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Positioning your project to win funding support

This is an excerpt from Research in Dance by Ali Duffy.

ADAPTING A PROJECT IDEA TO BE COMPETITIVE FOR FUNDING

The trick to securing funding is crafting a project that aligns well with a funding organization’s mission, is relevant and timely, is manageable within your proposed timeline and budget, and contributes new knowledge or innovates uniquely. Also, depending on the funder’s mission, it may also be helpful if your project seeks to foster community, make dance accessible to underserved or under-resourced populations, or build opportunities for diversity and inclusion. And, you must convince funders of your own and your team’s expertise and ability to complete the project effectively. This is no small feat within the limited number of words most grant applications allow!

It is always helpful to have a team of collaborators with unique specialties working together on a funding application and to share multiple drafts and offer multiple rounds of feedback to ensure your application is as clear and persuasive as possible. If you have access to a grant writer or editor, recruit them to your project as soon as you begin writing the grant proposal. They will aid you in clarifying your intentions for the project and help you write persuasively and efficiently. Have your research collaborators, board of directors, department chair or manager, or anyone else connected to the potential project review and offer feedback on the application. These feedback sessions will not only support your writing a strong application but will also help to flush out the details of the project itself in a whole new way.

Style and Tone Considerations

When writing an application for funding, consider who will be reading and rating it. Often, funding organizations recruit experts in the field, which could include professional artists, academics, scholars, and administrators. Your writing, therefore, could be geared toward someone active in dance. That said, if you’re applying for funding in a category that is broader than just the dance discipline, such as an interdisciplinary, arts education, or community-engaged category, you should tweak your application to avoid jargon that the average person may not comprehend.

Writing should be professional in tone, as if writing to your most highly respected boss or professor. It should also be clear, specific, persuasive, and efficient. Stay focused on exactly what you’re requesting and why. The project and the group or individual proposing to complete it should be centered in all parts of the grant so that no extraneous information, ideas, or opinions obstruct the mission of the project under consideration. Finally, follow instructions meticulously; grant panelists want to have their time and regulations respected, and any excessive verbiage could put your application at risk of being automatically rejected.

Persuasive Writing

One of the most important skills you can learn in creating funding proposals is how to write persuasively. This requires taking stock—and ownership—of your own or your organization’s accomplishments. It is not enough to simply know that you are prepared and able to see a project through successfully—you must sell your abilities and strengths to a grant panel through your writing. Grant panelists cannot read your mind; they must be able to read everything you want them to know about you or your organization.

Some dance researchers struggle to take the reins of persuasive writing because they don’t want to come across as bragging or overinflating accomplishments. Women and other historically marginalized populations have been found in recent research to be more likely to downplay their achievements—often at their own expense (Larsen 2018). Don’t let this happen to you! My advice is to let this worry about perception go. If you don’t toot your own (or your organization’s) horn, then who will? Be confident in your preparedness, vision, and capabilities.

Strong, persuasive writing in funding applications combines thorough research and careful word choice to get the readers to agree with and support the project and the need for funding. “Persuasive writing uses evidence-based logic, emotional language, and ethical appeals to illustrate a point of view” (Birt 2022, par. 3).

One of the ways you can make writing persuasive is by clearly defining the need for your project and its potential benefits to the individuals, groups, and communities involved in it. In being direct and confident about your project’s importance and anticipated impact, replace terms such as think, maybe, and might. Write as if you already have the funding and speak about what you know and what you will achieve. Be specific with the outcomes you intend to accomplish and ensure the amount of funding you request is aligned well with an achievable set of outcomes.

Another way to appeal to grant panelists is to use anecdotes for emotional effect. For example, if a community member shared a particularly compelling way that your organization affects them, and this feedback seems relevant to the project at hand, include a brief excerpt of their feedback in your writing. This illustrates a reputation for previous success and reach.

Don’t forget to reiterate the importance and relevance of the research or project as related to your expertise (Gorsuch 2020). Why are you the best person or team to take on this research right now? What gap does this research fill, or what need in a particular community or situation does this research meet? And how might this project be catalyzed into a next phase or something larger in the future? Indicating that your project is bolstered by a team of qualified and prepared experts and that the team has a plan to expand beyond this initial step that funding would enable shows your research trajectory and makes you a solid candidate for funding.

Efficient Writing

The reason you need to write efficiently is twofold: (1) Most funding applications offer a strictly limited amount of space or number of words to explain your project and your need, and (2) grant panelists will lose interest in an overly verbose proposal. Your goal is to say everything that needs to be said for reviewers to fully understand the project, its outcomes, the collaborators or partners on the project, the project’s importance and impact, and what the funding will be used for without going over the word or character limit.

In the narrative or description portion of the application, make sure your writing flows in a logical order. Read your narrative aloud to someone who doesn’t know anything about the project to see what questions arise. This will give you an idea of what questions will emerge for reviewers too.

Under each prompt, ensure that you address only that prompt and do not include tangential information. For example, don’t go into minor budgetary details in the project summary section. If needed, include subheadings within the body of your writing to make the flow of ideas clear for a panel of reviewers.

Once you have written a draft of your funding request, edit it for efficiency: (1) Don’t use two words when one will do, (2) don’t use a noun when you can use a verb, (3) don’t overuse adjectives and adverbs, (4) use specific rather than general words, and (5) use active language (Belcher 2019).

More Excerpts From Research in Dance

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