MANAGING GRANT OPPORTUNITIES

1. MANAGING GRANT OPPORTUNITIES Michelle Schoenecker University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee March 15, 2013

2. Purpose of Presentation • Identify/discuss best practices of grant searching and dissemination • Focus on developing structure/processes for managing the opportunities we find and that faculty want • Share experiences and learn from each other

3. Out of Scope • Identification of free/paid search engines • How to use search engines • Comparison of subscription services • Features, benefits, tools, cost • Recommendations for subscription services • Every institution is unique

4. Who are you helping and how do you help them?

5. What is the scope of your situation? • Who are you helping? • Small or large department? • School/college or entire campus? • Junior, middle, or senior faculty? • Attitudes/expectations? • Institution or department philosophy • Faculty • Sponsored Programs Office: PreAward Focus • Is this part of a broader faculty mentoring effort?

6. The Big Question: How much help do they need with a grant search? • Detail • Personalized based on their own research? • A basic list with URLs? Summaries? • Format • Posted on Web site? Email? Newsletter? • Frequency • Weekly, bi-weekly, monthly?

7. What do I need to know to meet these needs? • General or specific understanding of their research? • Where do I obtain information? • How do I organize/maintain the information? • Format: Excel? Access? Word doc? HTML? • Online tools? • Who should have access to information? • Archiving: How long do I keep information?

8. The Big Challenges for RAs • T I M E • Pre-award staff juggle multiple responsibilities • Searching can be very time-consuming • Searching is easily usurped by more immediate tasks • Searching may be given to student workers • Quality issues with content, format, accuracy • Preparing and sending information • Recordkeeping/maintenance

9. Knowledge Base • Unfamiliarity with topic(s) • Too much information to know • Budget • Paid subscriptions are costly (Pivot, IRIS) • Tools are costly (MyWebGrants) • Staff is costly • Return on Investment • Quantitative: App/win ratio? Financial threshold? • Qualitative: Service delivery? Client satisfaction?

10. GOAL: Manage Opportunities Effectively • Search efficiently • Know the right sponsors • Know your sources for information • Know your faculty’s research, if necessary • Record and archive wisely • Make it easy to use • Make it accessible • Don’t recreate the wheel • Create/modify templates • Research what other institutions are doing/share tools

11. Getting Started: Know Your Faculty • Stage of research career • Early-stage • Experienced • Research interests • Sponsors • Keywords

12. Early-Stage Faculty • Inexperienced • May be unfamiliar with funding sources/programs that benefit early-stage investigators • Little to no proposal development experience • Highly Motivated • Must get tenure • Shoot at everything and hope to hit something • Need strategic planning/mentoring

13. Experienced Faculty • Established funding track record • Established contacts (colleagues, program officers) • Familiar with federal/private funding sources and programs, but don’t keep up with changes • Seek sustainability • Sustain current projects • Seed funding for new projects • Leverage expertise in large-scale grant projects

14. Know Your Faculty Members’ Research • Keywords • Faculty profile (e.g., internal Web site/PubMed) • Publications • Biosketch • One-on-one interview • Lab tour

15. Know Faculty Members’ Primary Sponsors and Programs • NIH, NSF, NASA, DOE • Early investigator/career; mentored; pilot/seed funding; clinical trials; centers/institutes • Investigate unlikely sponsors • DoD funds medical research • NIH funds polymer research for drug applications • NSF and DoD fund large-scale instrumentation for non-clinical applications

16. Grant Identification Strategies

17. Go to the Well:Manual searching • Sponsor Web sites • Less-robust search functions; fewer options • Free databases (e.g., Grants.gov, FedBizOpps, internal) • More robust functionality due to scope • Paid subscription databases (e.g., Pivot, SciVal) • Highly robust functionality; extensive customization

18. Benefits of the Well • Allows for very refined/granular search • May find links/references to new sources • Increased knowledge/familiarity with sponsor • Better organization • Drawbacks of the Well • Can be very time-consuming • Difficult for busy offices/departments

19. Turn on the Faucet:Auto-aggregation/ Notification Services • Free or a feature of paid subscription service • Typically just a list with no additional functionality (sorting, bookmarking) unless generated by a paid subscription service • Pre-determined frequency • Reliable, easy to use, accurate • “Hands-free” approach

