Tips for Preparing Grant Applications - Know Your Audience

• Follow the Application Guidelines and Directions
• Contacting Program Officers
• Know the Review Criteria
• Know Your Audience
  Writing a proposal to the appropriate audience can be critical. Many funding agencies will provide information about who reviews applications. It may be a panel of experts in your field; it may be a mixed group of experts from different fields; or it may be comprised of reviewers who care about the end results of your topic, but have no expertise in your field. Look through the agency's website or announcement materials to learn as much as possible about who reviews your application. (Consider contacting the program officer to learn more.) You also may be allowed to provide input as to which reviewers are appropriate or inappropriate for your particular proposal. If so, take advantage of this. If you cannot determine who will judge your application, consider writing to multiple audiences. The best way to do this is to use the abstract or initial summary to clearly explain the overall goals and value of your proposed work—albeit in lay person terms, but then provide increasing amounts of technical detail in the body for expert reviewers. Less expert reviewers will still look positively on your proposal if they understand the general goals and concept, and defer to experts who read the whole proposal for quality of your approach. However, if the generalist does not understand what you are trying to accomplish in the first place, he or she will be far less likely to support an expert's opinion.
• Clarity of Writing and Organization
• Visual Presentation Counts
• Consider What Might Go Wrong with Your Project
• Accurate Budgets
• Issues Regarding Similar or Prior Funding

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