Top tips for internal grants

5 July 2016 by 6 Comments

Reza profile crop - smallDr Reza Mohammed is Senior Coordinator, Research Development, in the Research Office at RMIT University, Australia.

He leads a team that manages the University’s research-related professional development program for staff, its Early Career Researcher Network, and many of its internal research funding schemes.

Before transitioning to research administration, Reza held positions in academia, industry, and conservation education.

Read the guide(lines) | Photo by Reza Mohammed

Read the guide(lines) | Photo by Reza Mohammed

Many universities allocate funding to support research collaborations, research projects, and travel fellowships.

As public funding for research decreases annually, competition for internal funding becomes increasingly fierce.

The pros and cons of internal funding are discussed in another Research Whisperer post, and I want to talk about how to win internal grants.

If you’re a researcher wanting to increase your chances of success, lean in close so I can share my top five tips with you.

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How to make a simple research budget

7 October 2014 by 25 Comments

A napkin diagram of the basic concepts in a project: interviews in South East Asia and trails with a Thingatron

This might work! (Photo by Jonathan O’Donnell on flickr – https://www.flickr.com/photos/jod999)

Every research project needs a budget*.

If you are applying for funding, you must say what you are planning to spend that funding on. More than that, you need to show how spending that money will help you to answer your research question.

So, developing the budget is the perfect time to plan your project clearly. A good budget shows the assessors that you have thought about your research in detail and, if it is done well, it can serve as a great, convincing overview of the project.

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Who will win?

26 August 2014 by Leave a comment

Four colourful dragon boats on a lake in Nanjing.

Dragon boats, by Jonathan O’Donnell on Flickr

In the last week, academics around Australia have been receiving referee reports from the Australian Research Council. Yesterday, I read just over 50 of these reports. Today I spoke to my boss about them. I said that, in general, I was happy with them. We talked about some specific applications and some specific comments in the assessments. Then, right at the end of the call, he asked me the question that I’d been dreading.

So, who do you think will win? What do you think our chances are?

Don’t ask me that. Please, don’t ask me that. In the same way that I can’t tell an academic if they’ll get the grant or not, I can’t tell my boss, out of all our applications, who will win. I can tell who got positive comments and who didn’t, which might allow you to make your own educated guess. I can tell you who, in my opinion, deserves to win. But I don’t pick winners. Here’s five good reasons why. Read more of this post

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Five reasons to ignore the big schemes

22 April 2014 by 6 Comments

Jo + Kerryn, by Jonathan O’Donnell on Flickr

Pop quiz, peeps. Name a funding agency.

Quick, what’s the first one you thought of?

If you are from the US, you probably said ‘National Science Foundation’. If you are from Europe, you probably said ‘FP7′. In the UK, Canada, or Australia, you probably named one of the national Research Councils.

In each country, there are a handful of funding agencies that tower over the research imagination. Applicants mythologise them. Recipients revere them. Universities lionise them. They dominate the academic funding conversation to such an extent that the names of all other funding sources are drowned out.

In Australia (where I come from), we only talk about two: the Australian Research Council (ARC) and the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC). You might hear some highfalutin’ talk about the Australian Competitive Grants Register (ACGR), and ‘Category 1’ funding, but it’s just code for those two funding agencies.

Don’t believe me? There are almost seventy ‘Category 1’ funding bodies on the Australian Competitive Grants Register. I’ll bet most Australian researchers can’t name another three with any certainty.

The problem with this is that researchers, particularly new researchers, only ever hear about those funding agencies. They never hear about the smaller, more targeted government schemes, funding from state and local government agencies, local or international philanthropic funding agencies, or new possibilities like crowd funding. That’s just crazy! Read more of this post

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Five types of funding

25 March 2014 by 4 Comments

An intricate page of Chinese printing, overlaid with many chops and seals

Providing funds for suppressing the Heavenly Kingdom, by Jonathan O’Donnell on Flickr

Some people seem to think about research funding in the same way that I think about the doctor – only when it is an emergency.

That’s not the best way to approach it. You need  a plan and you need to know what funds are coming up when.

To plan for the long term and shape your searches, you need to have a picture of what is actually possible. Different types of grants fit different situations. Here is the way that I think about funding.

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How NOT to pad your budget

16 July 2013 by 1 Comment

U.S. Marine Corps, bedding down a big barrage balloon, Parris Island, S.C. - May 1942 (Library of Congress)

U.S. Marine Corps, bedding down a big barrage balloon, Parris Island, S.C. – May 1942 (Library of Congress)

Just before I had completed my previous budget post – “Conquer the budget, conquer the project” – Twitter threw an associated topic my way: padding your budget.

It grew (again) out of the livetweeted session of Aidan Byrne’s talk at ANU that @thesiswhisperer attended. @bronwynhinz responded to Inger’s tweet on Byrne’s admonishment for padding budgets with:

“How is ‘padding’ defined? Waffling instead of being succinct? Unnecessary/tangential material in significance sections?”

At the time, I said I’d write about it and – months later – here it is! Without realising it, the forerunner to this post is actually Emily Kothe’s (@emilyandthelime’s) tongue-in-cheek piece about “Research on a shoe-string“.

In it, Emily talked about some of the ways budgets can be inflated with unnecessary costs to justify the amount you’d ask for from the funding body.

Basically, ‘padding the budget’ means putting unnecessary expenses into your project costings. A good budget is logical, lean and costed with integrity.

Often, a chat with your organisation’s research office people (RO Peeps) can save you a world of pain. I’ve heard that, sometimes, there are RO Peeps who actually do your budget for you. Of course, when I say “do your budget for you”, I mean that you have already thought it through (or talked it through) with stunning clarity and have listed the precise items you want to make your project happen.

No-one can (or should) actually do your budget for your project. Your budget is inextricable from the methods, aims, and personnel of your project – it cannot be done in isolation, and I’ve banged on about this before.

Back to the topic of the post!

Here are my top five ways NOT to pad your grant application budget:

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Five superpowers I wish I had

25 June 2013 by 9 Comments

Silver statue of a man, standing dramically posed with rope around his waist.

My next superhero, by Jonathan O’Donnell on Flickr

Let me tell you a little secret.

I’m not Superman. I’m not Spiderman (sometimes, I feel like poor, put-upon Peter Parker, though). I’m not Iron Man and I’m definitely not Wolverine (although you might think I have adamantine claws once I’ve torn through your latest draft application).

Actually, I’m not a superhero at all. At best, I’m a “highly trained normal”, in the parlance of the comic book world (and some would question the ‘highly trained’ bit).

Which is funny, because a lot of you seem to think that I do have superpowers. I don’t, I assure you.

If I did, I’d be out saving the world, rather than trying to save your grant application. Despite this, you maintain an unshakable faith that I can do the impossible.

To prove my point, here are five superpowers that I don’t have (although I wish I did):

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