Everything I learnt about grant writing without going mad
It was 3pm on a weekday in late July when an email, with the subject line ‘For Action – SPARK’, had arrived from the European Commission. I had not anticipated the email so early; applicants had been told news would come at the end of August. It took me another hour before I had the courage to open the evaluation letter, which I had assumed would be a rejection for my grant proposal that I had submitted nine months prior. I scanned the letter, looking for negative words like ‘unfortunately’ or ‘sadly’. But I couldn’t see them. Instead, I picked up snippets of: ‘We are pleased to inform you…’, ‘I congratulate you…’. I screamed. Then cried.
… Yes, I know, dramatic. But it was a big deal. Applying for research grants takes a long time and success rates remain small. The scheme for which I had applied, a European Research Council Starting Grant (ERC StG), usually have success rates of around 10-15 percent. In the 2023 call, there were almost 2,700 applications (statistics about the call here). It has taken a long time to sink in that I am one of the successful ones.
How did I get here? What advice would I give for those considering applying? In this blog, I wanted to reflect on my journey and share lessons I learned. I won’t go into too much detail about my backstory, but let me summarise, briefly, that I am a Senior Lecturer in Politics at the University of Edinburgh, going to start my project, called ‘Studying Parliaments and the Role of Knowledge’, in 2024. It will take place over five years to compare how parliaments gather, analyse and use different types of knowledge to fulfil core democratic functions.
I know not everybody will want to read my self-indulgent blog about my grant-writing journey, so here’s the tl;dr version:
Academics with the highest rates of grant success are also the ones that get rejected the most often. Have faith in your idea and be aware that success requires perseverance.
Consider the relationship between grants and research. Think about grants as a way to support the research idea, not that you need to have a grant to do research. A patchwork might work.
Consider the nature of the call, the awarding panel, the process, etc. Different funders want and emphasise different things. Read successful applications and speak with previous applicants.
Do not underestimate that writing a grant – especially bigger ones – take a long time and might be developed over several months, not weeks. Put in place a clear plan for writing.
Integrate feedback throughout the writing process. Get feedback, get it often, at different times, and from different people and different disciplinary backgrounds.
Remember that it is a proposal. This is not a research article or other output, and therefore requires a different style. Remember also that it is not a contract.
Pay particular attention to feasibility of the research design. My experience of reviewers’ comments and reviews is that they will heavily focus on and scrutinise methods and case selection.
Figure out a way to deal with rejections that makes the pain and anger more manageable, whether it is identifying a commiseration prize or running a marathon.
Remember the bigger picture. Grants require hard work and investment, but there is also a lot of luck involved. I see it as our job to apply for grants, not necessarily to get them.
Finally, have fun with it. The work put in is never wasted. It might contribute towards an article, clarify an idea, or just allows you to learn about new and interesting research.
Has this list made you curious? Well, read on…
My research project wasn’t ‘new’ when I submitted it to the ERC; I had been thinking about the topic since 2016. Over the six-year period to 2022, I had applied for an early-career ESRC grant worth £300,000 and a fellowship worth 30,000€, neither of which were successful. I also dipped my toes into various other research projects as Co-I; five in total, each worth between £600k and £950k, and all of which were rejected. I think it is important to be honest about this because only celebrating success ignores the big pile of failed applications that I’m sitting on. Perhaps it means you shouldn’t take my advice too seriously, but it is also one of the most important pieces of advice I was given from a former research director: academics with the highest rates of grant success are also the ones that get rejected the most often. Have faith in your idea and be aware that being successful will require perseverance and multiple applications.
A second theme is to consider the purpose of the grant. When I was first applying for grants, I thought of them as the only route to do research. Of course, depending on your position in academia, that might be the case. But even so, I would recommend prioritising the development of the intellectual idea and research programme first, and then considering how you can fit that into the grant landscape. You can think about achieving this through a larger, three-year grant. This is how I wrote my first (unsuccessful) grant. Or, you can consider breaking up the elements into smaller chunks and – through a patchwork of small grants, sabbaticals, fellowships, internal grants, network funding, etc. – you can make the project happen. In short: think about grants as a way to support the research project idea, not that you need one big grant to enable you to do the research. Hopefully this will make grant-writing more manageable, help you to situate the grant in your wider research career, and lessen the toll of rejection if you are not successful.
Relatedly, when you look at applying for a grant, carefully consider the nature of the call, the funder and the application processes and procedures. Each research council or funder will emphasise different things, and work in a different way. For example, applying for an ESRC grant in the UK will mean that you need to integrate knowledge exchange and impact throughout the research proposal, while ERC grants focus on ‘scientific excellence’ with an emphasis on ‘high-risk, high-gain’. Without adequately integrating the requirements and preferences of the funder, they are unlikely to award you funding. Granted, this is easier said than done!
Importantly, do not just look for what a funder might want, but also how they will assess you. For grants that I have applied for, the awarding bodies and panels tend to be made up of academics with no knowledge of parliaments or parliamentary-focused research. This can be frustrating, especially the frequent misperceptions about the role of parliaments in democratic politics. But I can’t do anything about that; I need to make my case as convincing as possible. Cut out, or clearly explain, jargon; keep the application as accessible as possible.
Once you have a clear idea of the research project and matched it to the right funder, ask your research office or directorate for previously successful applications. Hopefully there will be some available for the scheme to which you want to apply. To get a feel for the nature of my ERC Starting Grant, I read at least nine previous successful ones. This was significant but worthwhile investment because it reminded me that every single application was structured in a distinctive way that worked for them. I remember that my own Research Office was sceptical about the way that I had put my B2 form together, but it worked for me – and the reviewers. Alongside reading proposals, speak to colleagues about their stories of applying. Is there any informal knowledge you can gather? Did they have particular tricks or things to focus on? What did the process look like for them?
