Grant Seeking in Higher Education

Strategies and Tools for College Faculty

Mary M. Licklider

• Publisher: Jossey-Bass
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781118395127
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education Teaching Methods

Written for anyone in higher education who is responsible for submitting and running a grant-funded project, Grant Seeking in Higher Education offers a hands-on resource for developing and managing the grant process from start to finish.

Step by step, the authors will help you to identify and sort through potential sponsors, tap into campus support that is already in place, and prepare to write a targeted grant proposal that can generate results. Once you have completed the research, the book outlines the keys to writing a winning proposal, including an effective proposal narrative, thorough budget, and readable proposal package. To give grant seekers an extra edge, the book contains a toolkit of tested materials. These proven tools—templates, examples, and cheat sheets—are designed to help you approach your project as a grants professional would.

Grant Seeking in Higher Education also spotlights the need for academic leaders to create a campuswide culture that fosters efficient and effective grant seeking.

Praise for Grant Seeking in Higher Education

"This book realistically provides great advice on proposal development and grants management. Additionally, readers receive a bonus as the authors have included some very helpful tools and templates that have assisted them in their grant endeavors." —Gail Vertz, chief executive officer, Grant Professionals Association

"This book is well researched, especially with regard to issues of collaboration, helpfully organized, and chock-full of practical advice—a must-have for any research development professional's bookcase!" —Holly Falk-Krzesinski, founding president, National Organization of Research Development Professionals (NORDP)

Part One
The How-to Manual

Section One
Diving into Grants Culture

Chapter 1

Grants Culture: The Big Picture

Mary Licklider and Susan Hazelwood

AS WE APPROACHED writing this chapter, our first thoughts were that many readers would be tempted to skip it. “Cut to the chase,” we could hear you thinking. “I just need to get a proposal written and submitted.”

You will not be surprised to read that, as grant writing consultants, we think this focus is way too shortsighted. What you really want to do is the proposed work. So, going backward from the goal of doing the work, you need money and, before that, you need to submit a fundable proposal for the right work. Those modifiers—a fundable proposal for the right work—are where this chapter will help. To be fundable, the proposal needs an implicit but nonetheless critical awareness of its context, and that context includes the sponsor’s, your institution’s, and your own as an individual faculty member.

This chapter will address each of those contexts in turn. We will begin with overviews of the histories of and current trends in federal and private grant making. Then we will encourage you to look at the roles of grant-funded work at your institution and, finally, at how strategic grant seeking can advance your academic career.

Federal Grant Making through the Years

The first federal grants in the United States were land (not cash) given to reward soldiers who fought in the Revolutionary War. Land grants were later used to promote development of railroads and higher education. (A key reason for giving grants of land rather than cash was that the first effort to establish a federal income tax didn’t happen until 1894. It took the passage of the 16th Amendment in 1913 to really establish a system of taxation to fund the federal government.) The point is that, even before there was a steady source of income, this country’s leaders held higher education as a priority on par with recognizing the sacrifices of our veterans. Indeed, the Continental Congress spoke to the importance of education as early as 1787 in the Northwest Ordinance.

Also significant for our purposes here, some of the earliest federal cash grants had to do with the development of new knowledge through the exploration of the Western territories and the establishment of agricultural experiment stations (Morrill Act, 1862). The United States has a long tradition, then, of support for discovery. In fact, the first agricultural experiment stations were supported by state and private sources, beginning with the Connecticut station at Wesleyan University in 1875 (Government Information and Reference Services Unit, 2008). The Hatch Act of 1887 created the national network of stations and institutionalized the tie between these stations and higher education by requiring that the stations be located at land-grant universities.

These very early traditions would probably be labeled as “applied” or “translational” research aimed at “economic development” in today’s jargon. The focus was on support for “agriculture and the Mechanic arts” (Morrill Act, 1862) and on exploration for the eventual development of commerce. Jefferson’s instructions to Meriwether Lewis as he and William Clark set out to explore the Louisiana Territory, for example, were that “The object of your mission is to explore the Missouri river, & such principal stream of it as by it’s [sic] course and communication with the waters of the Pacific ocean whether the Columbia, Oregon, Colorado or any other river may offer the most direct & practicable water communication across this continent for the purposes of commerce” (Gawalt, 1803; emphasis added).

It wasn’t long, though, before the need for accountability arose. Just three years after passage of the Hatch Act, the Morrill Act of 1890 allowed the federal government to withhold funding if previous sums had been misused, and it required annual reports “regarding the condition and progress of each college” (Second Morrill Act, 1890).

