"So far as I know, no one else has ever done this."

I can remember when I was in my 20s, writing my first grant proposal. I was writing to the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE). Somehow I knew that it was important to be able to write in my proposal, “So far as I know, no one else has ever done this before.”

1. Writing “so far as I know” was important, because I didn’t want anyone to be able to say my magical sentence was false. And, in fact, writing ‘so far as I know’ helped me justify not doing any search for existing practice. Because, if I looked hard enough, I might discover that my idea wasn’t unique.
   
2. It was important to write, “No one else has ever done this before,” because that’s what funders value, I assumed: uniqueness, newness, innovation. If someone else is doing this, I shouldn’t be wasting my time with a proposal.

My proposal was turned down.

A year later, I’d crossed to the other side of the desk, to become a FIPSE program officer, and soon realized how silly my assumptions had been. In fact, my claim might even have been a reason that my proposal had been turned down.

1. An idea that is truly unique is probably responding to a problem or opportunity that no one else has ever faced. Few foundations are interested in supporting such tiny problems or opportunities.
2. Someone who is as isolated as I was (or, worse, as isolated as I was pretending to be), has no opportunity to learn from the achievements and mistakes of others.
3. Someone that isolated is also unlikely to find it easy to disseminate the results of their work. Dissemination generally is part of what funders consider to be the payoff to their gifts or investments: wider impact and visibility for their work. That was certainly true for FIPSE.

So, the paragraph I came to look for as a funder was, "We're one of a number of pioneers in this area. Here' s what we've learned from the achievements and problems of others. Here's how we're connected with them. Here's what we want to do. And here's how those connections will help us share our experience with those pioneers, and with others who will want to adapt what we do with your money."

Four pieces of advice on writing persuasive grant proposals

I spent 19 years reviewing grant proposals for the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE) and Annenberg/CPB at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Here are four pieces of advice about writing proposals to grant competitions (internal or external) where the goal is to improve learning and where the competition is intense.

First and most important, grant proposal is an exercise in teaching at a distance. The desired learning outcome of your distance teaching is for two reviewers to meet, a day or two after they’ve each read the proposal, perhaps shortly before their review panel meets to discuss your proposal.

One panelist says to the other, “I don’t remember this proposal. What’s it about?” Panelist #2 replies, “Oh this is a good one. It’s about X and here’s why I think we should support it.” Panelist #2’s comments are no more than 60 seconds long, typically.

So what should panelist #2 remember to say about your proposal, a day or two after reading a stack of proposals of which yours was just one? That’s your challenge: teach these reviewers a few memorable things about your proposal, things that are important enough to excite the reader. If the reviewer thinks to herself, "I could borrow a couple of those ideas!" so much the better. Don't hide the good stuff.

Second, avoid passive verbs. Don’t be shy about saying “I” or “we.” It helps you use your own experience to a) explain why this is important, b) help educate the reader about whether and how much to trust your skill and insight (because you’re exposing more of your self and your experience.) Proposal reviewing is a confidence game.

Third avoid the current jargon, especially if the grant competition has an explicit goal– if everyone uses the same jargon, all the proposals sound alike.

Put those three things together, and you have the beginnings of a proposal that can persuade reviewers that you’ll be good at educating the world about what you’ve achieved with their money.

That's the fourth, and final, point. Whether far-reaching impact is an explicit goal or not, funders generally like it when other people can learn from the experience they’re paying you to gain. If you’re good at explaining (across disciplines and institutions) what you’ve learned, and being credible in the process, you’re a more valuable person/institution to fund.

Good luck, and please let us know if we can help with your proposal: evaluation planning? help you disseminate to other institutions? help plan faculty development? If you'd like to chat about grants, especially those having to do with improving teaching and learning with technology, please e-mail us at info@tltgroup.org.

PS Here's a chapter from the Flashlight Evaluation Handbook on how (not) to evaluate grant-funded technology projects.

The Paradox of Risk

Steve Gilbert and I have been working with a major university system on issues of strategic planning. Their planning teams have developed a huge list of imperatives for institutions and the system office, in order to improve teaching and learning with technology. I wondered how they would choose among those priorities: like everyone else, they have only limited funds, and even more limited time and attention. Choice is crucial, even when all the alternatives are wonderful, important and interdependent.

It reminded me of an evaluation that was done of the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE) when I was a staff member there. I think this was around 1979. The final report said that most FIPSE projects succeeded so well locally that they continued in operation at least 2 years after funding ended, and that they influenced something like a dozen other institutions, too. At our first staff meeting after these findings were announced, most of us were over the moon. But my colleague Alison Bernstein (now with the Ford Foundation) was disturbed. 'We're supposed to be a risk-taking funder,' she warned. 'This may mean we've been too conservative in choosing among proposals.'

I thought about that. Most seed grant programs had success rates far lower than FIPSE's: 10-20%, not 80-90%. Authors had written influential books about how likely innovation in higher education was to fail. So why were these FIPSE projects succeeding so often? The answer seems relevant to strategic planning today.

FIPSE's review process attracted people to submit their best ideas. The review process winnowed out almost all of them: less than 5% were funded. And 'apples' were always compared with 'oranges': which ideas were most learner-centered, cost-effective and capable of far-reaching impact?

I think the resulting ideas were so powerful that people inside and outside the author's institution would say, "Normally when you propose something I don't pay much attention. But this idea is different. It's so important that we can't let it fail. How can I help you?" FIPSE-funded ideas usually attracted resources and support far beyond what FIPSE had awarded. I remember talking with another institution that had adopted an idea pioneered by a FIPSE grantee, "Once we realized that it was possible to do that, our institution couldn't not do it."

Institutions and systems need ways to seek out ideas, from inside and outside. Sift them for the ones that are so important, and so potentially rewarding, that a coalition of support is easy to put together. A few ideas like that, successfully implemented, can help develop momentum and support for a second generation of improvements. Like FIPSE, it's also important to use some degree of external review to help sift ideas: external review can help the institution see if the ideas really are significant, and remove some of the political risk of making such choices purely with insider input.

What do you think? Wonderful idea? Impractical? Wrong-headed?