Funding provides financial support for faculty members’ time, material, travel expenses, graduate student assistantships, postdocs, etc., to further their scholarship, as well as their ability to create societal impact and change people’s lives. Applying for funding not only allows faculty to obtain these resources needed to execute their projects, it’s also an important part of engaging with and receiving feedback from the broader community of scholars. R&CA team members all have experience helping faculty develop effective proposals and can provide support across every discipline. The level of support we can provide is determined by your desired level of support, the proposal deadline, and our bandwidth.
We support faculty in planning their proposal or fellowship application so that it clearly aligns with the focus and scope of the funding agency’s requirements and goals. We review the information in the proposal/fellowship call with you and discuss how you plan to meet the requirements and how to effectively organize your proposed activities. We can provide example planning tools like timelines, charts, and checklists that will help you think through how and when you will accomplish all the necessary tasks needed to submit a full proposal or application on time.
A reviewer can only judge a proposal by what’s written on the page. Oftentimes, a faculty member has many ideas in mind that they want to include in their proposal, but given time pressure and space restrictions, it may be difficult for them to present their ideas in an order that makes sense to a reviewer. One way to increase the competitiveness of a proposal is to have other people review it before you submit the final version. The R&CA team has significant experience reviewing proposals through two different proposal development lenses: the lens of alignment with the proposal/fellowship call and the lens of flow, consistency, and ease of understanding. Note – while our team members have advanced degrees in different fields, reviews are not intended to provide subject-matter expertise. For a subject-matter review, we recommend that faculty reach out to colleagues in their field.
A 1-page summary is a great way to jumpstart the writing process by getting your ideas down on paper so that you can confer with colleagues and program managers to determine if your ideas align with a proposal/ fellowship call and find collaborators. The R&CA team often reviews 1-page summary drafts and acts as a sounding board for project ideas in their nascent stages, reducing any anxiety faculty members might have about sharing their 1-page summaries externally. In order to provide an effective review of a 1-page summary, we need:
1. Your draft 1-page summary (preferably as a Microsoft Word document)
2. At least 5 business days
We typically provide 5-10 comments in the margins of the document and an overview email with summative comments to help you prioritize how you might address our feedback.
A beautifully written, innovative proposal or fellowship application can be declined solely because it doesn’t match the goals, requirements, and priorities outlined in the proposal/fellowship call. This can happen when a required section is missing or when proposed activities do not match the funding opportunities’ goals. Our team can review the proposal/fellowship call and your proposal narrative to identify any missing pieces or misalignments so you can create a more effective proposal. To effectively review for alignment with the solicitation, we need:
1. Your proposal narrative as a Microsoft Word Document.
Subsequent draft revisions submitted during this process will not be reviewed.
2. A link to the call for proposal/fellowship applications
3. At least 5 business days to review your document
We typically provide 10-15 comments over the whole document in the margin and an overview email with summative feedback to help you prioritize your revisions. We can address further questions via email or schedule a follow-up consultation if time allows.
R&CA team members also read proposal/ fellowship drafts with a detailed eye, identifying inconsistencies, making recommendations to improve structure and flow and facilitate understanding. During this process, we also read drafts for alignment, as described above.
In order to provide an effective full review for flow, consistency, and ease of understanding we need:
1. Your proposal narrative as a Microsoft Word Document. Subsequent draft revisions submitted during this process will not be reviewed.
2. A link to the call for proposal/fellowship applications
3. At least 8 business days to review your document.
We typically provide 10-15 in the margin per page, some tracked in-line changes, and an overview email with summative feedback to help you prioritize your revisions. We can address further questions via email or schedule a follow-up consultation if time allows.
R&CA team members can also read declined proposals and review panel comments to help faculty develop resubmission plans. Whether you wish to polish an idea for resubmission to the same program or explore different funding opportunities, we work with you to identify concerns identified by review panels and develop tailored resubmission strategies.
In order to provide an effective debriefing of reviewer feedback, we need:
1. The submitted proposal
2. The link to the call for proposal/fellowship applications
3. Review feedback
4. At least 5 business days to review your document and the feedback.
We will schedule a consultation (in person or via Zoom) to discuss the feedback and help you develop your resubmission plans.
For large, complex, multi-investigator or multi-institution proposals, the R&CA team can also facilitate the proposal development process. In addition to helping develop your project ideas that fit within the scope and goals of the proposal call and reviewing the proposal document, we work with the Principal Investigator (PI) to manage the proposal writing and submission process – from building the team and facilitating communication during the writing process, to helping them set internal milestones and tracking progress.
With the explosion of easy-to-use Large Language Model (LLM) tools, some writers may choose to apply LLM tools to aid their proposal development activities. While we understand there can be benefits in exploring these tools, faculty should be aware of federal agency guidance and the likely loss of intellectual property. In addition, LLM tools are no replacement for an individual reading the details of a proposal/fellowship call, understanding the published literature, or writing each section of a proposal. Reviewers also often pick up on several indications that someone is using these LLM tools, which can negatively affect their proposal. To learn more about AI pros and cons, check out CFE’s Generative AI Resource.
