GWSW announces the extensively updated Successful Proposals to Any Agency workbook, issued September 2016
Our GWSW family is delighted to bring to your attention the latest updates of our grant proposal writing and publication workbooks, designed to allow you to stay abreast of the latest changes at our nation’s funding agencies. We updated and published The Grant Application Writer’s Workbook NIH Version in April, 2016. Now we’re pleased to announce the publication of our extensively updated workbook, Successful Proposals to Any Agency (referred to in this blog as Any Agency). Our popular Writing for Biomedical Publication text is currently being updated and is anticipated for publication in December, 2016. The updated NSF Version of our workbook is close to completion and an announcement regarding when it will be available will be posted on Facebook and our website in the very near future, as well as for the updated version of our USDA-NIFA Version workbook. This will bring our collection of workbooks up to date by the end of the year.
Specifically with regard to the Any Agency workbook, those of us at GWSW have, for several years, recognized the need for this update. However, in spite of this recognized need, our efforts have been admittedly frequently placed in a secondary priority due to the ongoing demands of our many clients and the need to ensure that their grant applications meet agency deadlines.
Given the relative length of time since the initial edition was published, we were struck by the relative constancy of the information presented in the original edition with regard to the new edition. This tends to underscore the importance of the fundamental principle on which our proposal instruction is based; namely that the fundamental principles that apply to writing a good grant application/proposal are invariant and that, while the actual format and rules of what is required by the various funding agencies might change, the lessons to be learned from the information presented in the workbooks never change. However, this is not to imply that the changes to the new workbook are in any way cosmetic. Since the initial publication, we have matured with the additional number of years of thinking about grant applications and how to prepare them, and this has led to a number of new insights into effective strategies.
All of these and more, are embedded in the new Any Agency workbook. Each chapter, paragraph and sentence has been examined for its relevance and, where appropriate, additions have been made. In many cases, entire new subsections of a chapter have now been included. This has resulted in an increase of some 30 pages to the original edition of the workbook, and it is now 140 pages long. The new version has also increased attention on writing grant applications to nonprofit organizations. If you’re writing an application to the NIH, NSF, or USDA- NIFA, you should continue to focus primarily on the information presented in those specific workbooks; however, if you have a smaller target funding agency or a small national organization, the Any Agency would most likely be the appropriate workbook.
To learn more about the new Any Agency workbook, click the links below to access sample pages from the workbook. To order the Successful Proposals to Any Agency workbook directly, click here.
Successful Proposals for Any Agency Sample Pages
Table of Contents
Before You Begin to Write
Development of the Overview Section
Writing the Body of Your Proposal
Background and Needs Assessment
Development of Abstract