ASTR 8500 (O'Connell, February 2024)

TIPS ON WRITING PROPOSALS IN ASTRONOMY

Most resources (money, observing time, and computing facilities) in astronomy are competitively awarded. This means that all astronomers must become adept at writing proposals to secure those resources.

The current national budget to support research in astronomy is over $400K per astronomer per year (see this table), which sounds more than ample. But individual investigators can acquire direct control over only a small portion of that amount in the form of grants. Most of the national budget goes to support the design, implementation, and operation of a set of large, shared facilities (e.g. the Keck telescopes, ALMA, HST, JWST), and access to these is awarded almost exclusively through a competitive proposal process.

Most of the following tips apply to all kinds of proposal writing, but they are specifically aimed toward university personnel proposing to obtain research grants from federal agencies or access to major national facilities (telescopes, computers).

Probabilities

Success rates for proposals in astronomy currently are generally small: rarely better than 30% and in the more competitive cases, only about 10%.

For NSF research grants, success rates are currently in the ~20% range. The JWST Cycle 1 proposal opportunity was oversubscribed (ratio of requested observing time to available time) by a factor of 4:1, but for Cycle 3 the factor was 9:1, a record for astronomical facilities.

Since a success rate more in the range of 30-50% would be much more healthy for the field, this is not a good situation and has gotten worse over the last 30 years. It is a consequence of the large number of people who have been attracted to astronomy over that time coupled with small inflation-adjusted growth in the federal budget for astronomy.

For intra-department observing proposals for time on our guaranteed-access facilities, the success rate is typically 80%.

Effort

Writing a good proposal is time consuming, and (obviously) the effort increases in proportion to the scale of the project involved. Some rules of thumb:

NOIRlab or NRAO/JVLA observing proposals (2 opportunities per year) might require 2-4 person-days.
Moderate-scale HST (say 25 orbits), JWST (20 hours), or NRAO/ALMA observing proposals (1 opportunity per year) might require 6-10 person-days.
Large-scale personal research grant from NSF (>$200K; 1 opportunity per year): 10-20 person-days.
Large-scale projects (e.g. NASA spacecraft), with budgets up to hundreds of $M, require over a hundred person-days of effort, usually involving private contractors. Simply organizing such proposals is a major undertaking in its own right, and institutions must commit significant funds just to mount a proposal effort. Most such proposals will fail, of course.

A survey of effort versus success was published by Ted and Courtney von Hippel (2015), who found that the average research grant proposal takes 116 PI hours and 55 Co-I hours to write and that the primary predictor of success is having had previous success.

Advance planning

TIMING: "Unsolicited" proposals can be submitted at any time, but the vast majority of proposal opportunities are "solicited." That is, a "Request for Proposals" (RFP) or an "Announcement of Opportunity" (AO) is circulated, and there is a specific submission date after which proposals will not be accepted. Major programs operate on a fairly predictable cycle, typically with 1-2 opportunities per year.
ALLOCATION DELAYS: For most ground-based facilities, observing time is awarded starting about 3 months after the proposal deadline. For space missions, the delay might be 6-18 months. NSF and NASA budget flows cannot be counted on for at least 6 months after the proposal deadline and possibly significantly longer.
CO-INVESTIGATORS: Almost all contemporary projects involve a team: anywhere from 3 to 100+ people. You must organize your team before you start to write the proposal. Team meetings with members outside your institution are normally held by teleconference.
LETTERS OF INTENT: some programs expect you to submit a Letter of Intent several months before the proposal is due. This is simply a statement that you, and your listed Co-I's, intend to submit a proposal. The LOI normally carries no legal obligation. It is mainly used by the agencies to assemble panels of independent reviewers well ahead of the proposal deadlines.
ELECTRONIC SUBMISSION AND INFORMATION SYSTEMS: Most opportunities now require electronic submission of proposals through special systems such as NSPIRES (NASA) or Research.gov (NSF). It's very important to become familiar with the idiosyncracies of these well in advance of deadlines and to make trial submissions, assuming this is allowed.
BOILERPLATE: A burden. Apart from the stuff that matters, you must normally provide brief CV's of all investigators, lists of previous successful proposals and resulting publications, a statement of existing grant support, investigator addresses, a list of cognizant university officials, your institution ID numbers, and so forth. Less reasonable demands can include lists of all your recent collaborators(!), drug-free certifications, data management plans, outreach plans, and more. Most of this material has little to no effect on the actual evaluation of the proposal, but it can't be ignored; and the problem is getting worse. A major time-sink: beware!
BUDGET PREPARATION DETAILS: Preparation is significantly more complicated if a budget is involved. If that's the case, your first step should be to acquire a good grasp of the details of your institution's policies on budgets: salaries, benefits, travel, F&A costs, restrictions on purchases, etc. There can be a steep learning curve here. On your first attempt, it is strongly recommended that you ask colleagues to see examples of budgets on successful proposals of similar scale from your institution.

