Deciding which grant to choose for your first submission

0:00 Welcome to the Clinician Researcher podcast, where academic clinicians learn the skills to build their own research program, whether or not they have a mentor. As clinicians, we spend a decade or more as trainees learning to take care of patients. When we finally start our careers, we want to build research programs, but then we find that our years of clinical training did not adequately prepare us to lead our research program. Through no fault of our own, we struggle to find mentors, and when we can't, we quit. However, clinicians hold the keys to the greatest research breakthroughs.

0:40 For this reason, the Clinician Researcher podcast exists to give academic clinicians the tools to build their own research program, whether or not they have a mentor. Now introducing your host, Toyosi Onwuemene. Welcome to today's episode of the Clinician Researcher podcast. It is such a pleasure to be talking with you today. Thank you for listening. I'm Toyosi Onwuemene, and I'm talking to you today about how to decide which grant you're going to submit first. This came up recently, I was leading a session at a table at a meeting where I was giving people tips on how to write grants.

1:24 And so at my table, it's one of the questions that came up. It's like, I'm a fellow, and I'm just starting, and there are all these grant opportunities, and which do I pick? Am I trying to submit a grant first of all to NIH? Am I doing a career development award first? Where do I start? And that's such a great question. And it led me back to when I first started writing grants, and the only criteria I picked for writing the grant was, oh, wow, they're going to pay for me to do my third year of med school, and I won't have to take out a loan for that year. Oh my goodness, of course I'll sign up and write this grant. And so the first grant I wrote was about, I think, a $50,000 plus grant that was going to cover my third year of research.

2:09 I didn't get it, but that was the first grant that I wrote. And I didn't actually really think very carefully about, oh, should I submit this grant first versus this other grant first? I didn't think that carefully. But anyway, it's a great question, and I want to answer it on today's episode. And I'm going to talk to you about five ways to decide which grant to submit first when you've never submitted a grant. And I do want to say that there is never a time in your life where you're too old to submit a grant. So there's not like, well, I've been a clinician for the last 20 years of my life. I've never done research, therefore I can never do it again. And I just want to pause and say, you're a clinician. The fact that you can say that is a testament to the fact that you can do the impossible.

2:53 I don't know many people who can maintain the kind of hours you maintain to succeed through residency or do the kinds of things that you did to be where you are today. So you've clearly shown yourself as a person who can do anything. The moment you have a clear understanding of where you're going, what you're doing, you can do it. I know because the phenotype of a clinician is very, very, very clear. It's a pretty strong phenotype. So there's never a time when it's too late for you because you're good at learning. You're good at learning. You're the kind of person who can apply your knowledge building skills to learn skills really, really quickly. So whenever you want to start submitting grants, you can do that.

3:35 There's never a time when you're too old. There's also never a time when you're too young. The moment you're thinking, should I submit a grant? There you go. You're ready to submit a grant. And the reason it's important to think about it is just because submitting a grant is just getting money, right? In every other area of our life, we fully understand what money can do. Oh, we know what money can do. And grant money is like that. What does the grant money you're applying for help you do? The grant money is just about doing. And yeah, at the end of the day, many people are using grant money as a way to measure effectiveness or a way to promote people or a way to advance people. The real purpose of applying for grant funding is not that people get to celebrate you at the end of it.

4:17 I mean, they will, or at least I hope you celebrate yourself, but just that you're asking for money to do something. And someone says, I align with what you're working on. And you're like, oh, we align. Let's see if you can fund my project. And so grant money is really about helping you accomplish things. And so hopefully you have something you want to accomplish. You're not just like, can I just have money? Can I just have money just to have money? You have a plan for the money. And so how do you decide which grant to submit first when you've never submitted a grant? Number one, pick one. That's my first advice. Don't think too hard. Especially if you've never done this before, don't think too hard. This is not like, oh, what's the perfect first grant?

5:00 I want to just promise you, if you've not been a clinician researcher for too long, if you've not done much in your research role, you're going to be submitting a lot of grants. You just are. And so ultimately, you know, the grand scheme of things, which was the very first grant I submitted, is not as important as just the fact that you just need to get started. And why do you need to get started? Because you know, it's a skill. It's a skill. And like any skill, you've got to build it. And if you've never built the skill before, if you haven't had someone mentor you to build the skill, then it's going to take you time to build it. And it's okay. You're the kind of person who can build skills well. But you're going to have to build the skill.

5:41 So start. Just start. And for many of us who've never done this before, the first grant is not your best grant. And that's okay. It's the way skill building works. You know, you start out, you're not so great, you get better over time. And so most people don't get the first grant that they submit. Most people don't. But it is such a great experience because it teaches you things you don't know. And it helps you grow and build a skill that you haven't had before. And the more you are able to do this thing, the more skill you build over time, especially with effective feedback and applying that feedback over time. So just start somewhere. You start somewhere because starting somewhere allows you to just go on this journey of building this amazing skill of putting your ideas into a cohesive and coherent format, putting it on paper, at least in a document that somebody else can read.

6:34 And then at the end, you assess whether they got your meaning and whether you were able to pass on your vision and your passion effectively enough and in a great format enough that they accepted your proposal and decided to fund your grant. So just start. Don't let analysis paralysis consume you. Just start. Okay. The second thing to do is start with an institutional opportunity. In general, these tend to be the lowest hanging fruit. Just start with something that's already available. Your institution says, we're going to fund researchers to do XYZ, or we have a little pot of money for researchers to do this. Usually when you start where you are, it's the least amount of competition usually.

