Let's talk about grants

In our newest "how can we help you?" thread, a reader asks:

Can we talk about grant money?

In the US, graduate students in the humanities and philosophy in particular are not well prepared or trained in writing grants. Of course, because there is no labs or equipment to buy, research in the humanities tends to be a lot cheaper than in STEM. But it seems to be an under utilized resource, particularly given that GRA / GTA and other lines of grad student support are drying up and thus faculty with grants can step in to help. Finally, it is much more common in Europe to apply for grants, even if the humanities.

This is a great idea, especially since if I understand things right, to have any chance of getting a job in many European countries, you need to have a successful record of getting grants. Like most American grad students in philosophy (right?), I didn't receive any training in writing grants, and nowadays I wish I did.

Any tips or other helpful insights? Links to helpful resources would be great too!

Comments

[been there, done that]

The grant culture is another world. I have worked in it and outside of it.
But be careful what you wish for. Where I am now, the only way we can have a PhD student is if we have an external grant that fully supports the person - for three years (and we are talking about a salary, as PhD students are employees of universities here ... about $45-50,000/year). Many smart, qualified people cannot enter PhD programs here, as there is no one who has a grant to support them.

[North American]

Like Europe, Canadian universities aggressively prepare their grad students for governmental grants. Every student--MA or PhD--was, in my experience, required to apply for multiple provincial and federal grants. It wasn't great prep for jobs outside of Canada, though. The US grant landscape is a universe unto itself, and almost none of what I learned during the PhD has translated...

At my current US institution, there's a grant person you have to go through for every application, who is responsible for taking care of the university's side of things. I'm not sure if this is universal, but that person has been incredibly helpful to me when it comes to locating more general grant writing info, which I have found to be strangely hidden and opaque.

Querying successful grant writers in the social sciences has also shed some light. There's more money there, so they know more about how things generally operate, even if the grants they're applying for are totally different.

[German perspective]

As a philosopher from Germany who has secured four bigger grants with different funding bodies, here's some tips:

- First, look at funders that might support your project, and see what kind of programs they offer and what kind of proposal they want (e.g. there's big differences in expected length, structure, required information).

- Find someone who has successfully applied with the funder before. Ideally, you can get their successful proposal and use it as a model. And they can give you feedback on your proposal when you've written it up. Lots of feedback is helpful even if you can't find anyone who fits my description.

- See if your university has someone whose job it is to advise researchers who want to apply for funding, and ask them for their input. Alternatively, funding bodies sometimes have events where they give out information about what they want. And you can directly call them with your questions.

- Be prepared that it takes lots of work and time to write a successful proposal. I might be especially slow, but the proposals I've written each took me a year at least, not of constant writing, but working on the proposals on and off.

I agree with the previous poster that it sucks to be expected to write successful grants, as is the case in Germany. Lots of people invest lots of time, but only some can be successful - so lots of time overall wasted on this.

[Patrick Lin]

"But be careful what you wish for."

This is spot-on. Like the hedonic treadmill, once you start chasing money, it's not easy stopping, esp. if you're trying to offset a heavy teaching load.

And if you do land a grant, then all of the sudden you're on a very real hook to produce what you promised and in the timeframe you promised. This is stress that academics typically don't feel, even with book contracts, etc. given how common it is for academics to disregard deadlines and their commitments. We're above-average in flakiness as a profession, IMO.

All the other advice in this thread are good, too, e.g., "Be prepared that it takes lots of work and time to write a successful proposal." Even for someone experienced like me (with about US$3M+ in grant funding), it'd take a minimum of 3 months to properly draft a proposal, and that's after I've done all the research that would go into it. This also accounts for your institution's requirement for review times, etc. Even 6 months can be cutting it close; I'd have a grant program on my radar maybe 9-12+ months in advance.

Finally, a grant proposal is a SALES PITCH, typically to people who aren't philosophers. So, you may need to break out of your academic habits and get a bit into sales-mode, esp. in writing a compelling narrative on why your project is important to the world or some demographic, beyond being an interesting intellectual puzzle. (See biz proverb: "Sell the sizzle, not the steak.")

If you're still a grad student, maybe sit in on a marketing class or talk on campus. In the US, this is definitely not the kind of stuff we're taught in grad school or in most folks' DNA; that's why you're an academic and not a higher-paid business executive.

Best of luck. With low funding rates (e.g., NSF's funding rates are in the single digits), you'll need it...

[S]

There’s another aspect to be cautious about with the competitive-grant culture — ie, it can be and often is subject to ideological capture. When putting in the time to prepare a strong application, it’s important to know from the outset whether or how much political ideology affects the assessing. Canada and New Zealand seem to put a lot of weight on non-scholarly demographics and politics. Templeton leans religious. Etc. Find out about the particular leanings of the funding agency before writing an application.