- \n
- I’m learning how best to track the progress of grant-funded projects run by large multidisciplinary teams, and by single distracted clinicians.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Somewhat obviously, I’ve learned the most from the applications and resulting projects in which I’ve been most heavily involved. For the purposes of
your amusement<\/del> this post, I can sum up my findings in the following equation:
\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/farm3.static.flickr.com\/2488\/4153707385_558afcd852.jpg\")
\nI find that tracking the progress of the blue stuff is relatively straightforward, if<\/em> I’ve been involved in (or at least party to) the PIs’ decisions about how to balance the individual elements of the red stuff1<\/a><\/sup>.
\nThe hard part is the reverse engineering.
\nOne of my current projects is to help write detailed in-house specimen collection and processing instructions, as well as an ethics application, for a grant we were recently awarded. The grant was originally submitted before I joined the group, and was revised and resubmitted last year. I was spending most of my time and energy on two other grants submitted to the same competition, and was therefore spared too much involvement in this fairly straightforward resubmission.
\nSo, when I had to come up with a very detailed description of the blue part of the funded project, I only had the first element of the red side of the equation to work from. I have no idea which experiments make up the bottom two categories.
\nWhile this has been a somewhat frustrating experience, my reverse engineering efforts have certainly taught me a lot that I didn’t know about grant writing. The primary lesson is the importance of a cleverly constructed budget.
\nI’m now trying to use this hard-won knowledge in one of my other current projects: drafting the budget and justification for another (five year, six figure) grant application, using only the single line item and sad-face emoticon provided by the PI.
\nRed stuff, blue stuff, and black holes.<\/p>\n1<\/sup> the balance is
usually<\/del>sometimes<\/del> never ever ever influenced by the rigour of the funding body’s financial and scientific progress reporting procedures<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I’ve been in my current job for two years now, and I’ve lost track of the number of grants I’ve worked on. I’ve done first drafts, final proofreads, and everything in between. I’ve been present from the first planning meeting … Continue reading