Comments on: How to Write About Something You Know Nothing About: It’s Easy, Just Imagine a Can Opener

By: Late March Links: Middle America, Phony Grant Writers, Federal Spending, and More

Mon, 29 Mar 2010 00:30:10 +0000

[...] * “But green jobs have become the ginseng of progressive politics: a sort of broad-spectrum snake oil that cures whatever happens to ail you.” And remember that no one appears to know what precisely a green job is. [...]

By: Lauren Martin

Lauren Martin — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 21:32:01 +0000

I love the idea of handing the researcher/technical-knowledge-holder a paper with the 5 W’s and the H questions. I’ve typically assigned a research faculty member (for instance) a part of the proposal to complete, just to give me an idea of where he/she is headed with the research, but it never works out well–either the writer feels overwhelmed and I get nothing or I get back way too much information that isn’t pertinent to the application. Additionally, the researcher rarely has the understanding of the guidelines that I do, so the 5 W’s and H idea fixes that issue as well. Thanks for the suggestion.

By: Terri Thal

Terri Thal — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 19:24:44 +0000

Yes — I’ve written proposals for firehouse expansion (got specific information from clients– results pending); acquisition of a historic property (provided information the RFP asked for rather than all the fascinating artistic background the client wanted to present–got $500,000); on laser research (information from the person who would lead the research–got $1,000,000); and other stuff I knew little or nothing about. Read or figured out what the funder wanted to know; got and presented correct, lucid information from client or related person; didn’t add frills.

By: Jake Seliger

Jake Seliger — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 15:53:12 +0000

But always remember the “KISS Rule” the usually means: keep it simple stupid,” but there a number of variations. Which is good advice for many endeavors in grant writing, as we discuss in The Goal of Writing Objectives is to Achieve Positive Outcomes (Say What?):

The secret to writing effective goal/objective sections is to use the time-honored KISS method, which is to “keep it simple stupid.” At the risk of going Proustian again, I first heard this term in Air Force basic training and it fits perfectly to this aspect of grant writing (for a nice discussion of the KISS method and the virtues of simplicity in general see a post on Ed Sim’s Blog (BeyondVC). By keeping it simple, I mean try hard to state a minimum number of goals (one simply stated goal is ideal), because a separate set of process and outcome objectives is needed for each goal statement.

By: Bob Lutes

Bob Lutes — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 14:58:14 +0000

Excellent and down-to-earth advice. But always remember the “KISS Rule” the usually means: keep it simple stupid,” but there a number of variations. These are usually based upon the application. I like the word “sweetheart” as a substitute for “stupid.”
This is a great phrase for discussion, in the more mundane!