Create a one-page Needs Statement that addresses the following:
the reason for requesting funding
the significant need for the grant with existing literature and research to support the assertion
the goals or expected results
who will be served by the grant

Part II: Locating Potential Funding Sources:
Conduct an internet search and list a minimum of ten (10) possible funding sources. Each grant has to be viable to your overall grant proposal and not solely related to the focus of the proposal. Your list must include the name of the grants, the funding source [name of the organization/association], along with the website address for each listed funding source.
Part III: Grant Proposal
Your grant proposal will include the following:

A summary of the project
Outline the plan of action to implement the grant, describing the activities and a sequence of events. The description also included who on the staff of the organization would be involved; what kind of training, if necessary, would be for the staff; the anticipated outcomes; and the method of evaluating the success of the project
Explanation of why should your organization receive the grant? What resources and competencies does it have to successfully use the grant? Will you be working with other organizations on this grant? What qualifications do individuals in the organization have to contribute?
Describe your organizations budget
NON-PROFIT GRANT PROPOSAL TEMPLATE
DATE SUBMITTED
GRANT NAME
SUBMITTED TO
ADDRESS OF RECEIVING PARTY
SUBMITTED BY
ADDRESS OF SUBMITTING PARTY
I. PROJECT DESCRIPTION
A. STATEMENT OF
PROBLEM TO
BE ADDRESSED
B.
GOALS AND
OBJECTIVES
C. TARGET
POPULATION
D. PROJECT
ACTIVITIES
E.
KEY STAFF
II. SUCCESS CRITERIA AND MEASURABLE OUTCOMES
III. ORGANIZATION BACKGROUND
IV. CURRENT PROGRAMS, ACTIVITIES, AND ACCOMPLISHMENTS
V. AFFILIATIONS WITH SIMILAR ORGANIZATIONS
VI. GOALS & OBJECTIVES
VII.
TIMELINE
ACTIVITY
PROJECTED DATE
VIII. BUDGET
BUDGET OVERVIEW
GENERAL OPERATING SUPPORT
BUDGET PURPOSE
PROJECT SUPPORT
BUDGET PERIOD START AND END DATES
INCOME
SOURCES
EXPENSE
AMOUNT
REVENUE
USES
AMOUNT
GENERAL OPERATING SUPPORT
TOTAL
TOTAL
NET INCOME
LONG-TERM SOURCES / STRATEGIES FOR FUNDING
IX. EVALUATION
X. APPENDIX
FILE NAME
DESCRIPTION
LOCATION attachment / link
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Elements of Grant Writing
Denise Gellene
Director, Academic Support Programs
UCLA CTSI
The Objective
Overarching Challenge
Present a tremendous amount of
information in a limited amount of
space.
The three C’s:
clear, complete, convincing
Writing Matters
Good writing won’t save a bad idea, but
poor writing can sink a good idea.
Writing is a skill that can be learned.
Presentation Outline
• Structure: Organize your material
• Toolkit: Punctuation and usage
• Writing: Putting words on the page
• Rewriting: Putting better words on the
page
Part I
Structure
Challenge #1
Organization
Basic Structure
– Specific Aims
• 1 page
– Research Strategy
• 6 or 12 pages
• Includes Significance,
Innovation and Approach
Research Strategy: Getting Started
• Understand what grant-making entity
wants to know
– Study review criteria
– Study RFA
• Special review criteria, if any
• Key phrases
Review criteria + RFA =
Research
Strategy
Organization
Review Criteria
Significance: Why is this important?
Who cares?
Innovation:
What is special about what
you plan to do?
Investigators: Can you pull this off?
Approach:
How do you plan to do this?
Research Strategy Organization l
• Significance
• Innovation
• Approach
o Investigators
o Preliminary Data
o Methods to Achieve Aims
– Organize by Aims
o Pitfalls and alternatives
o Timeline
Preliminary Data
and Pitfalls also
can be organized
by Aim
U54 Additional Instructions
A. Overview of the Proposed Center (12 pages)
Provide the overall objectives of the Center, including the shortand long-term goals. Describe how the Center’s expertise,
capabilities, partnerships, and resources will enable it to have
a significant influence on accelerating the pace and increasing
the probability of success for discoveries and innovations being
developed into commercial products. Provide a detailed
description of the Center’s leadership team.
Describe the criteria used to select the partners and the
qualities and strengths that each Partner brings to the Center.
Describe how the Center will facilitate and promote
interaction with existing institutional and government
programs.
The application should include a plan for transition of the
Center to a self-sustainable architecture.