In the 10 years between 1929 and 1939, federal grants rose from 3 to 39 percent of federal expenditures (Floersch, n.d.). Whereas the Depression and World War II years saw increases in federal grants for individuals and social services, the late 1950s and early 1960s shifted the focus squarely back to knowledge discovery and technology development. Sputnik, the first human-made object to orbit the Earth, was launched by the Russians in 1957 and led to a subsequent ramp-up in basic science, space exploration, and education funding in the United States.

Increasing funding in these areas and increasing awareness in the 1960s of social and racial inequities in American society proceeded in tandem with increasing concern about research ethics. This concern was initiated in large part as a response to war crimes during World War II. The Nuremberg Code of 1947 was drafted specifically as guidance for judging those who had conducted concentration camp experiments. In 1972, the US press published information about the now-infamous Tuskegee syphilis study, and in 1974, the Belmont Commission was charged with identifying basic ethical principles for biomedical and behavioral research. The Belmont Report, published in 1979, laid out the three principles of respect for persons, beneficence, and justice that continue to guide research with human subjects.

After the mid-19th century, this increasing connection between research funding and accountability seems to have been a less proactive and more reactive response to events such as the poverty of American farmers following the Civil War, the Sputnik launch, and public awareness of research abuses. This reactive stance has continued in more recent years. Protection of human subjects and financial conflicts of interest received increased scrutiny following Jesse Gelsinger’s 1999 death in a gene therapy trial in which the principal investigator (PI) owned significant interest in the therapy, and the PI’s university (his employer) owned stock in a company tied to the therapy (Gelsinger & Shamoo, 2008). Export control laws have received a great deal more attention (attention some would define as reinterpretation) since the 9/11 attacks. Funding for research to prevent or respond to acts of bioterrorism increased following the anthrax attacks in 2001. The wars in the Middle East highlighted again the vulnerability inherent in US dependence upon foreign oil, and funding for energy research has increased. The unresolved abortion debate ripples to make stem cell research controversial. Understanding how national events can affect the levels and targets of grant funding can help you to anticipate federal funding trends.

The United States has a long, rich history of innovation and support for innovation. US citizens want to be the shining city on the hill and see Yankee ingenuity as a vehicle for achieving that goal. At the same time, the United States is a democracy, and its citizens very much consider tax money “our money.” They expect tax expenditures to reflect their values as a nation and as individuals. The US population is richly diverse, and it would be understating the obvious to say that this diversity generates controversy and sometimes-contentious debate as to the priorities for US tax dollars. Recognizing these political forces can also help you write to all of the audiences for your proposals. Proposal abstracts, for example, are often published for funded projects. When you write your abstract, you do well to consider not only the peer reviewer but also the agency staffer testifying on Capitol Hill.

It may be less obvious that these democratic traditions generate at least some of the red tape of government. To be accountable to the citizens who provide the federal grant funding, agencies solicit peer review to get professional advice as to the best value for those dollars; they require specific budget plans and regular reporting on funded activities; they require compliance with ethical standards. All this transparency and accountability does feel like red tape at times, and it helps to understand its democratic purposes and historical sources. But if you are employed at a small institution, this also serves to warn you to be careful what you ask for: if your institution is small or new, it may not have the infrastructure to provide the audits and other compliance functions entailed in managing federal awards. If not, part of your proposal development process will be to engage partners who can provide what your organization lacks.

Private Grant Making through the Years

Americans have tended to take a somewhat schizophrenic approach to giving. Calvinist traditions suggest that, through individual work in a calling, one strives to discover one’s predestined state of grace (Tropman, 1995, ch. 2; Weber, 1956, p. 85). More productive and important work, higher levels of achievement, and reliable, ascetic habits characterize those in a state of grace. Poverty, dependence upon others, and the absence of rational order are indications of a lack of grace, which cannot be restored through human activity (Tropman, 1995; Weber, 1956). Why bother with charitable giving?

On the other hand, Alexis de Tocqueville (1969, p. 513) famously reported on the “voluntary associations” that Americans formed to address practical political and social problems. Today, we support private giving through more than 30 kinds of tax-exempt organizations. Over 1.5 million nonprofits were registered with the IRS as of 2008, reflecting a 10-year growth rate of 31 percent. More than 80 percent of Americans donate to charity each year. Over 25 percent volunteer an average of about 34 hours each year, and collectively, these services are valued at $3.3 billion annually. Don’t underestimate the dollars you might save by using volunteers in your projects. The estimated value of volunteer work in 2010 was $21.36 an hour according to the Independent Sector (n.d.).

