Why should this work be funded? - help on fellowship questio (Mar/31/2010 )

Hello People,

I need a bit of help.

I'm filling out fellowship application forms, and i'm stuck with their filler question:
"Provide reasons why XXXX should accept this grant application. Provide justification why this proposal is not funded, or is not expected to be funded, through current XXXX research initiatives. Failure to address this requirement can result in your application being excluded from further consideration."

Because it's novel, because it will cure breast cancer, because it will save researchers in the future loads of money... i don't know what they want to hear. it's not funded, and not expted to be funded because no one asked before? i don't know.

Any help will be appreciated.

V

i think they are asking why (how?) your proposal is different from research already in progress at xxxx. that there is no funded research that you are proposing.

not sure how much space you have to answer the questions. I use to add an "abstract" / "one-pager" where I summarise what questions will be answered by the project (hopefully) and what the impact of this will be for future research on the topic, summarising again the key points and innovative character of the project.

"The applied project will be the first adressing question xxxx which will help to understand yyyy which subsequently can lead to zzzz"

Second part of the questions seems for me to avoid double-funding, so state that it is not funded elsewhere. If there are more funding agencies around funding this kind of research maybe they want a short sentence why you choose this funding agency for handing in your proposal????

thanks guys... i was just having a brain fart when it came to that question. it's just one of the more ridiculous grants i've had to fill out. they asked the same questiion a couple of time, just with slightly different wording, and i had enough.
how many more times could they ask if i was deserving of the money? well, eight times .
urrgghhh. what research are you doing?.. not really interested in that. we want to know if you like the colour pink.

hope you know whether or not you like pink and get funded

good luck

ps: its the same everywhere, the less money they are giving you the longer the documents to fill in

Questions like the one you had often mean "have you read the guidelines". For instance, a funding body puts out a call for proposals for research, somewhere in their guidelines they state that in this funding round they will mostly fund research related to X, Y and Z, but other fields can still apply and may get funded or not. Affiliated funding bodies often have questions like the mentioned

Where you can say something along the lines of "This research does not fall under the scope of the research initiatives in document ABC from funding body HNRNP, therefore it is unlikely to be funded by body HNRNP at this time".

If your funding bodies (e.g. NHMRC) are anything like ours, they will love you for going and reading (and referencing in your proposal) the documents regarding what the government has said about your field of research and the initiatives they are proposing. Links and sometimes the actual documents can often be found on the funding agency websites, buried under several layers of pages.