Budgets

AVAILABILITY: Not all opportunities involve funding. Awards of observing time on most ground-based facilities (supported mainly by NSF) do not carry associated funding awards, even for travel to the observatories. This is true for most NOIRlab and NRAO facilities. In order to obtain research funds to support work at those observatories, you must make a separate scientific program proposal to NSF. This is a bad system and has an unpleasant "double jeopardy" character.
By contrast, observing time on most NASA facilities does carry associated research funding.
PRIORITY: In most cases, budgets are of secondary importance in the success of a proposal. The scientific justification is normally much more important. Exceptions include the case of a very ambitious program where the budget is a key feasibility criterion.
ESTIMATING: Nonetheless, the budget is of primary importance in actually doing the research. You should ask for what you need. Don't skimp to impress an agency (because you won't) and don't assume your department will pick up any slack (because it won't, unless you have negotiated shared support in advance). Be sure that what you ask for is reasonable and well justified. A list of typical budget items is given below.
GOOD SENSE: In cases where budget guidelines have been set in advance by the agency, you clearly have to abide by these and adjust the amount of work planned accordingly. It is foolish to submit a proposal that seriously violates a funding limit or time scale which is explicitly stated in the RFP.
UNIVERSITY APPROVAL: Any submitted budget requires approval by your university. This takes time, and for inexperienced proposal writers it may require iteration. Allow at least an additional week for this. Normally, but not always, you can continue spiffing up the science justification while the budget is processed, as long as there are no changes to the budget requirements.
CO-I SUPPORT: Primary funding for a successful project will usually flow through the PI's institution. External Co-I support may be passed through the PI institution, or it may be sent directly from the sponsor to Co-I institutions after separate sub-budgets are submitted by them. In many cases, the PI is expected to submit a consolidated funding proposal including all the details of Co-I support.
TWO-PHASE PROPOSALS: Because of the hassle involved in preparing budgets and the low probability of success, it is (thankfully) more common now for agencies (e.g. STScI) to break the proposal process into two parts and to request budget submissions only from successful proposers. NASA missions may also separate the requirement for detailed targeting information and observing sequences into a "Phase II" submission. To minimize pain, some programs use a simple, non-negotiable funding allocation, based, for instance, on the number of observing hours you are awarded.
F&A WARNING: Your institution will charge "facilities and administration" (F&A) costs to cover its general support expenditures on all external grants. (These used to be called "overhead" or "indirect" costs and can cover a broad array of items including office and lab space, utilities, support staff, Internet services, central administrative services, and so forth. They are re-negotiated by universities with government agencies on a regular basis.) F&A costs are charged as a specific fraction of the "direct" costs of a proposal and must be explicitly included (by you) as part of your budget. Since the total amount of grant funds available in an agency is capped, F&A charges effectively reduce the amount of money that can be used for actual research and over which you will have direct control.
TYPICAL BUDGET ITEMS: Agency and institutional expectations regarding budget formatting vary widely, so only general guidelines are given here. Budgets are normally broken out by year.

Proposal Review

PEER REVIEW: essentially all proposal review in NSF and NASA is by anonymous peer review, not by agency officials. The old "sweetheart" system, where a single agency grants officer decided on the award of funds, sometimes without any peer input, has faded away, except for a few corners of the government and private sectors.
COMPETITIVE REVIEWS: Major solicited proposal programs, which can yield over 1000 proposals, now usually hold competitive reviews, where groups of 5-10 referees read each of, say, 50 proposals. Two reviewers are chosen to be "prime" or "secondary" reviewers on each proposal; they look more carefully at their proposals, write summaries, and record comments from the group. The whole committee meets and systematically compares the proposals to each other and to the available budget and produces a rank-ordered list of proposals to support. This system works surprisingly well, and produces the closest thing possible to an objective review (though you will not always think so).
FEEDBACK: Most, but not all, programs will give you feedback concerning the reviewers' opinions of the strengths and weaknesses of your proposal. This can be very useful in making improvements for the next round. Sometimes only small changes can produce success on the next iteration. Unfortunately, with a little experience, you will begin to detect a significant random component in proposal evaluation. This is human nature; grit your teeth and try again.
STRATEGIC IMPLICATION: Given this atmosphere, you must design your proposal to impress harried reviewers who have only a few minutes to read each proposal and who are looking for reasons to reject.

Writing the Proposal

Never violate stated limits on length, font sizes, number of figures, and so forth. Not complying with guidelines will not only annoy the more finicky reviewers, but in some cases it will result in mandatory rejection. If you can't present your case in the expected space, reviewers will think you don't know what you're doing. Likewise, never omit some piece of information or boilerplate you are asked to supply.
A compelling proposal must be clearly, persuasively, and concisely written and must demonstrate:
1. That the questions you are asking are important and interesting;
2. That the program is technically feasible;
3. That you are competent to execute it; and
4. That it will provide a definitive answer to the questions posed.
Write for people who are generally well informed but who are not specialists in the field. Clearly explain the main issues. Be sure to define all acronyms and abbreviations. Place in the larger context. Make sure claims for importance or uniqueness are defensible; don't exaggerate.
Keep it short and clear, clean and uncluttered:
Put key points up front. Don't make the reviewer read to the 10th paragraph before you state what you're planning to do.
Work hard to be sure the abstract captures all the key points clearly and succinctly and in good prose style. The reviewers' first (and in some cases, only) impression will come from the abstract.
Be sure you have considered all the possible weaknesses in the proposed work and have implicitly responded to those issues and to common misapprehensions about your subject. Your Co-I's are a good resource here.
Don't waffle: where ambiguities exist, state clearcut choices and how you intend to resolve the issues involved.
Illustrations (images, plots) can quickly clarify issues for the reader. They add interest and "tangibility" to the project. They can represent nice summaries of your earlier work on the topic. They can substitute for lengthy text. Strongly recommended.
Especially for your earlier efforts, ask colleagues to review the proposal and offer suggestions for improvement. Do this far enough in advance of the deadline to accommodate major changes, if needed. In larger teams, assign a couple of Co-I's to be responsible for a full, critical review of the writeup, but be sure to circulate drafts to the whole team.
Essential: proofread line by line from paper, not a computer screen. Try to put yourself in the mind of a skeptical/harried reviewer as you read. Always spell-check.
Leave yourself sufficient reserve to be sure you can submit comfortably ahead of the deadline. Beware last minute computer glitches. Competition is so heavy for the large programs that the submission deadline is usually a hard (electronic) cutoff.