7:14 And there is just so many more opportunities that are around you. So if you are at an academic medical center where research is prioritized, then there's usually a pot of money and different call for proposals that go out. So you definitely want to take advantage of those and apply for the things that are immediately around you. And now many times people will say, well, apply for the KL2 or apply for the big career development K-12 or some other career development award that's available within the institution. And I would recommend that you do that, especially if you're starting out as early career faculty. But before you do the bigger grant, what are some smaller opportunities that you have opportunity to practice the skill building and take advantage of those opportunities first?

7:55 Or do them simultaneously so you're going for the KL2? Great. But also while you're doing that, what are the other small opportunities you can apply for? OK. Number three is to find a foundation grant. So the thing about foundations, they vary in terms of what they fund, how much they fund, whether they give overhead, which we also call F&A costs. They vary. And what's most important about foundations is that they're very different from the government in the way they think about funding grants. And usually the barrier is not as high. And I say that carefully because actually I would say that there are some foundations that have a very, very, very high barrier for entry.

8:41 And then there are some that don't have as much of a high barrier or maybe are new to the funding space. But what they're really interested in is who is aligning with our priorities? And honestly, at the end of the day, with every grant opportunity that you are applying for, it really is a question of is there alignment between your priority and the funder's priorities? So that does need to be aligned. But foundations in general have a lot more opportunities. And their applications don't usually involve as much compared to, say, like an NIH grant or some of the bigger government agencies as far as grant funding. So maybe start with the foundation grants because in general those tend to be less intense, relatively speaking.

9:24 Some foundations, again, are pretty intense. But for the most part, you can find many foundation grant opportunities where there's not as much intensiveness. Okay. And then number four is find a grant that meets your needs. And to be able to find a grant that meets your needs, you've got to be able to define what those needs are. Like, what do you actually need? What do you need money to do? And sometimes I find people say, well, I'm told I need to submit grants. I'm going to submit grants. And it's interesting when I hear that because it's like, well, you've got to be very clear about what you want the money to do for you because that is the case you have to make in your proposal. And sometimes I have people say, well, I just want to be able to do research without any funding.

10:05 And I say, you can't do research without any funding, but you're probably not going to be able to do very much. And your research may not go very far because, hey, it takes money to do anything. You know that. And if it takes money to do anything in the real world, in the academic world, it's the same thing. And if you want someone to move your research project forward while you're in the clinic seeing patients, then it does cost money for them to do that. And maybe you have access to that and you're not paying for it directly, but somebody is. And what grant money allows you to do is to fund the team that does your work. It does also allow you to fund yourself. And that's something that a lot of clinicians sometimes get upset about. It's like, why do I have to fund myself?

10:46 And I always remind them, like, as long as you have a job, you're figuring out a way to fund yourself because if you could not be profitable as a physician to the system, you may not have a job for very long. And so in general, being able to fund yourself is an important piece of the whole process. So what do you need? Do you need your time funded? You need a team funded? What do you need exactly? The funding agency is also important in the decision because if the funding agency is just giving $50,000, it doesn't matter that you need a million. This is what they're giving out. And so then you tailor your need to the amount of funding available, right? You kind of narrow your scope so that you can fit what you're trying to do. You just take a piece of your project and you narrow your scope to fit within the budget limits.

11:32 OK. And then number five is to work your way up to a bigger grant. In general, especially if you haven't had much by way of research training and by way of like research proposal writing training, you are first of all really using your first few submission opportunities to get good at grant writing. And that doesn't mean you're not going for the grant. Like you're not like writing with the view of like, well, this is good practice. I mean it is, but you should go for it so that your goal is to try to get the grant funded. But do you know that it does take time to figure out the components? When I wrote my first grant, I thought I could pull the all-nighter and get the grant submitted.

12:12 To be honest, if you're going to submit an effective grant, you can't pull it off in 24 hours. Maybe if you've been doing it for a long time, you can finally do it, but it's very hard. And so many times the first grant submission is the wake up call. It's like the what? They need me to get how many signatures? Oh, it's not just my mentor that's going to sign this. Oh. So sometimes there's a sticker shock of, oh, these are all the components that go with a grant submission and now you know. And the next time you're going to have it together before the deadline. And so work your way up over time to a bigger grant. Okay, so I talked about five things. Number one, pick one, don't let analysis paralysis consume you.

12:52 Just start somewhere. Number two, think about institutional opportunities because sometimes these are more widely available and may not have as much competition to say national or international opportunities. Number three, find a foundation grant because many foundations really don't have the same kind of intensive applications as government funding agencies can have. And then number four, find a grant that meets your needs. Make sure that this grant actually has something it can do for you. Be clear about what your needs are. And then number five, work your way up to a bigger grant. Start small, work your way up and definitely work your way up. Don't stay small because you've got a lot of work to do and you've got people who've got to help you come alongside you and do this work.

13:34 So you can start small, but definitely go big. Okay, so those are the five things that I'm recommending in terms of submitting your first grant. If you want more ideas on how to negotiate your academic career, you should think about joining us in Academic Negotiation Academy. More information, visit our website, clinicianresearcherpodcast.com. It's been a pleasure talking with you today. You know one other physician, you know one other clinician who needs to hear this, and I'm inviting you to share this with them. All right, we'll see you again on the next episode. Thanks for listening to this episode of the Clinician Researcher Podcast, where academic clinicians learn the skills to build their own research program, whether or not they have a mentor.

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