Starting as an organization’s new grant writer can be a challenge, especially in a case where there has been a time lapse since the last one left. People get out of the habit of pursuing grant funds. This slideshow addresses some of the reasons for such reluctance and proposes some ways to mitigate these.

1. Overcoming Reluctance
to Pursuing Grant Funds
in Academia
Dr. Shalin Hai-Jew

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3. Slideshow Rationale
 Starting as an organization’s new grant writer can be a challenge, especially
in a case where there has been a time lapse since the last one left.
 People get out of the habit of pursuing grant funds.
 This slideshow addresses some of the reasons for such reluctance and
proposes some ways to mitigate these.
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5. What are some reasons why people
view pursuing grant funding as risky?
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6. Professional Reputations on the Line
 Pursuing grant funding means putting one’s professional reputation on the line
at the local institution and more broadly.
 Pursuing funds to make changes has implications for curriculum, research,
infrastructure, and other ways of doing things.
 Various stakeholders in the organization have to assess 1st, 2nd, 3rd order
effects as well as long-term encumbrances and costs.
 Said another way, there are approvals needed up the bureaucratic ladder and
from colleagues and collaborative partners.
 Then, grant applications are often publicized, whether they are funded or
not, by some funding agencies.
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7. Professional Reputations on the Line (cont.)
 People work in social ecosystems. They exist in cultural milieus. They are
influenced by what is going on around them and how they choose to interact
with that environment.
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8. Grant Writing Costs
 For the grant applicant or applicant team, there is the hard work of thinking
up a proposal, writing it, documenting main points, and submitting it while
adhering to standards.
 Some applications require outside expertise, such as for architects,
engineers, and others. Their labor involves costs.
 Some applications require early data, to justify further continuing research.
 There is the necessary social capital spent on working with grant partners and
the many colleagues who help make grant pursuits possible (research
compliance office, legal counsel, pre- and post-award offices, leadership, and
others).
 Those who need letters of support also need to reach out to those outside the
institution, such as from industry, government, and other entities.
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9. Learning Curves
 For many, they may have little experience in pursuing grants early on.
 There are available learning resources, but much about the space depends on
the particular organization, the environment (as in “environmental scan”),
and the spaces where they have competitive advantage.
 The grants “marketplace” also varies, with funding from public (govt),
private, corporate, family foundation, and other sources.
 Acquiring the “KSAs” (knowledge, skills, and abilities / attitudes) to thrive in
the grant space requires time and practice.
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10. Time and Effort Demands
 Even with the willingness to learn or extant prior knowledge, grant pursuits
are often add-ons to existing work.
 Acquired grants mean added work, with varying levels of compensation.
 At universities, there are three main goals: teach, research, and advance
society. Ideally, grants would advance all three.
 The institution takes a chunk of any funding for overhead.
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11. Competitive Advantage
 Assessing “competitive advantage” for an institution can be interpreted in a
straightforward way.
 Who is on staff?
 What are their areas of expertise?
 What is their willingness to get out there and compete for funding?
 What is their ability to follow through on promised work? To professional
standards? Ethics?
 How well do they document their work? Engage with empirical data?
 What does leadership prioritize? Fund? Support (in rhetoric and deed)? Support in
funds (it takes money to make money)?
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12. Competitive Advantage (cont.)
 What are institutional resources?
 How resilient is the organization in the face of headwinds? “Iffy” funding?
Rejections (which are par for the course in the space)?
 Do people have tough skins even as they are sensitive to the world? (Both are
critical.)
 Ultimately, what is the team that can be fielded and supported?
 The team has to be willing to take the opportunity costs that come with grant
pursuit and following through on funded grants. For many, their professional life
will be funded by a partial string of funded grants.
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13. Ranked Grant Applications
 Funding entities often rank the grant applications. The top ones are funded,
and the others are returned unfunded.
 Only a percentage of grant applications get funded.
 Not all grant applications meet minimum requirements.
 In terms of funding, there are a few that attract large funds, and perhaps a
long tail of smaller funded projects.
 Many funding entities are dependent on available funds. They can only fund
based on the pool of moneys they have.
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14. Up-to-Date Knowledge
 The team pursuing the grant has to have up-to-date knowledge in their
respective fields.
