Grant Sprint

Are you looking for a fresh approach to grant writing with your research team? This two-day grant sprint approach, developed by faculty from the University of Michigan, is an intensive period of 4-hour blocks working with your collaborators that will leave you with an almost complete proposal by the end.  

Collaborating with your research team and collaborators to write a grant proposal can be great for team building and to open constructive discussions to identify the strengths and limitations of your proposal.  

Who is involved?  

A team of approximately 5-10 members, that can include: 

• the Principal Investigator,  
• co-investigators/ collaborators, 
• grant writers, 
• quantitative experts, 
• students/fellows, and
• a facilitator. 

Process Highlights  

The Grant Sprint process is divided into two days: 

• Day 1 focuses on introductions, brainstorming, and gathering relevant research, preliminary data, and study outcomes.
• Day 2 focuses on the writing aspect. Each member of the team is allocated a section of the proposal and everyone on the team works in a synchronous manner to produce the content. Once each section is completed, there is a short debrief and then the sections are rotated around the team. There are at least two rounds of rotations to allow revisions by other members.
• Outcome: At the end of day 2, you should have a final proposal, and next steps for further editing should be established.