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CHAPTER 7
After the Fall: Rewriting and Resubmitting Our Proposals
Let's spend just a little bit of time on rewriting and resubmitting our grant proposals, because there are some things we can do to increase our competitive posture at this stage in grant proposal writing.
We are all acquainted with faculty members who seem to have a Midas touch with the granting agencies. Seems like they write a note to the grantors, and lo!—money flows like water from a broken valve.
We usually are surprised on the rare occasions when these folks have a brief gap, or a major break, in their funding streams, but we shouldn't be. Everyone, even people with long histories of successfully getting grants, takes a hit now and then.
Maybe a panel didn't like the direction the program was going. Maybe the research outlived its obvious usefulness. Maybe the panel missed the point of the proposal. All we have to do is think about how many grant proposals get submitted, and how many get funded.
Most grant proposals are not funded. Most really good grant proposals are not funded. Most competitive grant proposals are submitted two or three times before they finally hit pay dirt. We need to be emotionally, psychologically and strategically prepared for disappointments in funding for two reasons.
* It's not easy
First, competitive grant proposals are not easy to produce. We invest a lot of time, effort, creative energy, planning, budgeting, administrative skill and persuasively eloquent writing into a competitive grant proposal. We heavily invest our emotional energy into the proposal. Then we learn that the proposal will not be funded.
It's hard to feel real good about that.
Another reason we want to be emotionally prepared for disappointments is because the negative news often is attended by some pretty tough criticism of our proposal. Many times the criticism is not carefully expressed, and we get bruised even more than necessary. Often the criticism flows beyond the objective content of the proposal and into the personal regions of our lives. We read not only that we have produced an unfundable proposal, but that we are inherently unfundable scientists.
I often have thought review panels could greatly improve the life quality of scientists by consulting experts on courtesy. Surely there must be language that can attenuate the brutish, thuggy criticisms leveled by callous reviewers.
Perhaps in a more enlightened future, reviewers will attend to this human aspect of rejected grant proposals. In the meantime, a little emotional preparation will help us realize this is just part of the business.
Harsh reviews reflect far more upon the linguistic and social shortcomings of reviewers than upon ourselves.
* A biased mind-set
Psychologically, we need to realize negative remarks stem from the problem that there is not enough money to fund all proposals that merit funding. This puts reviewers into a mind-set necessarily biased toward finding fault, rather than merit, in our proposals. This bias is just the obverse of our bias as proposers.
We offer creative, optimistic visions of the potentials for superb performance in teaching and research. Reviewers offer bluntly pessimistic assessments of what cannot or will not work.
Couple this sort of negative mental bias with pressure to get too many proposals reviewed in a very short time frame, factor in the group dynamics of review panels, and mix in the need to get back to running their own programs, and you have a sure-fire recipe for inconsiderate reviewing.
Again, psychological preparation can help us deal with bruising grant reviews. That's not to say enjoy them, but learn to see them as nonpersonal aspects of a competitive arena.
* Laying siege
I often have thought that I don't write grant proposals. I lay siege.
The siege metaphor helps develop a long-term vision of funding our projects, rather than focus on the short-term outcome of any single grant proposal.
We want to maintain our vision that writing competitive grant proposals is about persuading people to give us money to do useful work. It follows that the most important preparation for rejected grant proposals is strategic preparation.
Getting our projects funded may require two or three rounds of granting. Submitting the first proposal can be regarded as just a single step in a larger process. We take the (inevitable) rejection as an early step in the process. The rejection does not say we're not going to be funded; it says now it's time to go to work.
What work can we do on rejected proposals? Plenty.
Colleagues can be a major resource in competitive grant writing.
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* First things first
The first thing is to get all the available information on what happened to our proposals. Some agencies, such as NIH, automatically send the review panel's comments and recommendations some weeks after the evaluation meeting.
Sometimes we have to call or write to request that the comments be sent to us. Then we can really study the comments, always asking, "What are they actually saying here?"
We can share the comments with colleagues, asking for their interpretations. Most agencies employ program officers, whose specific charge is to help people understand what happened to their proposals. Program officers seem to enjoy talking with people. The program officers usually sit in on the evaluation meetings, and we can ask for their interpretations of the discussion on our proposals.
Was our proposal aligned with the mission of the panel? Was the project simply less important than other projects? Did the panel understand the proposal? Did the discussion focus on the quality of the proposal, or on the quality of the project?
* Collect information
We can collect a good bit of information about our proposals from the review panel and from the program officer. We can use the information to help guide the development of our revised proposal.
Sometimes we can get help from colleagues who have been involved in review panels. The colleagues might be able to help interpret the remarks of the panel that read our proposals and provide us with a "...this really means... ."
A friend of mine was having a hard time breaking into NIH some years ago, so he approached a very senior, well-funded individual during a scientific meeting. My friend didn't know the fellow, so he introduced himself and blurted out that he needed some help with his grant proposal. He must have received some pretty good advice, because a year later he was rolling in the big bucks. It kind of warped his attitude about his stature as a scientist, too, but that's another story.
I had a similar experience. NIH rejected a proposal that was based on a really neat idea, and I just could not figure out what was wrong. I called a senior colleague and arranged to present a seminar to his department. During the dinner that followed, we discussed the work and my proposal. Again, by acting on some pretty good advice, the proposal was funded on the second round.
Colleagues can be a major resource in competitive grant writing.
We also can visit our granting agencies. Some universities provide travel money for the purpose. Think of it as a sort of business holiday. Get a little travel packet, go to D.C., drop in on your program officers, treat yourself to an above-average dinner.
When you're in the program officer's office you can discuss your research program, ask questions about the grant proposal reviewing panel and talk about your specific proposal. Visits of this sort help because we can get some straight talk about proposals, and the program officers get a better understanding of us and our University. Of course, you always run the risk of finding yourself on a grant reviewing panel, too.
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