--- name: grant-proposal-craft description: "Use when drafting or critiquing the body of a research grant proposal of any funder — the reviewer's four scoring dimensions, the title-written-last discipline, the abstract-as-trailer and lay summary, SMART objectives, anticipated pitfalls, Gantt deliverables, and a realistic budget. Works on the proposal content regardless of agency or country." license: MIT --- # Grant Proposal Craft How a proposal actually gets scored, and how to write to the scorer. Grounded in a 2026 workshop for Indian researchers, but the mechanics are funder-neutral — the same discipline applies to NIH, NSF, ERC, DST, or a foundation. A proposal is a sales document and a methodological argument at the same time. The reviewer's job is to form an opinion fast; every section should lower the cost of that opinion in your favor. ## Hard rules 1. **No fabricated citations.** Every cited precedent must resolve to a verifiable record (DOI, PMID, arXiv ID, ISBN, URL with retrieval date). A gap in the literature that is a claim, not a verified absence, must be phrased as "as of this review" and the search logged. 2. **No claim without provenance.** Every quantitative claim — a budget line, a projected n, a timeline date, an acceptance figure — must point to a table, the OIM/circular, or a dataset the agent can show. "Trust me" is not provenance. 3. **No silent failure.** Every tool or lookup used to build a section (a literature search, an agency OIM read, a budget calculation) must report what happened on non-zero. A "we found no precedent" that came from a failed query is a false gap; say so. 4. **Title last.** The title is written after the body, when the point is settled. It must be clear, informative, and interesting without heavy jargon. 5. **Concrete beats plausible.** Every objective, method, and expected outcome is specific enough that a skeptic can test it. Vague aims are the most common reason a strong idea reads weak. ## When to use - You are drafting the body of a research grant proposal and need the structure a reviewer actually scores (any funder). - You are critiquing a draft and want a dimension-by-dimension pass (novelty / usefulness / methodology / who) with the specific gaps named. - You need the lay-summary / abstract / title discipline, or a pitfall and budget realism check before submission. ## The four scoring dimensions Most structured reviews (and every workshop rubric) score four independent axes. Write to all four; a proposal that nails novelty but ignores *who* loses to one that is merely competent across the board. 1. **Novelty** — is there something new? A funder wants to fund a gap, not a rerun. Frame the gap concretely, and if the closest prior work is nearly identical, do not apply — reframe or pick another scheme. 2. **Usefulness / relevance** — what does it buy the field or society? Stated plainly, in terms the reviewer's discipline values. 3. **Methodology** — is the plan doable? Methods are specific, and each anticipated failure has a named contingency (a "pitfall plan"). 4. **Who (PI fit)** — is this the person to do it? A track record + a genuine reason this PI, not the next equivalent one, is the right owner. The why/how/who spine: **why** now (the gap + its value), **how** (methods + pitfalls), **who** (the PI's fit). A good proposal answers all three before the reviewer asks. ## Writing the sections - **Title** — last. Clear + informative + interesting, no jargon. Test: can a smart non-specialist tell what the project is from the title? - **Abstract / synopsis** — the movie trailer, not the credits. It must make the *point* land in the first two minutes: gap → what you'll do → why it matters. Lead with the point, not the background. - **Lay summary** — "the parent test": write it so a parent with no training in the field understands the problem and why it's worth doing. Zero jargon, no acronyms unexplained. - **Project description** — objectives first, then rationale, primary data, methods, expected outcome. - Objectives: **SMART** — specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, time-boxed. Each maps to a deliverable. - Rationale: the concrete gap (sourced), not a survey of the field. - Methods: the specific approach, and — the signature of a strong proposal — the anticipated pitfalls and the named remedy for each. - **Anticipated pitfalls** — write them yourself, before the reviewer does. "If X fails, we fall back to Y because Z." A proactively managed risk reads as confidence, not as doubt. - **Deliverables & timeline** — a Gantt chart or table aligning each objective to a date and a concrete output (a dataset, a model, a paper, a pilot). Objectives without dated deliverables are not fundable. - **Budget** — split non-recurring vs recurring; stay inside the agency's OIM / circular caps on personnel, overhead, and contingency. Realism is scored — an inflated or infeasible budget flags the whole proposal. - **Supporting documents** — letters of support, an AI/plagiarism declaration where required, resource list, CV, and a publication list. Assemble early; they gate the submission. ## Specificity discipline The single most common mistake, per the workshop: a **vague aim + vague method + vague outcome** makes an excellent-sounding project look unfundable. For every claim ask "specific enough to test?" and answer in one clause. > Propose a **better approach**, not an "alternative." Positioning your work as > "we also did X" is a claim of mere addition; positioning it as "the existing > method breaks in case C, and here is why our approach is the right fix" is a > claim of necessity. Funders fund necessity. ## Pitfalls - **Writing the title first** and dragging the whole proposal into jargon. - **A background-lead abstract** that buries the point — the reviewer's first two minutes are the whole first impression. - **Survey-style rationale** ("X is important, Y is important...") with no concrete gap. - **No pitfall plan** — the reviewer finds the risks for you and docks the methodology score. - **Deliverables without dates**, or objectives that no deliverable maps to. - **A budget that ignores the OIM caps**, or that is not internally feasible. - **"We also did X"** positioning instead of the better-approach framing. ## Validation - Title appears last in your edit history and passes the "smart non-specialist" test. - Abstract's first two minutes carry the point; lay summary passes the "parent test." - Every objective is SMART and maps to a dated deliverable in the Gantt. - Every anticipated failure has a named contingency. - Budget sits inside the agency's OIM/circular caps, split recurring vs non-recurring, with each line traceable. ## References - Workshop source: local transcript `grant_talk.txt` (IISc grant manager, 2026) — four dimensions, why/how/who, title-last, abstract-as-trailer, lay summary, SMART objectives, pitfall planning, Gantt deliverables, budget realism, "better approach not alternative," ISTIP/IndiaBioscience discovery. - SMART objectives: - Gantt timeline discipline: standard project-management practice. ## Cross-references - indian-grant-ecosystem — pick the scheme and read the landscape before drafting. - grant-review — the reviewer's view of these same four dimensions. - specific-aims — when the target is a US NIH-style specific-aims page. - nih-r01 — the full R01 mechanics (foreign-scheme target). (For the final provenance + citation pass before submission, run the `meta/integrity-audit` skill. Content skills in this repo do not cross-reference `meta/` slugs as bullets, so it is referenced in prose here rather than as a `- meta/...` entry.) ## Changelog - **1.0.0** (2026-06-18) — Initial release. Funder-neutral proposal craft: the four scoring dimensions (novelty / usefulness / methodology / who), the why/how/who spine, title-last, abstract-as-trailer, lay-summary "parent test," SMART objectives, anticipated-pitfall planning, Gantt deliverables, realistic budgeting, and the "better approach, not alternative" framing, distilled from the 2026 workshop.