The Kind of Clients I Work With
I help researchers, technology companies, colleges, universites, medical schools, and hospitals who want grants and contracts. They face extreme competition and need to make their proposals maximally persuasive.
Grant Clients
Clients interested in grants usually want money for:
- research conducted by individuals or groups
- science-related training, purchasing instruments, or constructing laboratories
- healthcare support, such as grants to hospitals
RFP Contract Proposal Clients
Clients interested in contracts are usually preparing RFP contract proposals to federal science and healthcare agencies such as NIH, FDA, VA, CDC, NSF, NIST, and others.
Clients work with me for several reasons, including:
- They want an every possible advantage against the competition. These clients tend to be very experienced with proposals and know that winning is often decided at the margin. If there’s something they can do to make their proposal even a little more persuasive, they’re interested.
- They struggle for words to do themselves justice. These clients know they have something great to offer, but writing is not their strength. I help them clarify why their work is important to the funding agency’s needs and place their argument where reviewers will find it easy to notice.
- They’re newcomers to grants and proposals. Either they’re newcomers generally, or new to some particular grant or contract competition. They work with me because they need guidance in preparing their proposal.
- They’re short-handed. These clients are short-staffed as they prepare the proposal or short on time until deadline. They need extra help fast.
- They have to repair a grant proposal for one last try. These clients came close to winning on their last attempt and have to pull out all the stops in their final effort.
- They need help coordinating a group effort. These clients are working as a group and need help creating a proposal that assembles separate sections into a cohesive whole and gives it a single voice.
- They need help finding grants and contracts they’re eligible to apply for. They’ve tried the do-it-yourself approach to finding funding opportunities through grants.gov and aren’t satisfied with their results. They want a thorough search for what’s available.
You will be most successful working with me if:
- You will have time to discuss your proposal in depth and revise. Most of your competitors will put off writing their proposals until the last minute. If you will start early and give yourself enough time to write your proposal right, I’ll be much more effective in helping you and you’ll have much greater odds to win. But if your schedule is so busy you’ll have no time to do your part in making your proposal as persuasive as possible, it’s unlikely you’ll get the result you want.
- You are open to feedback about your proposal. For me not to tell you what’s wrong with your proposal is to deprive you of a chance to fix it before it’s too late. So if I believe your proposal cannot win without major repairs I will tell you. I will also advise you to delay submitting your proposal until some other time if I believe that will give you a better chance to win. I wish there was some other way, but in my view honest feedback is what you’re paying for, even if you may not always like it.
- Your proposal is strongly aligned to the funding agency’s mission. The more your proposal fits what the agency wants, the better your chance to win. But trying to fit your round peg into the agency’s square hole will only end in disappointment.
- If you are a group working on a proposal, you have a group committment to success. If your group is preparing a proposal only because management ordered it—and especially if some members resist contributing—you face long odds against success. At least one person in the group must intensely want to win and have the power to hold the others accountable for contributing. Otherwise your group has lost already.
Now that you know the kind of clients I work with best, learn more about How I Work.