---
name: grants-writer
description: "Grant proposal writing: research grants, innovation grants, government funding, and charitable foundation applications — structure, narrative, budget justification, and evaluation criteria"
---

# Grants Writer Skill

## When to activate
- Writing a research grant proposal (NSF, NIH, UKRI, EU Horizon, etc.)
- Applying for an innovation or startup grant (SBIR, Innovate UK, regional schemes)
- Writing a foundation grant application (charitable, philanthropic)
- Structuring a grant budget and justification narrative
- Reviewing a draft proposal against the funder's evaluation criteria
- Writing a project abstract or executive summary for a grant application

## When NOT to use
- Investor pitch decks — use the pitch-deck skill
- Academic paper writing — use the lit-review skill
- Contract bids or RFP responses — different format and procurement rules
- Fundraising for a non-profit via donations — different audience and strategy

## Instructions

### Research grant structure

```
Write a research grant proposal for [funding body].

Funding body: [NSF / NIH / UKRI / EU Horizon / other]
Grant scheme: [scheme name and call]
Budget: $[X] over [X] years
Discipline: [describe research field]
Research question: [what you want to investigate]
Team: [PI, Co-Is, institution]
Deadline: [date]

Proposal structure (adapt to funder's specific format):

1. PROJECT SUMMARY / ABSTRACT (1 page, often public):
   - Background: why this problem matters
   - Objective: what the research will do
   - Methods: how you will do it (brief)
   - Expected outcomes: what you will produce
   Rule: write this last, after the full proposal is complete

2. INTRODUCTION / SIGNIFICANCE (1-2 pages):
   - The problem: what knowledge gap exists?
   - Why it matters: scientific or societal importance
   - Why now: what makes this the right time to fund this work?
   - Prior work: what has been done, and what's left to do?
   [Cite extensively — demonstrates literature mastery]

3. OBJECTIVES AND AIMS (most important section):
   Format: 3 specific aims, each independent but contributing to the overall goal
   Aim 1: [Test hypothesis / develop method / demonstrate X]
   Aim 2: [...]
   Aim 3: [...]
   Rule: aims should be achievable even if one fails. Reviewers penalise "if Aim 1 fails, Aims 2 and 3 cannot proceed."

4. RESEARCH PLAN / METHODS:
   For each aim:
   - Rationale: why this approach?
   - Methods: exactly how
   - Expected results: what you anticipate finding
   - Potential problems and alternatives: how you'll handle failures
   - Timeline: milestones per quarter

5. INNOVATION:
   [What is genuinely new about this work?]
   [How does it go beyond the current state of the art?]
   [What new tools, methods, or knowledge will it produce?]

6. TEAM AND ENVIRONMENT:
   [PI qualifications — relevant publications and experience]
   [Collaborators and their specific roles]
   [Institution resources that support this project]

7. BROADER IMPACTS (NSF-specific) / PUBLIC ENGAGEMENT (UKRI):
   [Who benefits and how?]
   [Training: how does this fund student/early-career researchers?]
   [Outreach: how will findings reach beyond academia?]

Write the proposal sections for my specific grant and research question.
```

### Innovation / startup grant

```
Write a grant application for [innovation scheme].

Scheme: [SBIR Phase I / Innovate UK Smart Grant / EU EIC Accelerator / regional scheme]
Organisation: [company name, size, stage]
Technology: [describe the innovation]
Problem: [market problem being solved]
Grant amount: [X]
Match funding required: [yes — X% / no]

Innovation grant structure:

1. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY (1 page):
   - The problem and market opportunity
   - Your solution and what makes it novel
   - What the grant will achieve
   - Team overview
   - Grant ask and match funding

2. PROBLEM STATEMENT:
   - Market pain: who has this problem and how severely?
   - Current solutions and their limitations
   - Market size: TAM, SAM (bottom-up, evidence-based)
   - Urgency: why solve this now?

3. SOLUTION AND INNOVATION:
   - What you've built or are building
   - The novel element (technical / business model / process)
   - Why this is hard to replicate (barriers to entry)
   - IP position: patents, trade secrets, data advantages

4. TECHNICAL WORK PLAN:
   Funder wants to know grant money is used for credible R&D, not just marketing.
   Work packages: [WP1: X / WP2: Y / WP3: Z]
   For each: objective, activities, deliverables, timeline, lead person
   
   Technical risks and mitigation:
   | Risk | Likelihood | Impact | Mitigation |
   |---|---|---|---|

5. COMMERCIALISATION AND MARKET:
   - Business model: how will this generate revenue?
   - Go-to-market: first customers, channel strategy
   - Traction: pilots, LOIs, letters of support
   - Financial projections (3 years post-grant)

6. TEAM:
   - Why this team for this problem?
   - Key hires planned with grant funding
   - Advisory board / strategic partners

7. BUDGET:
   - Personnel: [X]
   - Equipment / software: [X]
   - Subcontractors: [X]
   - Overheads: [X%]
   - Total: [X]
   [Every line item justified in narrative]

Write the innovation grant application for my organisation and scheme.
```

