Aiming for a center proposal?

ASU's Research Development proposal managers support proposals with $1M annual budget and above almost exclusively. That means our staff have deep experience in facilitating large, team-based efforts. In fact, they have supported over 17 preliminary and full proposals to federal sponsors in the first six months of 2020. We're not shy! We are all about sharing the experience.

Next, a few observations.

Several of these teams worked for over a year (meeting once or twice a month) on developing their center proposal. The contrast is that sometimes, we work with teams that prepare proposals in under 30 days (recently in less than 14 days). Every funding agencies asks for items that are specific to the program, but generally speaking, all of the center proposals were required to identify an overarching research theme, a description of potential research projects, and how the projects (and personnel) would work together as part of the center to achieve the overarching theme.

All of the centers required a principal investigator with years of experience and extensive knowledge on the research theme. All of the proposals explored an emerging aspect of the field, demonstrated the need and the impact, could reference past performance on leading teams (of any size), and they demonstrated a good understanding of the sponsor agency's funding portfolio and priorities.

Then, a couple of logistical considerations.

We, like you, hate meetings. But they are critical to foster a team culture and drive the proposal forward. Even if you meet for 30 minutes every other week, your team knows that the effort is still progressing, you are still invested, and they are still needed.

Meetings are especially important as the technical approach is being solidified. In the early months, brainstorming should be 90% of the meeting. Later meetings need to focus on who does what, when, and why.

Timelines should be developed and distributed widely (include the ORSPA three day allowance to guarantee an on-time submission). Do not vary significantly from the timeline. It will be hard, but as a PI, adherence demonstrates your leadership and the team starts following your lead.

Send drafts out to the team regularly. This helps the team track where others are, creates cohesion and integration in the draft, and solidifies the overall vision of the proposal. The team doesn't have to (and likely won't) read all of the drafts, but simply sending them will help with transparency.

Finally, some recommendations.

Do not be overly worried about cutting people from your team. Generally speaking, team members want to be wanted and will gracefully bow out when their expertise is no longer needed. It is preferable to identify team members and explore interactions early and often. You don't want to find yourself in the position of needing a particular technical insight and not have the person teed up. Do not shoehorn people into the research plan for any reason. This includes leaders of education, broader impacts, and diversity programs. Add enough people to be successful, but not so many to dilute funds and compromise management.

Do consider your center's objectives over different scales. From the post doctoral researcher to the senior faculty member, what do they want and need professionally to be successful? What is the objective of a single experiment as it relates to the overall center objectives? This alignment from the smallest to largest objectives helps streamline your approach and integration (next recommendation) of the center's activities.

Spend all of your time integrating people, concepts, and research programs. All parts of your proposal should reinforce this integration and synergy of efforts. If you have multiple institutions, they must have purposeful interaction points (e.g., samples, techniques, facilities, people) that you can point to in the proposal. It is worth your time and effort if you can relate these interactions in a graphic. If you can repeat that graphic across sections, even better.

If you are a principal investigator, you are the leader. You must ask for input, prioritize that input, and steer the proposal. Be aware of your leadership style and seek to balance that with the team you bring together. You should consistently remind yourself of your vision in order to pull yourself up out of the weeds of research and people management. Do not sweat the small stuff.

Always celebrate and recognize your team (all the way down to the staff that helped). You want them to work with you again. And again. And again.

Do you have a center level idea and/or a funding program? Reach out to ResearchDevelopment@asu.edu and ask to meet with us to discuss your idea.