Research Strategy Organization II
• Short- & Long-term Goals
– Long-term Goal: Sustainability
• Significance
• Innovation
• Leadership
– Expertise & Capabilities
• Partnerships
– Expertise, Capabilities and Resources they bring
• Interactions with Existing Entities
– Capabilities and Resources they bring
• Approach: Methods to Achieve the Goals
– Includes sustainability plan
Challenge #2
Outline
Hierarchy
C.
APPROACH
C.1.
AIM 1: DEFINE THE STRUCTURAL VARIATION
IN PARVOVIRUS CAPSIDS
C.1.1.
Brief summary of the literature and
preliminary results
C.1.1.1. Functional variation and flexibility of
parvoviral protein structures
NIAID
Outline Tips
• Be consistent
• Avoid going beyond four places
– A.1.1.1.
• Use headings to make your argument
Part II
Toolkit
Challenge #3
Punctuation
Common Challenges
• Commas and semi-colons
• Discover the dash
• Hyphens
• Odds & ends
Commas and Semi-colons
Separate words, phrases or clauses in a series with
commas
Please record subjects’ age, race or ethnicity, gender,
and blood pressure.
Semi-colons bring order to lists that contain
commas
Study sites are Olive View, a county hospital; UCLA;
Methodist, a community hospital; and USC.
Avoids ambiguity
The Dash
Amplify a thought in a sentence
Los Angeles is the largest county in the U.S.— it is
larger than 42 states.
Set off parenthetical phrase
Young adults ages 18–24—a group known as
“Young Invincibles”—face a high risk of motor
vehicle fatalities.
Makes sentence easier to read
Hyphens
Hyphens are connectors
•
•
List your long- and short-term goals.
Team-based approach
Hyphens affect meaning
•
•
Study-site selection vs. study site selection
Spanish-language interpreter vs. Spanish language
interpreter
No hyphen with words that end in -ly
•
Publicly traded company
Odds & Ends
No apostrophe for plural numbers & abbreviations
•
•
I’ve been working on this problem since the early 1970s.
These courses are for MDs.
Apostrophes indicate possession
• The MD’s notebook is on the counter.
Commas in dates
•
•
May 10, 2013 (comma between day and year)
May 2013 (no day, no comma)
Place commas inside quotes
• “I have found it,” he said.
Challenge #4
Words
Voice
Example #1
It has been found by me! (Passive; 6 words)
I have found it! (Active; 4 words)
Example #2
Analyses for the effects reported in this study are
of two kinds. (Passive; 12 words)
We can analyze our results in one of two ways.
(Active; 10 words)
Joseph Williams, Columbia University lecture, 2008
Clarity: Antecedent Problem
Ambiguous
My sandwich was in my lunchbox, but now it’s gone.
Clear
My sandwich was in my lunchbox, but now my sandwich is
gone.
Ambiguous
The lab has tissue samples from 20 women frozen in a tank.
Clear
The lab has tissue samples from 20 women. The samples are
frozen in a tank.
The Elements of Style
Be Positive
Avoid “iffy” language
• Bad: hope, hopefully, with luck, if possible
• Good: expect, anticipate, predict, forecast
Avoid negative language
• Bad: could not complete, did not work
• Good: made steady progress, improved
our approach
Alphabet Soup
Keep unfamiliar acronyms to a minimum
CTSI, a research partnership of UCLA,
CSMC, CDU and LA Biomed, is funding
pilots with LAC DHS and LAC DPH.
But, OK if “common knowledge” in your
field
NLRs, analogous to TLRs, contain LRRs for
sensing PAMPs.
Parallel Structure
Before
Formerly, science was taught by the textbook method,
while now the laboratory method is employed.
After
Formerly, science was taught by the textbook method; now
it is taught by the laboratory method.
The Elements of Style
Part III
Writing
Effective Grant Writing
• Clear:
Your writing conveys exactly
what you mean to reviewers
• Complete:
Your writing completely
expresses your idea and
responds to the RFA
• Convincing: Your writing excites
reviewers about the value
of your proposal
A Grant is an Argument
Significance: Why is this important?
Who cares?
Innovation:
What is special about what
you plan to do?
Investigators: Can you pull this off?
Approach:
How do you plan to do this?
Challenge #5
Specific Aims
Specific Aims
• Do the aims address interesting and
significant issues?
• Are they hypothesis-based?
• Are they “win-win” — will an outcome
consistent with the null hypothesis still be
a contribution to the field?