One crucial piece of advice I received when I asked colleagues about their experiences was: do not underestimate the amount of time it takes to put together a high-quality proposal. Despite being told, I learnt that lesson the hard way. The starting point for my ERC StG application began in 2020, when I was thinking about how to deal with my rejected ESRC bid. I was a bit distracted with the pandemic and teaching in 2020, so it wasn’t until summer 2021 that I began to put the paperwork together. A few months later, I realised I couldn’t do this with my other commitments, so I took a step back. I was crushed at the time and incredibly demoralised. How would I ever write this thing? In the end, I let the idea percolate and then dedicated summer 2022 to only writing this grant, and write nothing else. And I was able to do that over a four-month period (especially relying on a sabbatical), leading to submission later that year. I would recommend having a clear structure in place to manage dedicated time for grant-writing. I had a clear plan dedicated to reading and writing, with checklists, to-do lists, deadlines and milestones. Rigorous organisation made the idea of a huge grant proposal far more manageable.
When planning grant-writing, integrate feedback into the process. I don’t mean peer review at the end of a full draft; ask for advice throughout. I will always appreciate the time that colleagues gave to reading my drafts and talking through ideas. I was nervous, at first, about sending what felt like – because it was – a half-baked proposal. But it was great to have it at that stage, because it meant that I knew how I needed to push particular elements. I also asked colleagues from different disciplinary backgrounds to read it. My project was rooted in political science but tries to push boundaries across disciplines – so getting colleagues from social policy, science and technology studies, and social anthropology to read it was great. Even political scientists with different approaches and methods were invaluable to providing feedback. Their perspectives helped to strengthen the interdisciplinary aspects but also ensured that I wrote in an accessible way. My university’s internal peer review process also meant that my proposal was reviewed by non-academics. A key consideration: make sure they are people you trust and who will be honest with you. There are a couple of people who I knew would be nice whatever I wrote; others who I trusted would not hold back if I got things wrong. In short: get feedback, get it often and at different times, and from different people and different disciplinary backgrounds.
Remember that you are not writing a research article or other academic output; it is a proposal for research. Being clear about this has several implications. First, it means that you need to acknowledge that there is a trade-off between writing papers and writing grants (even if one can lead to another). I spent an entire summer only writing a grant, which could have been spent writing one or two papers. Second, it requires a different approach to writing. You are telling a story that needs to convince the reader of the plausibility or importance of the research; we do not – on the whole – need to ‘sell’ ideas in research outputs. Getting a hang of this isn’t easy, but hopefully reading previous applications and getting feedback from a range of colleagues will help. And finally: it is a proposal, not a contract. Things might change, and that’s totally fine. Do not stress about the application being perfect or if things develop. That’s not to say that the application isn’t the basis for a contract, but that’s a problem to deal with if you’re successful.
By their nature, all research proposals will require a clear explanation of the costings (even if the only cost is your own time), research plans and timelines. What I have found is that in almost every single grant application that I have submitted, feedback has included something about the feasibility, methods or cases. In short, the research design matters. This is therefore a crucial dimension of the grant. Consider every angle to justify your method or tool. If you are a qualitative researcher by background, like me, think about how a quantitative researcher might approach your topic. Or vice versa. Stress-test the weaknesses with colleagues. Visualise and practically explore what your method looks like. Think about alternative cases and consider why you did not include them.
Ok, so you’ve submitted the proposal. Next, it’s time to prepare for the outcome. We can all hope that we’ll be successful, but we should also be prepared for the rejection – and the sometimes brutal feedback that comes with it. Months of work are often reduced to one or two short paragraphs. Once, cruelly in my view, I received a rejection letter in which I had been told that the awarding panel had ‘unanimously’ rejected my proposal (the panel was a committee of 50+ people). Another time, almost as cruel, was almost entirely positive feedback but still not being awarded funding because the panel hadn’t ranked the proposal highly enough.
After submitting a grant, I now prepare a small ‘protocol’ for what to do when I receive a grant outcome email, including setting up a commiseration prize I can buy on the day; cancelling all meetings (if able) and going for a walk before reading the outcome; and having a clear list of (mundane) things to do if rejected, like laundry or whatever; and identifying alternative funders or research strategies (see above about the ‘patchwork’ idea). In particular, I need to be prepared for the fact that the rest of the day will be crap and unproductive. This might not work for everybody but, regardless, my advice would be: figure out a way to deal with rejections that makes the pain and anger more manageable. In my case, having a reward set up for the outcome (positive or negative) has helped me a lot.
Another way to try to make the rejection less personal is by remembering the bigger picture. Grants require hard work and investment. But once your grant reaches a particular threshold of quality, there will be nothing more that you can do. It might be that you submitted your grant in an especially competitive round. Or it might be that somebody misunderstood something and that is then reflected poorly in the panel meeting. Or, more pessimistically, a panel member disliked your use of the word ‘however’, and was negatively disposed to your idea. It feels disempowering – because it is. But it also means that being rejected does not mean that your project is a bad idea. It was just that, in this particular round, your proposal didn’t get through. I try to de-personalise this process: it is my job as academic to apply for grants, but it is not my job to be successful. It would be great if I did but, in the grand scheme of things, it’s ok if I do not.
But that’s a negative way to end. Let me end more positively. Because, honestly and true to heart, I also enjoyed the process of applying for the grants, even if I didn’t get them. Through each grant, I read a lot more around the topic and learned about a new method or tool that I could use. I understood particular concepts, cases or ideas better than before. Over time, I got better at articulating my project ideas and why they’re important. I found great papers that I subsequently used for teaching. Certain sections of proposals could be re-used for literature reviews or to underpin a lecture. Put another way, the work put into a grant is never wasted; it can actually be fun.