 They have to know where the research is in the field, what the extant
research questions are, and what the applied practices are in terms of
research, documentation, and professional practice.
 They have to be able to use the language of the field.
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15. Up-to-Date Knowledge (cont.)
 A grant proposal has to be imaginative and visionary and ambitious on the one
hand, but it also has to be practical and doable and applied (within deadline,
within resources, within the limits of staffing)…on the other.
 Successful grant applicants have to have unique concepts and be able to be
actualized to standards.
 The proposed work has to contribute to the future.
 Every institution has its own localisms. To succeed, a team has to move
beyond the localisms to the national and international.
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16. Up-to-Date Technologies
 The work related to a grant will often require contemporaneous technology
KSAs.
 Even putting together a competitive grant requires access to various
technologies: geographical mapping, data analysis, data visualization, e-book
publishing, databases, servers, and others.
 Generative AI and other forms of AI are also fore-fronted in current work.
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17. Contractual Considerations
 It is important to read the fine print for every call for proposals.
 A grant application works as a contract. It offers an exchange of work for
funds. Every contract involves potential liabilities.
 To best understand the standards, it helps to read all documentation closely
and participate in pre-application webinars and other such events. (One can
hear from the grant funder representatives what is desired, and one can also
scope out the competition a little.)
 The proposed work has to be achieved to standards—of research, of training,
of data collection, of data analysis, and so on.
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18. Contractual Considerations (cont.)
 There is rigorous and continuing oversight.
 The work should generally be completed under deadline.
 Some work may go into unfunded extension years post-end of a project.
These are not advisable, but they are sometimes necessary.
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19. Who Owns the Intellectual Property (IP)?
 Private companies and corporations that fund research often will own the
intellectual property (IP).
 Work done in labs that belong to an institution of higher education belong to
that entity (not the individual researcher).
 Larger universities will have organizational units that may pursue patents
(which cost in the five figures to acquire, and only if the patent application
meets rigorous standards).
 In many cases, in terms of publications, the researcher and research team
will be able to publish and retain copyright; however, these are works that
may not have direct commercial value (in most cases).
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20. Who Owns the Intellectual Property (IP)?
(cont.)
 Often, datasets which are published out with the release of a publication
have been exploited as fully as possible before their release.
 There is a speed to publish to be an established “first” though. There are
competing considerations in terms of IP and professional credit.
 Reputation informs on who has standing to apply for more funding along
particular lines of inquiry in research.
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21. Overlapping Grant Cycles and
Seasonality
 Some grant releases are fairly predictable in terms of a time cycle.
 To understand how the timings work, it helps to keep an eye on the grant
space, particularly for government (Grants.gov), large foundational funders,
and others.
 Many “forecasted” funds are projected, but these should still be on radar.
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22. Long-Term Work and Planning
 Many larger grants take years to prepare and evolve grant applications to
standards. All i’s must be dotted and t’s must be crossed.
 It may help to “pre-position” some work first: historical organization
information, fresh data, lists of equipment needs, plans for space remodels,
and others.
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23. Prospects for Acceptance, Prospects for
Rejection
 If a grant application is accepted, then the applicants have to follow the
contours of the application and follow through on all promised work.
 If the application is rejected, then the invested work is all sunk cost, and the
individual or team has to learn from the rejection (and accompanying
feedback), and move on to other work.
 The professional relationships made with the application may / may not
affect future potentials in terms of grant funding. But it is a good idea to
keep the relationships positive and open in terms of communications.
 There are limited bites at the apple though.
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24. Prospects for Acceptance, Prospects for
Rejection (cont.)
 Pursuing grant funding is not costless, and not every opportunity can be
chased, so it is important to ensure that there is fit first (between the
applicant organization and the funding entity).
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25. Controlling for (Inter)Personal Stress
 On teams, people all have different work styles. They have different roles.
They have different expectations.
 It helps to show everyone in good light. It helps to interpret others’
comments and actions in the best light.
 Close communications are important.
 It is critical to be respectful of each other.
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27. Common Myths about Grants
 Contrary to common talk, grants are not “free money.” They involve the
trade of work for supporting funds.
