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Essential preparation before starting
Preparation is key to funding success
Before starting an application, following a few crucial steps can help save you time and set you up for success.
Key takeaways
- Understand the funding scheme you are applying for before you start writing your application. It may save you time and energy if you’re ineligible or your research isn’t the best fit.
- Be realistic about whether your research fits the scheme requirements. Perhaps another source of funding is more appropriate.
- Take time to know who your assessors will be. It will influence how you write your application.
- Talk to the Pipeline and Pre-Award team for more specific advice.
Read time: 4 mins
Funding applications have to be written very persuasively. And to be persuasive, it helps to know who you’re trying to persuade, so you’ll need to find out what kind of people are going to assess your application. Those assessors will be obliged to judge your application according to assessment criteria specified by the funding body. So you must write in a very targeted way and convince assessors that your proposal meets those criteria and will therefore deliver what the funder is looking for.
Assessment criteria direct and constrain what you write about, but most applications also have prescribed page-, word- and even character-limits that constrain the amount of information you are permitted to include. As well as writing persuasively, you must write concisely.
Understand the funding scheme
There’s little point in submitting a proposal to conduct cancer research to a scheme that funds cardiovascular research. That’s an extreme example, of course, but it highlights a more subtle but common issue: funding applications must suit the scheme, not the other way round.
All funding schemes have guidelines that explain the scheme’s purpose, objectives, priorities, intended outcomes, and similar. It’s critical that you read and understand these things. Many schemes are quite narrow in focus, and in some cases, you have to think very carefully about whether your research would be suitable. You can of course adjust your research to suit the scheme, but there are limits to doing this credibly.
Schemes that fund a broad range of research, such as the ARC’s Discovery Program, are rare. But even the Discovery Program has limits (no health or medical research) and preferences (e.g. research benefiting Australia; research involving or leading to international collaboration).
As you write your funding application, keep in mind the scheme’s purpose, objectives, and so on. It can be helpful also to integrate into your application some of the funding body’s own phrasing.
Getting the complete picture
In some cases it’s useful to find out more about a scheme than appears in its official guidelines. Funding bodies may have ‘agendas’ you should be aware of; and sometimes there are pre-existing relationships between funders and particular research groups. These unofficial considerations are less applicable to ARC and NHMRC schemes, but for many other schemes it’s worth doing your homework to find out if you’re even in the running.
To learn more about a funding scheme than is published in its guidelines or on its website:
- Email the Pipeline and Pre-Award team in the Research Portfolio
- Use your contacts and networks to talk to people ‘off the record’.
Adapt to the conventions for the type of funding
Bear in mind that there are numerous types of funding and many different shapes and sizes of funding applications. This means, for example, that what works for an ARC grant may not work for an NHMRC grant, and that applications for fellowships differ from applications for project funding which in turn differ from applications for research centres. Certainly there are some common themes, but the requirements of funding schemes and the application formats they use vary considerably.
Target the assessment criteria
Assessment criteria are the scoring rubric that assessors use to judge and rank applications. All funding schemes have such criteria; essentially they embody the scheme’s objectives.
Writing your application so as to address these criteria is vital. In some cases the format of the application will help you do this. For example, there is often a section where you must describe the research team – which corresponds to an assessment criterion about the team’s expertise and experience. But things are not always so clear and explicit. In these cases, don’t leave anything to chance: tell your readers that you are now addressing this criterion or that criterion; don’t assume they will figure it out. One useful technique is to use headings that correspond to the assessment criteria; another is to echo the criteria’s phrasing in your text; or do both.
Sometimes there are discrepancies between a scheme’s guidelines/instructions and its assessment criteria. For example, the guidelines/instructions may ask for information that is not reflected in any of the assessment criteria. What you have to bear in mind is that assessors are more likely to read and pay attention to assessment criteria than guidelines. So, if in doubt, prioritise the assessment criteria.
A few funding bodies, such as the NHMRC, provide peer-review guidelines for assessors too. It’s worth having a look at these, to gauge what assessors are being instructed to focus on.
Find out about the assessors
Ascertaining the extent of your readers’ subject-matter expertise, and having a sense of their views and opinions, is a common challenge when you embark on any piece of writing. Funding applications are no exception.
Depending on the funding body and the scheme, assessors may be disciplinary experts, researchers outside your discipline but in cognate areas, researchers whom we might class as informed non-experts, or end users and beneficiaries (e.g. practising clinicians, engineers, government staff, industry leaders, commercialisation specialists, patients, consumers, and members of the wider community). Different types of assessors will have different levels of knowledge about your application, as well as different priorities and preferences. You have to shape your writing accordingly.
Complicating your task further, many funding applications are judged by more than one type of assessor. Even the ARC, which arguably runs Australia’s most ‘pure’ research schemes, uses a combination of ‘detailed assessors’ (disciplinary experts) and ‘general assessors’ (researchers selected from the ARC’s College of Experts who may or may not have expertise in the disciplinary area of the proposal). Some funding schemes, especially in health and medical research, include consumer representatives as assessors, alongside the usual peer reviewers (i.e. researchers). This means your application frequently has to be understood by, and appeal to, multiple audiences simultaneously.
For these reasons, it is paramount that you find out who will assess your funding application. Often you can ascertain only the type, or types, of assessor, but this is still a big head start. Sometimes the funding body names the assessors individually; then you can do some homework and learn more about them.
Contact the Pipeline and Pre-Award team in the Research Portfolio for more information about who will assesses a particular funding scheme.