Formulating good grant proposals?

In our newest "how can we help you?" thread, D writes:

I would be interested in hearing your thoughts on the best way to formulate research proposals, especially for grant applications. In particular, I am undecided between these two options:

(a) in terms of the arguments that you intend to make. For example: "I will write a paper arguing that X."
(b) in terms of open research questions that you wish to explore. For example: "I will write a paper exploring X."

I would be glad to hear what people who have won grant applications or been on committees prefer or if they have any other suggestions.

This is a great query. I've only applied for a few grants myself, so I'd be very interested to hear some tips as well. Have any readers won grants, or alternatively, judged grant applications? If so, do you have any helpful advice? 

Comments

[EuroProf]

I recently won a grant to fund a small-ish research network in my area. For what it's worth, from my experience I'd recommend option (b): focus on the questions. Why is the project you need the grant for relevant? Why are these questions important? How does it further research in your field? These are questions reviewers want to see answered. Keep in mind that in many cases, reviewers (or members of the decision-making committee) will not necessarily be experts in your specific field. Your application needs to be compelling to them, too, and the best way to do so is to explain what questions you have, why you need to answer them, and how you're going to do that.

[Sam Duncan]

When I applied for grants both when I was a grad student at UVA and a lecturer at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Both schools had a person whose job was to help students and faculty apply for grants. They both went through several drafts of my proposal with me and were just generally incredibly helpful. The proposal I wrote at UVA was atrocious and they helped me whip it into good enough shape that I got the grant. I didn't get the grant at UTK but it was honestly a kind of hail Mary kind of thing given my background and the competitiveness of the grant in question. The guy there (whose name unfortunately escapes me) was amazingly helpful though. I think most schools with any research focus at all will have analogs of these people, though they are often housed in weird divisions. (The UVA one was in something like "the division of undergraduate excellence" or something even though she made clear to me she actually worked with more grad students than undergrads). Talk to faculty at your institution and someone should be able to point you in the right direction. Another thing you might do is to look up past winners of the grant you are applying to and ask them for their proposals. I did that and most people were more than willing to share. I was also told that Michele Lamont's "How Professors Think" is very good for anyone thinking of applying for a grant, though unfortunately I never gotten around to reading it.

[In Europe too]

I second EuroProf. I've been involved in several successful grant applications (small and big; written by myself and together with colleagues; targeted for both individual applicants and research groups) and unsuccessful ones. I've also reviewed applications a few times. Based on these experiences, I would focus on describing one's research question as clearly as possible*, why that question matters (i.e., provide context for the question), and how your approach can make progress towards answering the question. So I recommend option (b). Note that this does not prevent one from saying something substantial about the possible answer to the question. I recommend describing the research objectives in terms of (a) only if the grant is small (i.e., in cases one can be expected to know exactly what they are doing) or if the tasks are grounded on one's previous work (e.g., one has been arguing for X, been maybe criticized on that, and the objective is to defend/extend one's position).

* It is very rare that my applications are reviewed by philosophers working on the philosophy of mind, which I focus on. Instead, the reviewers have been experts in logic, metaphysics, applied ethics, social ontology, etc. Moreover, the panel that makes the final decision often includes only one or two philosophers, and the background of other members varies considerably (I’ve had members from history, cultural history, theology, law, education, linguistics, psychiatry). This observation applies both nationally and internationally. My point is this: the clear majority of those who read the application and/or make the final decision may not know almost anything about one’s topic and the relevance of the research question – the application can be the first time the decision-makers learn about the whole topic. For this reason, I recommend being as explicit as one can be on what the research question is and why that matters. If they do not understand the topic, they will not fund it (tip: ask for feedback from a non-philosopher academic friend on your application). Conversely, making a person from another field understand what you would like to work on and why that is significant (for your field) gives a strong impression of your expertise.