NINDS Checklist
Specific Aims
Specific Aims
Aim 1: Develop algorithms for C. elegans viability assays to
identify modulators of pathogen infection
Aim 2: Develop algorithms for C. elegans lipid assays to identify
genes that regulate fat metabolism
Aim 3: Develop algorithms for gene expression pattern assays to
identify regulators of the response of the C. elegans host to
Staphyococcus aureus infection
Limited to no more than three aims
Aims are related, but not dependent
Each aim is a concrete objective
NIAID
Specific Aims Page Outline
Introductory paragraph
–
–
–
Summarize knowledge
Identify gap/need
Identify problem associated with gap/need
Second paragraph
– Introduce project designed to address gap
– Identify long-range goal
– Introduce qualifications of team
Specific Aims
– Purpose, rationale and outcome for each aim
Conclusion
– Emphasize significance and goals
Specific Aims
Microscopy has emerged as one of the most powerful
and informative ways to analyze cell-based, highthroughput screening samples in experiments designed to
uncover novel drugs and targets. However, many diseases
and biological pathways can be better studied in whole
animals—particularly diseases that involve organ systems
and multicellular interactions, such as metabolism and
infection. (1) The worm C. elegans is a well-established
and effective model organism that can be robotically
prepared and imaged, but existing image-analysis
methods are insufficient for most assays. (2)
1) States a need
2) Identifies a problem to be solved
NIAID
Specific Aims
Aim 1: Develop algorithms for C. elegans viability assays to
identify modulators of pathogen infection
Challenge: To identify individual worms in thousands of
two-dimensional brightfield images of worm populations
infected by Microsporidia, and measure viability based on worm
body shape (live worms are curvy whereas dead worms are
straight) What they plan to do
Approach: We will develop algorithms that use a probalistic
shape model of C. elegans learned from examples, enabling
segmentation and body shape measurements even when worms
touch or cross. How and why they plan to do it
Impact: These algorithms will quantify a wide range of
phenotypic descriptors detectable in individual worms, including
body morphology as well as subtle variation in reporter signal
levels. Outcome
NIAID
Part IV
Rewriting
Challenge #6
Editing
First Draft
Either the congeners (1) themselves have
direct and permanent effects upon the
central nervous system, or there (1) may be
a retardation of the metabolism of ethanol
by the congeners (2) so that it (3) has a
stronger effect.
(1) Parallel structure
(2) Passive voice
(3) Ambiguous antecedent
Joseph Williams, Columbia University lecture, 2008
Edits
Either the congeners themselves have
directly and permanently affect effects upon
the central nervous system, or there may be
a retardation of the metabolism of they (1)
cause the body (2) to metabolize ethanol
more slowly by the congeners so that the
ethanol (3) has a stronger effect affects
the nervous system more strongly.
(1) Parallel structure
(2) Passive voice
(3) Ambiguous antecedent
Joseph Williams, Columbia University lecture, 2008
Revised Text
Either the congeners themselves directly
and permanently affect the central nervous
system, or they (1) cause (2) the body to
metabolize ethanol more slowly so that the
ethanol (3) affects the nervous system more
strongly.
(1) Parallel structure
(2) Active voice
(3) Clear antecedent
Joseph Williams, Columbia University lecture, 2008
Emphasis & Readability
• Use bold, italics and underlining
• Use white space
• Use graphics
Challenge #7
Cutting
Omit Needless Words*
Before
In the event that we envision only positive future selves, we
may not accurately gauge our chances at success, or
properly prepare ourselves for obstacles. (25 words)
If n the event that we envision only positive future selves,
we may inflate not accurately gauge our chances for at
success, or and fail to properly prepare ourselves for
obstacles.
After
If we envision only positive future selves, we may inflate our
chances for success and fail to prepare for obstacles. (20
words)
* William Strunk Jr.
Omit Needless Words*
Before
There is growing evidence to suggest that there are unique
risk factors that are unique to truants. (17 words)
There is g Growing evidence to suggests truants that there
are face unique risk factors that are unique to truants.
After
Growing evidence suggests truants face unique risk factors.
(8 words)
*William Strunk Jr.
For Your Bookshelf
• “Eats, Shoots & Leaves” by Lynne Truss
– Punctuation
• “On Writing Well” by William Zinsser
– General writing advice
• “Elements of Style” by William Strunk and E.B. White
– Grammar and usage
• “10 Lessons in Clarity and Grace” by Joseph Williams
– Sentence construction
• Chicago Manual of Style
– Authoritative technical guide
• Purdue Owl
– Online grammar, punctuation and usage guide
Resources
NIH
•
•
•
•
NIAID sample applications
NCCAM links to grant-writing advice
OER tips on writing the application
NINDS writing-a-grant-application checklist
CTSI
•
•
•
•
Regulatory, biostatistical consultations
Research facilitations
Complete CTSI contacts list
Writing consultations: [email protected]

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