Grant Sprint

A highly efficient and effective two-day process to develop and critique research proposals.

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Tool

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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.