An annual report by Giving USA tracks the sources and recipients of private giving. According to the 2011 report, private giving comes from individuals, charitable bequests, foundations, and corporations (Giving USA Foundation, 2011). Contributions in 2010 amounted to $290.89 billion, with 73 percent coming from individuals, 14 percent from foundations, 8 percent from bequests, and 5 percent from corporations (including corporate foundations), which often provide in-kind support through donations of products or employee time rather than cash. Combined charitable giving by individuals, bequests, and family foundations amounted to an estimated $254.1 billion in 2010, or about 87 percent of the total. Family foundations provided 48 percent of all grants made by independent, community, and operating foundations in 2010.

Most individuals and family foundations do not employ staff to handle their private giving. Knowing this will help you understand why phone calls to them may not be returned and e-mails may not be answered. In these cases, you must rely on your own research to become familiar with the foundation’s grant submission guidelines (if they even exist) and where the foundation has historically awarded its dollars. The IRS 990 tax returns that foundations are required to file are public information, and these can be accessed on the websites of the Foundation Center (http://foundationcenter.org/) and other organizations that provide funding information. Read the previous years’ forms for foundations to which you are considering sending proposals. Look for the names of the individuals who served or are serving on the foundation’s board, levels of giving in previous years, organizations and locations that received the money, and changes in the foundation’s total assets from year to year.

Nationally, the table below summarizes the types of recipient organizations that received the $290.89 billion in private contributions in 2010:

TABLE 1 US Giving by Type of Recipient Organization

Source: Giving USA Foundation, 2011.

Percent of Total US Giving	Type of Recipient Organization
35	Religion
14	Education
11	Foundations
9	Human services
8	Health
8	Public-society benefit
5	Arts, culture, and humanities
5	International affairs
2	Environment/animals
2	Individuals
1	Unallocated

Total charitable giving has increased in current dollars in every year since tracking began in 1954 with the exceptions of 1987, 2008 (which had a massive decline of 7 percent), and 2009. An inflation-adjusted increase of 2.1 percent in 2010 follows the trend of postrecessionary increases seen in the past. Giving USA predicts “a promising future for charitable giving in the coming years. … [H]owever, the slow recovery of the economy will certainly impact just how quickly charitable giving will rise to pre-recession levels” (Giving USA Foundation, 2011).

Monitoring reports such as the one produced annually by Giving USA will help you better understand the current state of affairs with regard to charitable giving and whether the private sector is a likely source for your project at any given time.

The Roles of Grant-Funded Projects in Academia

External funding can support any of higher education’s missions of education, research, outreach, and economic development. The catch is that no grant award ever fully pays the cost of a project. To understand why this is the case, you have to understand how overhead costs are covered in grant awards.

Indirect, overhead, facilities, and administration—these costs are labeled differently across time and across disciplines, and all refer to the same thing. In recent years, most federal agencies have been using facilities and administrative costs (F&A) as the label of choice to refer to those expenses that are difficult to ascribe to a particular project but are nonetheless required for that project. A grant-funded project typically takes place in a building, for example, but does not use the whole building. It would be exceedingly time-consuming and expensive to calculate how much of the building’s depreciation, maintenance, janitorial service, utilities, and grounds keeping should be apportioned to each project that takes place in that building. Similarly, the institution’s libraries are available to all institutional personnel, and calculating a percentage of the library costs for each person and project is not practical.

Instead, the federal government allows institutions to negotiate a flat rate for these facilities and administrative expenses. That rate is then applied to all projects. As the name “facilities and administration” implies, calculating the F&A rate entails an extensive audit of all the institution’s expenses for administration and facilities.

The administrative portion of the rate is currently capped by the government at 26 percent. This typically includes such functions as enrollment, admissions, business services, human resources, libraries, procurement, and financial management. The costs of research compliance activities—institutional review boards (IRBs) for human subjects re...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Series page
• FREE Premium Content
• List of Figures, Tables, and Boxes
• Foreword
• Preface: What’s in a Name?
• Acknowledgments
• About the Authors
• Part One: The How-to Manual
• Part Two: Grant-Seeking Toolkit
• Afterword: Summing It Up
• Appendix: Building a Grants Culture: A Word to Campus Leaders
• References
• Index