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By Brian Burkhardt, GGC Proposal Writing Consultant

Writing a grant application is like writing nothing else. As academics, we are trained extensively in the art of writing. We are competent and more than capable of articulating our thoughts and ideas as they regard our particular discipline. However, we are not taught to sell our ideas. In fact, you might feel like any hint of trying to sell something in an academic paper is a sign of dishonesty, of trying to pull something over on the reader. For grantwriting, you must forget that idea. Think about when a person comes up with a new product and wants to sell it to a company for production. When they present their product to the company, if there were no hint of trying to sell this product, the company, in this case, would think that something was wrong. They might think that there was something wrong with the product, that it wasn't worthy of production.

The point of all this is that in order to be a successful grantwriter, one must disabuse oneself of the notion that selling equals being dishonest. Now think about how hard it is really to sell something. Not in the sense of getting someone to buy something — a vacuum salesperson can hound you until you give in and buy the thing, but this will not work for a successful grant. The reviewer will see through any attempt to be sold snake oil. Really selling something requires successful rhetorical persuasion. This means that you must convince the person based on beliefs she already has and on new beliefs that you can convince her that she ought to have. Being successful at rhetorical persuasion in the long term requires, among other things, honesty. One must be then truthful and straightforward in presenting oneself and one's ideas in a grant application. However, these truths must be presented in the appropriate way — presented in the appropriate light — so that the reviewer may see their greatness, so that the reviewer may be sold on the person and the ideas.

Here's a helpful trick for getting yourself to present yourself and your ideas in this way: instead of sitting to write your grant proposal, have a friend interview you about it. Think of yourself as on the spot. You must convince this person that your project is the right one to be funded and that you are the right person to do this project, but with the end result that the person will be truly won over and not simply forced or tricked into saying "yes." Doing this and keeping notes on what you say works wonders for gathering selling points for your application.