Writing a Grant

I realize I'm not the most consistent blogger in the world, but you might have been wondering where I've been of late. Well, I'll tell you. I've been writing a grant. And I realized late yesterday how much writing a grant is like giving birth to a baby.

Many of you are aware the department for which I work at West Virginia University writes a lot of grants, but I'm not sure how many of you know it is 100% externally funded. That's right. Completely and wholly funded by grants and contracts. Some of them are 5-year grants. Some are 3-year grants. And others are year-to-year contracts. It's not a particularly stable way to have a career, but I've managed 33 years doing it so far.

There are actually a couple of different types of grant applications. In one, the government tells you what work they want done and you have to explain how you're going to do that work. But in the kind I was just working on, the government allows you to come up with ideas for projects you think they should fund. They call these field initiated projects because the concepts come from people in the field all over the country. This year, they'll fund 20 such projects out of what will likely be at least a thousand applications.

Writing a grant starts off when the seed of an idea makes its way through all the environmental barriers of reports that have to be written and quilts half done and on-line games and plants itself into your brain. At first, you don't really notice too much that the process has begun. But as you consider the idea a bit more, additional brain cells are taken over by it. The funding agency gives you the framework around which your grant application must be provided, and you begin to see in your mind's eye the information you want to include in each section.

As of yet, nothing is put down, either on paper or electronically. But that now begins to happen. New ideas for the project begin to emerge almost like arms and legs. More and more of your brain is now committed to this effort. A new paragraph comes to you while you are sleeping and you must get it down before it slips away. A conversation with a colleague gives you that essential piece of information you must include.

Oftentimes, the grant writing process is a tortorous one. You aren't particularly thrilled by the project to be done, but the area is within your department's expertise. So you write the thing, send it in, and hopefully get it. But every great once in awhile, especially when the project you're writing is one of your own ideas, you become really invested in the writing. You pour your heart and soul into the work. You want the reviewers to understand how important and meaningful you think this project will be. And so it was with this one. A project to design and build a mobile app that will allow anyone to conduct a competent evaluation of a facility's accessibility using the latest government standards. Cool, huh?

Now you reach a point of no return. You've put so much time and effort into it, that you can't turn back. As the deadline for submissions nears, you work harder and harder until you reach a fevered pitch. You must get the application completed. You've got to have it all done in time. To accomplish this, you give up your evenings, your weekends, even holidays if you must. Family and friends are virtually ignored. And certainly, minor things such as blogs go undone. As you reach the final week, this thing consumes you completely. Dishes lie in the sink for 3 days. Your dogs look at you, begging for just a short break to go outside to play and they sleep quietly at your side while you work into the wee small hours of the night.

When you've done this sort of work for as long as I have, you come to realize how important it is to provide the proper fuel to see you through. And what would that be, you ask? Are visions of lean meats and loads of fruits and vegetables dancing in your heads? Maybe those tiny little 5-hour energy drinks? Not even close! The only thing that can possibly get you through such times of stress is C-H-O-C-O-L-A-T-E. Massive quantities of it. Milk, dark, semi-sweet, bitter, 60% cacao, 75% cacao, even 80% cacao all have their place in helping you through the writing blocks and the endless forms that must be completed.

This particular grant was formed out of a 1lb box of Holl's chocolates (OMG, what a thing of beauty that was!) and a Boston creme pie. Couple all of this with the fact that your butt doesn't leave your chair for about 6 weeks and you've got a recipe for weight gain that would make a sumo wrestler jealous. Yep, this particular "baby" put 6 lbs on my back side.

Yesterday afternoon, I gave birth to a lovely kicking and screaming grant proposal package. The labor pains were horrible. I spent 2 1/2 hours preparing the online form required by our Office of Sponsored Programs. Not because there was that much stuff to put in or because I didn't know what I was doing. No, it took that long because their system wasn't working correctly and was taking a minimum of 10 minutes for each new page to load. And after all that time and I pushed the submit button? The system whirled around for about 20 minutes and then popped up a "Cannot Display Web Page" message. Oh crap! This meant redoing all the government forms, copying everything onto a CD, and driving it over to their office.

But its done. Its out of my hands. Ohh, they might come back with a few requested changes. But its breathing on its own now. But you don't get to raise your grant baby. No, you have to immediately give it up for adoption by the funding agency. Maybe, if you're very, very lucky, it will be amongst the chosen ones. You'll receive a notification that your project has been funded. And the work will begin in earnest to raise this child you've created.

So until that glorious day, little one, God bless. Maybe we'll meet again when you're a little older. But if not, know that you were well loved while you were with me.

LOL!