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The Research Funding Toolkit
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The Research Funding Toolkit
How to Plan and Write Successful Grant Applications


June 2012 | 224 pages | SAGE Publications Ltd
Making high-quality grant applications is easier when you know how research funding agencies work and how your proposal is used in the decision-making process. The Research Funding Toolkit provides this knowledge and offers a range of practical techniques to help you succeed in tough research funding competitions.

A complex set of factors determine whether research projects win grants. This Handbook helps you navigate these issues and identify your personal challenges to research grant success. The guidance also extends to the real-world challenges of grant-writing such as:
  • Obtaining the right feedback
  • Dealing effectively with your employer and partner institutions
  • Making multiple applications as efficiently as possible
There are many sources that will tell you what a fundable research grant application looks like. Very few offer a step-by-step guide to writing one. The Toolkit fills this gap with detailed advice on creating applications that are easy to read, easy to understand and convincing.

 
Introduction
 
How to Be a Fundable Researcher
 
How to Find Funding
 
How to Get Good Advice
 
How to Plan Your Applications
 
How Funding Agencies Make Decisions
 
How to Get the Best from Your Employer
 
How to Say What Needs to Be Said in the Case for Support
 
How to Exploit the Application Template
 
How to Convince Decision-Makers: Arguments and Evidence
 
How to Write for Funding Agencies: Language and Style
 
How to Test Your Draft Applications
 
How to Assemble Your Budget
 
How to Put Together Collaborative Projects
Appendix 1: How to Run 'Toolkit' Workshops

 
Appendix 2: The Application Template Overview

 
Appendix 3: The Funded Applications: More Information

 

This comprehensive book tackles one of the main issues an academic faces today - how to secure funding for research. With Research Council success rates falling and funding in general becoming more competitive this is a book postgraduate students, researchers and the professionals supporting them cannot do without
Dr Louise Bright
University of Glamorgan


I'd certainly have no hesitation in recommending this book to researchers who want to improve their chances of getting funding, and also to new and to experienced research managers. In particular, academics who don't have regular access to research managers (or similar) and to experienced grant getters and givers at their own institution should consider this book essential reading if they entertain serious ambitions about obtaining research funding.
Adam Golberg
Social Science Research Funding


 

'The authors of The Research Funding Toolkit,  guide the reader through constructing a grant application step by step, and succeed in providing a very useful tool for success in the research world. Although writing an application is often a daunting and dreaded task, this book is neither boring nor uninspiring: every page is clear and enjoyable, and includes a broad range of examples included from across many disciplines. Thirty-six examples are extracted from eight actual funded applications, covering a diverse selection of funding agencies in several countries. This book is a must-have for every researcher, whether junior or senior, and should be required reading for every member of a department. This book will allow readers to organize a workshop with research groups, with easy to follow steps exercises that Aldridge and Derrington suggest. The result will surely be an interesting and much-improved research proposal that will have high chances of obtaining that next grant'

Simone Belli
LSE Review of Books

Sample Materials & Chapters

Chapter One: How to be a fundable researcher


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