### Budget justification

```
Write a grant budget justification for [proposal].

Total budget: $[X]
Budget period: [X years]
Categories: [personnel / equipment / travel / indirect costs / subcontracts]

Budget justification narrative (one paragraph per category):

PERSONNEL:
"[PI name] (20% effort, Year 1-3): [PI] will provide overall scientific direction, lead [specific activities], and ensure timely completion of project milestones. [20% of annual salary + fringe = $X].

[Postdoc name] (100% effort, Year 1-2): [Postdoc] will conduct [specific experiments/analyses] as described in Aims [X]. [Annual salary + fringe = $X]. A second postdoc will be recruited in Year 2 to lead [Aim Y] work. [$X]."

EQUIPMENT:
"[Equipment name] ($X): Required for [specific experimental task described in methods]. The [institution] does not have access to [equipment], and purchase is more cost-effective than rental/core facility use because [reason]."

TRAVEL:
"Domestic travel ($X/year): To present findings at [conference names] and attend project team meetings. International travel ($X): To [conference] in Year 2 to disseminate [specific milestone results]."

INDIRECT COSTS:
"Indirect costs are calculated at [X]% of modified total direct costs (MTDC) per [Institution's] federally negotiated rate agreement dated [date]."

SUBCONTRACTS:
"[Partner institution] will provide [specific services/expertise] not available at [home institution]. Subcontract budget: $X for [X person-months of named PI at partner]."

Write the budget justification for my specific grant categories and amounts.
```

### Reviewer criteria alignment

```
Align my grant proposal to reviewer criteria for [funding scheme].

Funding scheme: [name]
Evaluation criteria: [paste from funder's guidance or describe]
My proposal draft: [paste or describe key elements]

Alignment check:

For each criterion, confirm:
Criterion: [e.g. "Scientific merit and novelty"]
Weight: [X% of overall score]
What reviewers look for: [describe]
My proposal's response: [section + specific language]
Gap: [what's missing or weak]
Improvement: [specific change to make]

Common criteria and how to address them:

SIGNIFICANCE / IMPACT:
- Show the problem is important with data (not opinion)
- Quantify: "X million people affected" / "$Y billion market" / "[Z]% of patients lack effective treatment"
- Explain why solving this matters beyond the research community

INNOVATION:
- Reviewers want to see what's genuinely new, not incremental
- Use: "Unlike existing approaches that [limitation], our method [innovation] because [reason]"
- Avoid: "innovative," "novel," "groundbreaking" without specifics

APPROACH (research grant):
- Every method needs a rationale ("we chose X because Y")
- Every aim needs an alternative strategy ("if approach A fails, we will try B")
- Preliminary data is critical — shows feasibility, not just promise

TEAM:
- Match each team member's expertise to a specific aim
- Highlight track record: publications, previous grants, relevant experience
- For early-career PIs: explain how senior collaborators mitigate risk

Produce: criterion-by-criterion gap analysis + priority improvements.
```

## Example

**User:** I'm applying for an NSF SBIR Phase I grant for an AI-powered drug interaction checker. $275K, 6 months. Help me write the Broader Impacts section.

**Claude's Broader Impacts draft:**

---

**Broader Impacts**

The proposed research addresses a significant and growing public health challenge. Adverse drug events (ADEs) caused by drug interactions affect an estimated 1.3 million Americans annually and account for over $5 billion in avoidable healthcare costs (AHRQ, 2023). Despite this burden, pharmacists and prescribers currently lack real-time, context-aware screening tools capable of evaluating complex polypharmacy scenarios — a gap that our technology is designed to address.

**Healthcare access and equity.** Our AI-powered drug interaction checker is designed for deployment in under-resourced clinical settings, including Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs) and rural pharmacies where specialist consultation is unavailable. By providing guidance previously accessible only in well-resourced academic medical centres, this technology has the potential to reduce health disparities in medication safety across socioeconomic and geographic boundaries.

**Workforce development.** Phase I funding will support one full-time research engineer and one part-time clinical pharmacist collaborator. Both positions will gain cross-disciplinary experience at the intersection of machine learning and clinical pharmacology — skills in high demand as health systems increasingly adopt AI-assisted clinical tools.

**Commercialisation and knowledge transfer.** A successful Phase I will produce a validated prototype and a published accuracy benchmark dataset, made available as open data to the broader research community. This dataset, covering [X] drug pairs across [Y] clinical scenarios, will support future research in pharmacovigilance, drug repurposing, and clinical natural language processing.

**Scientific infrastructure.** The benchmark and evaluation methodology developed in this project will establish a replicable framework for assessing AI performance in clinical pharmacology — an area currently lacking standardised evaluation protocols. This contribution extends beyond our specific application to benefit the broader field of clinical AI validation.

*Approximately 275 words — adjust to fit NSF's page limits.*

---

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