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Grant Clinic:

Grant Application Budget

Reader Question: Do the reviewers look at the grant application budget, and is it taken into account as a review criterion? How does one ensure that a budget will be viewed as realistic?

Expert Comments:

In theory, the reviewers are not supposed to take the budget into consideration – that is for the council, which meets several months after the study section. The study section reviewers’ job is to evaluate, and assign, a priority score, to the science and feasibility (at the broadest level).

However, the budget is there if the reviewers want to take a look at it – I do – and may be factored into their scores, albeit unnamed as such. After all, it is one measure of the PI’s experience and judgment.

If the budget is deemed inadequate, you may be told that your proposal is an “ambitious” one. Although excellent science is necessary to receive a good score, it is not sufficient: The reviewers are equally concerned with the question of whether you are likely to accomplish the goals and milestones you have laid out. Less experienced investigators often will try to show that they are a “bargain”, thinking that the more “bang for its buck” NIH is receiving, the more impressed will be the reviewers. Not a good calculation. Reviewers don’t care about a bargain; they care about you successfully completing the proposed study.

Moreover, less experienced investigators often hold the attitude “I’ll say what I have to in the application to get the funding; I’ll worry about actually carrying out the work after I have the money”. I offer a bit of advice: Be careful what you wish for.

Years ago I held this attitude myself, and then, blessedly (so I thought!) I did get funded. Then I spent a miserable five years trying to fulfill my commitments with inadequate resources. One place that is easy to cut in the budget is the amount of effort you, and/or co-investigators, and/or staff is allocated; you then will be overwhelmed, because no matter what your percent effort is listed as, you still have to do all the work, or end with a poorly run grant.

You may not regard the above comments as very useful if you are in the position where your contract will not be renewed if you do not get funded for your K (career) or R (research grant) award. You may even be booted out of the tenure track. So getting the grant is all you care about, consequences be damned. There is no good response to this: You are correct, no funding, no job. Many are very ego-invested in getting NIH awards – let’s face it, this is a pretty exclusive club, and having such awards marks one as a player. Maintaining that self-image may be more important to those individuals than worrying about the management of the grant. Just remember by “low-balling”, you make it difficult for yourself once funded, and you run the risk of failing to honor your commitments to NIH, which may cost you in the long run.

On the other hand, be careful about padding your budget to gain extra funds. Do it where it is unnoticeable. But experienced investigators/reviewers can look at a project and get a pretty good notion of what the direct costs should be.

Comments by William Gerin, Ph.D., Professor of Biobehavioral Health, Pennsylvania State University. Author, Writing the NIH Grant Proposal: A Step-by-Step Guide SAGE Books (2006)

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This eAlert is brought to you as an informational training tool by the Principal Investigators Association, which is an independent organization. Neither the eAlert nor its contents have any connection with the National Institutes of Health (NIH) or the National Science Foundation (NSF), nor are they endorsed by these agencies. All views expressed are those personally held by the author and are not official government policies or opinions.