Obtaining Grants for Communication Research

By Philip Salem, Southwest Texas State University

[Just prior to NCA's annual meeting in November, Phil Salem, a speech communication professor at Southwest Texas State University, visited Washington, DC during a sabbatical leave. He interviewed a number of grant officers at various Federal agencies, and he reported to me what he had learned. I asked Phil if he would share his impressions with the membership, via Spectra, and what follows is his report. --Bill Eadie]

Over the last three weeks I have been in Washington, D.C., looking for funding for several research projects in my department. The projects are as varied as the members of my department, but they reflect the diversity of interests and methods in communication research. The general topics include classical rhetoric, contemporary rhetoric, interpersonal communication, organizational communication, and communication technology, and the methodologies cover a broad range including quantitative, qualitative, and criticism.

At Southwest Texas State University, the Office of Research and Sponsored Projects tries to keep us informed of the latest grant postings or calls for research that might apply to our department. The office sent us forms to identify our research interests, and those of us who have a specific project have had several meetings with the office staff to help them in their search. Even though I was the chair of the search committee that hired the first director of this office and I am friends or at least on good terms with all the current staff, I still must take special care to explain a given project. They are all getting better at understanding what my department does, but it has been slow.

Before I left Texas, I asked faculty to describe informally either on-going or potential projects that could be funded. A few were in the process of applying for some type of funding while others were not ready for a formal proposal. I left home with a two-page summary of one proposal and notes on other projects.

While in D.C., I met with the directors of programs within larger agencies, the biggest agencies being the Department of Education, the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the National Science Foundation (NSF). Each person seemed happy to see me and complained about limited funds or uncertain funding, but all tried to help me identify a potential source of funds within their program or in a related program. Furthermore, some of them gave me a few tips to strengthen a proposal when we were confident we had identified a specific funding source.

I will return to my faculty with four pieces of information. First, obtaining grants is about labels. You must find a way to code your project in their language. My conversations were about translation and matching words. It was as if the program directors and I were trying to crack each othersí safes, turning symbolic tumblers until something clicked. Although I have had this experience before, doing this for three weeks was a bit like giving the first lecture in an upper division theory class over and over again.

The audiences for your proposal will vary, but the review panels and program directors all have one thing in common: status. This means they all have academic or scholarly qualifications we would all recognize, plus they have done something that brought them acclaim. Most often this refers to graduating from a prestigious university, receiving some prestigious award, or being part of some well known project. In most cases this means your audience employs an old, very old, disciplinary taxonomy that may not include speech or communication as a recognizable formal category.

The NEH has over 30 panels organized around topics; some NCA members have served on those panels, but there are no panels specifically devoted to speech, communication, or rhetoric. The NSF just recently created a separate Directorate for Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences, and one of nearly 20 programs within the Directorate has communication in its title; but there are no programs focused on communication. It is simply that we are a "new" discipline, and things are changing. The NSF did include behavioral science in that new directorate, and there is even a program in cultural anthropology within it.

The good news is that everyone was willing to talk and to try to help. Everyone has been through the translation process, first as grantees, and now as grantors. Furthermore, some of them have met some of us, and some of them have worked with some of us. It is getting easier.

Second, specificity helps the entire process. Bill Eadie and the NCA staff have done a good job of keeping us all informed about grant opportunities, either in these pages or via Internet. Several times Bill has suggested some sources that might help beginning grant writers. One of those sources is On the Art of Writing Proposals from the Social Science Research Council. One of the things it emphasizes is specificity. Pose a clear research question, identify a significant payoff, and describe your methodology. The more specific formal proposals have a greater chance of funding. Even before the formal proposal, the more specific ideas have a better chance of finding a source. The program directors have an easier time matching labels with more specific proposals.

I will advise my faculty to prepare informal two-page proposals to use when discussing projects with our grant office, program directors, or representatives of other funding agencies. At the very least it should contain a clear and direct statement of purpose including a specific research question, an explanation of significance, and a description of methods. The document is a starting point--a specific starting point.

Third, adapt your proposal to the mission of the agency. Every government agency has some specific area of concern, and most often it involves spending money, tax money on some program. Some research programs in the agency may want pure research, but more often they want research that will help some other part of the agency spend money. In the private sector, there are more institutions that will fund pure research, but in a specific area, and similar to the government agencies, several private sources will only fund research that will help spend other money.

The mission of the funding source is important to how you frame your significance argument. In the case of a grant proposal, significance comes from answering two questions: (a) how would the results of my project be useful to communication research, and (b) how would the results be useful to the potential funding institution. Of course, the answer to the first question usually comes before the answer to the second question. However, both answers are important to the funding source. Answering the first question will establish the scholarly credibility of your project, and answering the second question will help connect a worthwhile project to the funds.

Finally, there is money for research, money that can be had for any good project and a project director who is patient and diligent. Obtaining the funds is no different in this respect than publishing your research. Good research will eventually find an audience, and good projects can eventually find money. Just as you might anticipate rejections, rewrites and resubmission, anticipate resubmission and looking for better sources. The process of pursuing funding works best when it becomes habitual.