Student Resources:
It’s in the Approach: Effectively Communicating Your Research and Evaluation Plan to Field a Competitive Proposal
*Names in bold indicate Presenter
Proposals are a constant in the professional landscape. You will write them (all or part), revise them, and/or oversee their construction and submission. Because funding applications have in-creased while funding dollars have remained flat for the past 20 years, competition is stiffer than ever. The national average for federal awards is roughly 12%. That means only 1 out of every 8 ap-plications gets funded. Ironically, creating a non-competitive proposal takes almost as much effort as creating a competitive one.
Understanding how best to approach the process, especially if you are new to the field, will help it be less overwhelming. It will also increase your chances for success. The same is true for research and evaluation plans. As the importance of evidence-based decision policy making increases, so too does the need to concentrate on planning—at the front-end. Policy creates programs, and proposals that promise to generate better evidence will win out over those that do not.
