Do you need a collaborator?
Re: Do you need a collaborator?
Do I need a collaborator for my grant? People ask this question for many reasons. Sometimes the underlying questions about collaborations are:
- Are collaborators expected for grants?
- Do collaborators make grants more competitive?
- Am I ready to write a grant on my own?
The bad news is, it depends. The good news is, you can gather information that will help you make decisions about collaborations. You just need to rephrase the questions above. Let me show you what I mean.
- What does the funder want? (Answers the expectations question.) Grant mechanisms, meaning specific types of grants, have different requirements. Some grants for new PIs want you to forge work that you lead (e.g., the National Science Foundation CAREER grant). Some grants want you to develop a mentoring team (some of the National Institutes of Health K grants). And some grants are mixed regarding whether one or more people work on the project (e.g., National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Stipend program). Carefully review application instructions for guidance on whether you should be including collaborators. If in doubt, meet with a program officer. Ask their opinion about this issue - but show you’ve done your homework trying to figure this out on your own.
- Who’s been funded in the past? (Answers the competitiveness question.) If this is an existing grant mechanism, who did they fund? Was it a team? What types of experts were on the team? For example, say you are applying to a National Endowment for the Arts Research Grant. Read their description and then google for news releases on who has received the award. What can you find out about who has been funded? Were collaborations the norm?
- What do you want in your career? (Answers the are you ready question.) For The Grant Writing Guide, I interviewed scholars to understand how they navigated career choices like this. Scholars differed in their priorities. For example, one scholar spoke about how as an extrovert, she really missed having time to brainstorm with others. So she used grants to create time to work with others. Others said they were trying to break away from their mentors. That meant forming collaborations with scholars in different areas. Some said they had to lead a grant on their own to show their department that they are an independent scholar.
In sum, gather information to decide whether you want collaborators on your grant. And just a warning - be careful of having too much overlapping expertise on your grant. A group of three child psychologists and I wrote a disaster grant. Reviewers hated how closely related our expertise was. They felt it wasn’t worth paying people with similar expertise. We disagreed and resubmitted with our full group - but the next round of reviewers had the same critique. Ultimately, you get to make choices about your grant. Reviewers may not agree with you. But this is your work and your career.
That’s all for today! If you know someone who is pondering collaborations, would you mind forwarding this newsletter to them? As always, thanks for reading and believing that scholars deserve support for incredible ideas.
Betty
Stay in touch: The Newsletter, Twitter, TikTok, and The Grant Writing Guide book.
P.S. Happy Halloween to those of you that celebrate. I’ve got a dinosaur and Harry Potter at my house.
P.P.S. Children always find a way to say the words that matter. Case in point, here’s my card of the day. (It says, “Love you so so much.”) Thank you all for being part of this community. I am grateful to be connected to people who believe that sharing information lifts all of us up.