 The money is always conditional on performance.
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28. Changes in Admin Expectations
 Instructors may be leery that their roles may switch from a budget line item
to soft money, which is much less dependable.
 They may be concerned that administrators will expect them to continuously
chase money.
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29. At First Glance, At Second Glance…
 There are a lot of commercial sites that “sell” scraped grant data. They
create a misleading impression that there is a lot of “free money” out there.
 It is better to go to the web pages of the direct funders, and to engage their
representatives directly with questions as needed.
 The strength of a grant writer is not only in telling a story elegantly but more
about the actual work proposition and value added. (Grants are all pretty
much zero-sum.) Ensure that there is a return on investment (ROI) that is
objectively observable and measurable.
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30. At First Glance, At Second Glance… (cont.)
 New potential grant applicants (PIs, co-PIs) will let opportunities pass them
by. Many chances will not recur.
 Many are passive and think they will just receive money to buy what they
want. These have not been paying attention.
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31. Learning the Grant Space
 It is important to get and stay in the swing of grant pursuits, both individually
and institutionally.
 Some professions in academia are more dependent on grant funding than
others.
 Any lost time without funding will mean a reversion to work that may be done
without outside support.
 Lost time may mean that others gain the advantage. There are costs to time gaps.
 For many others in academia, grant funding may be highly peripheral.
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32. Grant Funders, Reputations, and Trust
 Grant funders pursue a limited range of objectives and interests.
 Do due diligence to ensure that the grant funders are on the up-and-up.
There are third-party organizations that check financial holdings of various
foundations to check their financial legitimacy. There are databases of
various grant funders for accurate histories and track records.
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33. Planning for Dynamism and Exigencies
 Principal investigators (PIs) may change institutions and take their funds (and
labs) with them.
 The world is a dynamic place, and there are many unpredictable changes that
may occur.
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34. Making the Case with Respective Publics
 There are many publics everywhere, those informed and not. Second-
guessing is one of those things that is just part of the gossip ecosystem.
 There is always a political surround.
 There is always a media surround.
 There is always a social media surround.
 Being able to engage in public space is important, to represent the
institution, support the tenets of the grant, back up the team, and advance
the work.
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36. Encouraging Grant Pursuits in an
Organization
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37. Encouraging Grant Pursuits in an
Organization
 It may help to have the institution offer in-house low-risk grants to prime
faculty and enable some early wins.
 It helps to keep instructors and researchers hungry and striving and competitive (in
the best senses).
 It is important to collect baseline data to accurately represent the institution
of higher education.
 It helps to offer incentives to conduct research and to publish.
 It is important to support interactions between the institution folks and those
on the outside.
 Going insular is high-risk for an institution of higher education, which has to be an
engaged and learning organization.
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38. Encouraging Grant Pursuits in an
Organization (cont.)
 Offering support services for grant pursuit can be helpful. This may include
help with writing, with budgeting, with timelines, with legal counsel, and
others. This must include training others into the space, so there is cross-
functional capabilities.
 It is important to avoid the “optimism bias” that can result in too-short timelines,
and too-small budgets.
 Avoid a sense of entitlement for grants.
 Do not assume that “need” alone is compelling.
 If extra moneys are suddenly given, think through the expenditures, and plan so
that sustainability is possible.
 Pursuing grant funds is part of a long game.
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40. Blood Running Cold Yet?
 Professional reputation on the line? Upfront and hidden costs? High learning
curves? Demands on time and effort? Competition? Judgment and ranking?
Contemporary domain knowledge required? Need for up-to-date technology
skills? Contractual obligations? Rigorous oversight? Deadlines? Acceptance /
rejection? (Inter)personal stress? Abundant myths? Changing administrative
expectations? Fly-by-night grant funders? Grant work exigencies? Observant
publics? Precise documentation?
 Nah! Like anything else, it is a matter of learning and hard work!
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41. Conclusion and Contact
 Dr. Shalin Hai-Jew
 Grant Writer
 Hutchinson Community College
 620-694-2453
 HaijewSh@hutchcc.edu
 Note: The images are made with the Deep Dream Generator (artmaking
generative AI) tool, based on different models, some with seeding images by
the slideshow author.
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