Chapter 12: Getting Grants

Grant proposals are documents written to solicit financial support for an ongoing or new research or teaching project. Fellowships are probably the first type of grant application that academic professionals learn. From my own experience, I remember filling out forms for a Finnish government fellowship to study English philology at the University of Helsinki. The forms were straightforward and included filling out matriculation examination scores and results from the university entrance examination. A couple of years later, I applied for a Philanthropic Educational Organization International Peace Scholarship to study for a year in the United States. This particular application was more complex; it included a personal essay and a recommendation from a major professor. Writing the personal essay was difficult. I had little practice in writing English in general, and persuasive writing in particular. I turned for help to a fellow dormitory dweller, David Zubin, a Fulbright scholar from the United States, who, with his wife Kate, tutored me in the writing of a successful personal essay to the U.S. grant source of the International Peace Fellowship. In retrospect, this experience taught me an important component of successful grant writing: the need to match your skills and wishes to the expectations of the donor.