20. Types of Free Faucets • Government-wide • Federal Register • Grants.Gov • FedBizOpps • Agency-specific • Congressionally Directed Medical Research Programs(CDMRP/US Dept. of Defense) • NSF, NIH, EPA, DOE, DoED, NASA, CDC • Public Service • ScanGrants

21. Paid aggregation subscriptions offer to do all the work for you • Finding • Alerting • Organizing • Reporting/predicting • Archiving • Awards

22. Examples of Paid Subscription Services • SciVal • Community of Science/Pivot • InfoEd/SPIN • ResearchResearch • Foundation Center • Grant Spy • Grant Forward (formerly IRIS) • In-house databases (Arizona State, NU)

23. Domain-Specific • National Association of Children's Hospitals and Related Institutions • State Science and Technology Institute Weekly Digest (SSTI) • HNet (Humanities & Social Sciences Online) • FundSource (behavioral/social science) • Grants Alert System (for grants that serve non-profits and citizens in Illinois)

24. Value of Paid Subscription Services • Save time • Broad access and distribution • Save money? • Reduce staff? • Improve efficiency? • Improve win rate? • Increase faculty satisfaction?

25. Benefits of the Faucet • Receive notices from the agencies/orgs of your choice • Set parameters once and change as needed • Keyword list • Faster and easier to sift through a collection of opportunities • Repetition can help make sure you didn’t miss important opportunities • Drawbacks of the Faucet • Easy to put aside; easy to scan through too fast • Can be easy to miss a good match • Deadlines can be too close • Repetition bores the mind; easy to disregard

26. Drawbacks of the Faucet • Overlapping/repetitive information • Price • Free services lack useful features/online tools • Accuracy in paid subscriptions – better to go directly to the source?

27. Organizing and managing information

28. What Data do I Need to Keep? • Keywords • Program titles • Sponsors • Deadlines • Faculty distribution • Individual • Department/college/school • Date sent

29. What Data do I Need to Keep? • Recurring opportunities • Limited submissions • Applications based on distribution • Awards and/or rejections • Web sites • List of free subscription services that you receive (e.g., Grants.gov; NSF Update, NIH Update)

30. Where do I Keep the Data? • Excel® and Access® databases • Easy to categorize, sort, query, generate reports • Low-cost • Advanced knowledge helpful • Homegrown/internal systems • Full-service subscription service • Generate reports when needed • Email folders • Sponsor, faculty, dept., deadlines, etc.

31. How to Make the Data Accessible? • Shared drives • Web-based storage • Hard copies, if necessary • Multiple users on subscriptions

32. How Long Should I Archive the Data? • Why should you keep it? • Topic trending • Faculty documentation for tenure • Recycle recurring opportunity announcements • Create templates and boilerplate content • Metrics to determine ROI • Volume • Application/win rates • Faculty satisfaction (surveys) • Assess effectiveness of paid subscription services

33. Dissemination Strategies

34. Determine how faculty prefer to receive opportunities • Visit a Web site? • Your institution’s? The sponsor’s? • Receive an email or e-newsletter that you created? • Forward sponsor’s/vendor’s email w/aggregated list? • All of the above? • Make sure the method is manageable for you and effective for faculty

35. Do not waste faculty members’ time • Send only relevant opportunities • Do not send too many, too often • Briefly summarize the most important information • Create a format that is easy to skim • Include links to full solicitation, program Web page, and other relevant sources • Solicit feedback often – are you providing the right kinds of opportunities?

36. Entice faculty members to read your information • Use language and formatting strategies (keywords, headers, boldface, underline, bulleted lists, numbering) • Use lots of white space to increase readability • Maintain standard format for consistency, familiarity • Use templates and boilerplate content when possible

37. Provide ample lead time before the deadline • Keep track of deadlines • Keep a record of distributions • Send reminders • Determine preferred frequency • Remind yourself! • Stay on top of searching and distributing • Make it a priority • Easy to let it get away from you • Hard to catch up

38. Summary • Determine the scope of grant searching for your institution • Understand your faculty and their needs for the information • Determine if the well or faucet is best for your institution and faculty • Determine if you want to pay for comprehensive services

39. Summary, continued • Create a database of information based on the metrics that you want to track and report • Create informative, but easy to read templates • Make grant opps a priority to avoid falling behind and missing great opportunities for faculty

40. Questions? Michelle Schoenecker University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee schoene7@uwm.edu