive external proposals.

* Same theme applies

The theme of identifying the real needs of a potential granting agency applies to all organizations. As example, the commodity boards award an impressive amount of money to University faculty. These boards are composed of fairly sophisticated individuals blessed with a clear focus on the needs of the growers they represent. We need to be just as clear on the idea that the needs of growers have changed during the last generation.

Due largely to the success of land grant universities such as ourselves, research on productivity and agricultural efficiency is less important than research on marketing efficiency and value-added processing techniques. Accordingly, fewer commodity dollars are directed toward research on production, and more are aimed toward marketing and at research into value-added operations.

In the current climate, it doesn't help to propose research work that no longer fits into the needs of the commodity boards.

Federal granting agencies also have needs, although they usually are expressed in terms of funding policies. We can thoughtfully consider the needs of these federal agencies by asking a couple of difficult questions.

* Why should anybody pay to have this work done?

This is just another way of wondering if the work we want to do meets the needs of those agencies to which we plan to send proposals. The only reason anybody should pay to have any work done is because that work meets their needs.

Very often the information we get from larger granting agencies, such as USDA, NIH, NSF, EPA and so on, is expressed in general language. It may be difficult to figure out exactly what the review panels really are interested in funding this year. Yet, a little advance planning can help us learn quite a bit about the real needs and objectives of review panels.

We will return to this later. Before we do, let's get a bit more personal about proposal writing.

If we can assume we have forcefully and elegantly articulated the need for the work we are interested in doing, we have gone a long way toward a competitive grant proposal.

* Why should anybody pay to have us do this work?

Think about the federal granting picture. More and more people are competing for fewer and fewer dollars. Yep. More pigs are squeezing up to a smaller trough.

From our point of view as faculty, increased pressure to get money is coupled with decreased money to get. There is vastly increased competition for less reward.

A couple of big points bear heavily on this issue.

First, some people are generating competitive grant proposals. We all know this is so because we all know somebody who has a nice pile of grant money. Certainly there is less money available to compete for, but that less money is still a bunch of money.

Second, even the most highly regarded research and teaching programs experience gaps in their funding streams. I believe we ought to be able to successfully compete for some of the available money some of the time.

If we can assume we have forcefully and elegantly articulated the need for the work we are interested in doing, we have gone a long way toward a competitive grant proposal. Our next step is to forcefully and elegantly articulate why we should be the individuals or organizations funded to do this important work.

Consider three major elements of competitive grant proposals:

* We establish a match between what we are interested in doing and the needs and values of the granting organization.
* We establish an assurance that we are the most appropriate individuals to do the work.
*We provide assurance that we work in an institution that provides top-drawer facilities to conduct the work.

* Establish credentials

There are three sections of proposals that let us clearly establish our credentials to do the work.

First, a major reason for the preliminary data sections of large grant proposals is that we establish we are able to conduct the work specified in our proposals. Up to some point, the more preliminary data we generate, the better.

* What's key

The key idea is to ensure that we have some preliminary data on each of the major objectives in our proposals. If the universe is kind to us, we might even have enough data for a manuscript or two, which can be appended to our proposals.

Second, major grant proposals also have a biography section, which provides an opportunity to show our credentials. We describe our educational backgrounds, our work history and our publication records in the biography section.

A number of individuals have worried aloud to me that, as newly minted Ph.D.s, they have not had enough time to generate all the publications required to compete with more experienced individuals. That is not really a concern.

A first-year post-doctoral associate is not expected to have the same publication background as a fifth-year faculty member. What is expected is that we all have the experience and skills to carry out the work in our proposals and that we have the knowledge and energy to publish the results of our work.

For the third point, the structure of our appointments can help indicate we are eminently qualified to do the work. If a large share of our appointment is aimed at research, it is a clear sign that we have the background to compete for a major research appointment in a major research institution.

The same logic applies to teaching and extension appointments: by virtue of our appointments, we are competitive individuals. What is important is that we can clearly indicate that our appointments are structured in such a way that we have the time and institutional structure to do the work.

* Improve your chances

We improve our competitive posture by paying careful attention to the section of grant proposals addressing our resources and environment. For example, the forms for NIH research grant proposals have spaces to check off to indicate that we have an office, a laboratory and a few computers. Near the bottom there is a space to list the major equipment in our laboratories, such as ultracentrifuges and so forth. Below that is a space for special facilities.

Recall that our goal is to indicate that we are well-prepared to conduct the work we are proposing. The fact that we sit in an office doesn't add much to the proposal. But what about our laboratories?

Rather than just check off that we run a laboratory, it helps to have a statement such as, "The laboratory is a 900 square foot room with three benches that easily can accommodate six working personnel."

If we work in a unit that commonly shares equipment, we can list all the major equipment we have permission to use. We do not have to limit ourselves to the specific items in our spaces.

We want to pay attention to the working environment in our University. If we are proposing to use the tools of biotechnology in our work, we might stress UNL's Center for Biotechnology, and the relevant core facilities available. If we are proposing to do chemical work on monitoring environmental pollutants, we might stress our well-known Center for Mass Spectrometry. If we are thinking of designing a new adult education program, we might include the Nebraska Center as one of our facilities.

* Resources matter

The point is that NU is blessed with some of the most modern facilities available. As an academic entity, we have high-powered expertise available to us. These enhancements increase the likelihood that we can successfully conduct the work we propose. We want to draw the proposal review panel's attention to these resources.

* Why should anybody pay us to do the work we propose?

Because we have proposed work that best addresses the needs of a grant agency, and because we have forcefully argued that we are well qualified to do the work in an institution that is committed to it.

Returning to planet Earth for a brief glimpse of reality, let us not lose sight of this point:

The intrinsic merits of the proposal and the background of the investigator are the main determinants of grant funding.

I emphasize our facilities because in times of intense competition, they can tip the balance in our favor.