Write a grant proposal aimed at receiving funding for a programme that you expect to run in anarea (village) of a developing country of your choice. Set the content of your programme on anidea that is in line with one of the Millennium Development Goals. Demonstrate that you have athorough insight into the nature of the problem that you wish to investigate with yourprogramme, that you have a clear understanding of which analysis you wish to carry out (andwhy), and what results you expect. How will the research address a policy need, and what kindof policy lesson is expected? Discuss carefully the methods and data that you wish to employ.
Identify clearly the outcome(s) of your study.
These general considerations spell out in the following bits of advice:
Put yourself in the right mindset. Assume that you want to convince the reviewers of a potentialgrant giving agency to invest money into your project. This boils down to three requirements:
- Convince the reviewers that you are qualified to carry out the project. In real-life grantproposals, this qualification is demonstrate
_ by your previous work in that field (not relevant for the guided researchproposal),
_ by a lucid motivation and explanation of the project problem (if you can explainthings well it is clear that you have understood them), demonstratingmastership of relevant terminology
_ by choosing the right references (one of the first things an experienced reviewerdoes is to check the list of references to see whether the author has a goodjudgement of what is important and en vogue in the field).
- Convince the reviewers that the problem is interesting. In real-life projects, this canmean "academically and intellectually interesting", or "promising economically relevantapplications" - best is if both can be demonstrated.
- Assemble your proposal from the following essential sections:
- An executive summary (target size: 15-20 lines) Consider this a separate document,although it is submitted together with the rest. The executive summary aims at anotheraudience than the rest of the proposal. It is directed at the final decision maker, whotypically is not an expert at all in your field, but more a manager kind of person. Thus, donot go into any technical description in the executive summary, but use catch-words andbold statements (which should however be ultimately defendable) that highlight theimportance of your project.
- Summary description of project (target size: 1/2 to 1 page). This, like the rest, addressesfellow experts from your field (but not from your particular topic of research). Here youshould technically connect to the main concepts from that field and give an outline ofyour project, stating the research/engineering question that you want to get answeredby your project.
- Statement and motivation of research question (target size: 1 page). This part shouldmake clear which question, exactly, you are pursuing, and why your project isrelevant/interesting. This is the place to cite relevant literature. Where does yourproject extend the state of the art? what weaknesses in known approaches to you hopeto overcome? If you have carried out preliminary experiments, describe them here.
- Planned experiments / investigations (target size: 1 - 2 pages). This is the technical coreof the proposal. Here you lay out your plans of how you want to answer your researchquestion specify your design of experiments or simulations, point out difficulties thatyou expect to encounter, etc. Define milestones and sketch a time plan.
- Specify expected results and evaluation criteria to measure the success of your proposal(target size: 1/2 page).
- List of references.