Checklist for Polishing Your Grant

Checklist for Polishing Your Grant

How do you stand out in grant writing? You go the extra mile. You leave yourself enough time to catch mistakes and polish your grant so that your ideas shine. But it’s hard to know how to polish your grant when you’re getting started.

It’s like baking bread. This is a loaf I made in 2018. I did my best, and I was proud of this loaf.

But here’s a loaf I made five years later. I used the exact same recipe. This second loaf is objectively superior because I’ve learned polishing techniques: how to stretch and fold; rice flour creates contrast; and baking longer generates a deep brown crust.

I share my bread journey because you don’t have to spend five years slowly picking up polishing techniques on your own. I asked 100 experts what their grant polishing techniques were, and I wrote them down for you.

Here’s a free interactive checklist of their top polishing techniques. Use it before you submit your next grant. It covers big and small issues like have you indicated how you address the funder’s mission? Are you using the same terms throughout your grant? (And for even more details on skills, see The Grant Writing Guide.)

Cheers to writing your next fundable grant. If you think this checklist could help someone, would you mind forwarding it to them? Academia is a better space when we help each other. Thanks for reading and believing that scholars deserve support for incredible ideas.

Betty

Stay in touch: The Newsletter, Bluesky, TikTok, and The Grant Writing Guide book.

P.S. Here’s the bread recipe. It’s Jim Lahey’s no knead bread (no surprise to long-term readers, I’m sure!). Even without polishing, this bread is amazing.

P.P.S. I just tried this lychee drink at a friend’s house. Five stars!