Recently, my good friend Rolf invited me to contribute a post to this site on proposal writing. Rolf and I worked together on many proposals at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and a sizable share got funded. I would like to think we had an all-star level batting average, thanks of course not only to the two of us, but to a whole team of writers and graphic designers.

If you are a scientist reading this — and I am writing for scientists, not other strategic editors — you are thinking, stop taking credit! It was the science that got those proposals funded. You are correct. When proposals were funded, it was because the science deserved funding. 

The converse is not true, as you have probably experienced in your own career: when the science deserves funding, it does not follow that the project will be funded. In many competitions, whether hosted by NASA, the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, or other agencies (I supported basic science at the University of Southern California, where I directed research communications), we have seen proposals with decent science get funded ahead of peers with superior technical merit. 

The cream rises to the top, more or less, but the surface layer is complex. A good strategic editor helps you rise that extra fraction of an inch that may make all the difference. A good editor does not try to “make” the science sexy: that’s called pandering, and interestingly, the ones trying too hard usually are the authors themselves. A good editor listens and reads carefully, and finds the sexy in the science.

The good news of proposal writing is that the rules are simple. The bad news is that they have to be received. I have other business priorities currently, and do not need strategic editing projects: therefore, I can tell you, without worrying about your impact on my bottom line, that you should leave the writing and editing to the professionals, just as we leave the science to you. 

Obviously there’s give and take involved, and the best collaborations involve a lot of careful inquiry in both directions. But the biggest impediment to a strong proposal, in my experience, is the attitude that a strategic editor is only there to make the package look pretty. It should look pretty, of course, and it will, once the science is understood and expressed cleanly. Asking an editor to make a graphic prettier, but not giving them leeway to ask deep structural questions about the proposal, is a waste of their time and your money.

With that out of the way, here are the three rules I found most useful when helping scientists package their proposals.

Flip the Abstract

As a scientist, you have been trained from graduate school to back into the point. You begin with the context, the unresolved questions in your chosen field of inquiry, the different schools of thoughts and evidence to date, your study and methodology, and finally, at the very bottom of your abstract, you arrive at what you actually found, or are proposing to prove/disprove.

A proposal, and in particular an executive summary, needs to do the exact opposite: tell the reviewer up front what you intend to do and why, and only then provide the context and justification for your investigation.

Having worked with dozens of scientists, I can say with confidence that you can’t help but write summaries as if they were abstracts. That’s how you were trained. You can train yourself out of that mode of writing, but it’s easier to let your strategic editor find your key points and highlight them for the impatient reviewer. That’s why you have an editor. Allow them to earn their keep.

Follow the Golden Rule

In proposal writing, the golden rule is this: assume the same patience for your proposal from a reviewer that you, as a reviewer, would grant to a proposal — and no more.

It’s a very human trait to expect more attention for our stories and experiences, than we are willing to grant to those of others. It’s also a trait you can unlearn. When writing your executive summary or introduction and fact sheet, and throughout the proposal, don’t overstay your welcome.

Make Your Grant Officer Look Good

It’s not the grant officer’s job to justify your science. It’s your job to justify their selection. Give them a proposal, and in particular a fact sheet and summary, that they can put in front of a high-level agency executive, or a congressional staffer, and that will make a persuasive case on their own. Few grant officers will advance proposals that risk confusing their higher-ups.

Those are the three rules, and they have served me well throughout my career in research communications. Implicit in these rules is a high degree of trust in your strategic editor and their team. I understand how hard that can be, when even if the editor has a science background, they most likely know very little about your specific discipline. Keep in mind that the final decision maker for your proposal also will be someone with only a general understanding of your topic. Your editor is writing for someone like themselves.

Don’t trust your proposal to just any editor, obviously. Evaluate them as they evaluate your project. Are they asking intelligent questions? Are they curious about your specific discipline, or taking only a generic interest? What is their background and education? What references and work samples can they provide?

If you should be fortunate to find a good editor, recognize your fortune: give them room to operate, respect their craft, and watch your proposal blossom.