How to build a watertight funding application
Your case for support—or whatever your funder calls the main free-text part of the application—needs to present your project in an ordered and systematic way. This means getting the right structure in place.
What is the ‘right structure’? In large part, it is determined by the needs of those for whom you are writing. As an applicant, that’s the reviewers who have a pile of applications to read, and what they want from you is not to be taken on an elaborate intellectual journey of discovery but instead to be presented with a clear, coherent and complete account of what you want to do.
A lot of early-stage applications I see have most of the elements needed for a strong proposal but aren’t clearly structured or signposted. It’s often possible to substantially improve a proposal through restructuring and reordering, with minimal edits to the core text.
Opening section
A lot of applications make the mistake of starting with background: often a mini-literature review or history of research in this area. While it’s important to locate your proposal in the literature and demonstrate your awareness of it, my advice is not to open with the background and not to commit too much space to it.
Instead, your very first section should be like the opening paragraph of a news story. Journalists are taught the five Ws—who, what, where, when, why (and also the…um…one H: how) —that should be near the top of most news stories. Only after that will they pull back to detail, context and reaction.
Some applicants repeat their summary section at the start of the case for support, and whether this is a good idea depends on how many pages it has been since the reviewer first read it. If it’s been a few pages and you’re sure it will get you off to a good start, it’s possibly worth repeating. If it’s close by, probably not.
Second and third sections
Then, for your second section, pull the focus back. Drop in a subheader and say what you need to say in terms of background. It’s easier as a writer to place your proposal in the context of the literature and the ‘state of the art’ once you’ve summarised what your project involves, and easier and quicker for a reader to trace backwards from a known project rather than work forwards from first premise.
For the third section—new subheader here—list your aims and objectives and the structure of the project. Your reader now knows roughly what you want to achieve; your job here is to outline the structure that will enable your project to succeed.
You can use the European Union’s funding language of work packages. Or you can talk about challenges or research questions or themes, which might break down into sub-questions. Do this briefly and don’t get drawn into too much detail. Only say what you need to say to show how the pieces fit together. Consider including a diagram, especially if your funder rations space by word count rather than by number of pages.
If you don’t provide the project structure and just plough straight on into the detail, your reader has no clear idea where you are taking them and how what they’re reading now will relate to what follows. If you let your structure gradually unfold rather than setting it out, you are asking the reviewer to do that work for you as they read, which will distract them. The lack of an early clear set of statements also poses a risk of topic drift, where research questions can disappear, appear or mutate over the course of the document.
I’d argue that if you can’t outline a clear structure to your own satisfaction, you’re not yet ready to submit an application.
The bigger picture
Most online application systems will allow you to print off the form as a PDF. Do this early to get a sense of what’s needed in the application and of how the whole document will look to reviewers on the page. You want to see it as they will see it, in context, not as a Word document.
Once you’ve got a complete first draft of the whole form, look again at what’s in your case for support and what’s in the main body of the form. Check to see if you’re repeating elements of the form in the case for support. If you are, consider whether you could just refer the reader back and use that space more effectively. In addition, look for areas of ‘underlap’—areas where you’re not explicitly given enough space to address an issue—and focus on that issue in the places where you can, which might well be the case for support.
Finally, get someone to read the form. By this stage, you will probably find the application so familiar that it has lost all meaning. Get some fresh eyes, both from academic colleagues for content and from research development managers for readability.
Adam Golberg is research development manager (charities) at the University of Nottingham
This is an extract from an article in Research Professional’s Funding Insight service. To subscribe contact sales@researchresearch.com