Dusting Off the Classics: Hot Tips for Recycling Grant Proposals

One of the best ways to speed up the grant writing process is to have readily available templates based on earlier, successful grant applications. Frankly, even copies of previous losing grant applications are immensely helpful whenever you sit down to write a new grant. 

The challenge is that the grant reviewers can often tell that you are simply recycling a previous grant rather than preparing a new, fresh, cohesive application for their benefit. 

Despite this difficulty, I have had a lot of success in recycling earlier grant applications into successful contemporary grants. Part of the reason is that I implement some key changes that insure the revised proposal still looks fresh and relevant. 

First, I am very careful about updating all of the dates in the document related to program goals and objectives. Leaving in a prior date is a powerful signal to the funder that you are simply recycling an old version of a previous grant.

Second, I make sure to update the research used to support the grant application so that the footnotes indicate that we are using the most recent articles in the field. These articles may still have the same information as the earlier articles, but they look sharper with a more recent publication date. 

Third, if I do add some new information to the existing grant, I make sure to balance that additional information out by referring to this new information in three or four other locations in the grant application. This makes for a more consistent application. It also creates the impression that you have thoughtfully revised the proposal rather than simply recycled an existing one. 

Finally, I am also careful to revise the grant so that it reflects a single voice. We all have slightly different, habitual writing styles. The reviewers can often tell that a grant has been recycled simply by noticing the abrupt changes in writing style that sometimes appear in a grant application. My favored technique is to rewrite each line of a previous grant so that it reflects my voice and not the style of the previous grant writer.