How to secure institutional approvals for your research grant proposal: navigate through the approvals process like an experienced academic.

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Now back to the main topic of today - securing institutional approvals for your research project.

Cheers, Dawid

You've done the hard work - weeks or months of effort putting together a compelling research proposal, running simulations, crunching numbers, and gathering preliminary data. After jumping through countless hoops, you finally wrote the full draft - your project idea is ready to be submitted! Time to press the button, right? Not so fast.

As experienced academics know all too well, writing the application for funding funding is merely the first step in a proposal submission process. Before submitting your proposal to the funder, you'll need to obtain additional authorisations and approvals from offices scattered across your institution. The approvals seem endless, from grant board revisions to budget rehashings, ethics scrutiny to risk assessments, foreign engagement reviews to leadership endorsements.

It's an administrative requirement that often seems to be in place only to momentum and leave scientists feeling like they're wading through bureaucratic quicksand. But it is a critical process to ensure that your proposal is of high quality, the budget is sound and representative of what you’re proposing, and that you’ve got full support from your institution - this may seem a hassle, but it will save you time and, more importantly, reduce risk of things going sideways during your project. In this article, I want to share a roadmap for efficiently obtaining those crucial institutional OKs to finally kick your hard-earned project into high gear.

Grant Board Review

The first major requirement is satisfying any additional requirements from the grant board itself. Your original proposal may have already been vetted by your colleagues, but further revisions and updates are usually required before truly locking in the project scope.

One of the most critical steps is developing a strong working relationship with your research director or research support officer. This person will be your main point of contact, so open and frequent communication is key. Provide them with timely updates on any changes in personnel, resource requirements, or shifts in your experimental approach. Be proactive about addressing their critiques up front, rather than having revisions bounced back.

At the same time, it's important to strike a balance between accommodating their input and asserting your scientific vision. Don't get mired in logistical minutiae at the expense of your core intellectual aims. Build your case thoroughly, backing up methodological decisions with evidence, data, and expert perspectives. Illustrate your big-picture impact.

Setting a collegial yet confident tone can help smooth conversations around revising proposed budgets, tweaking timelines and milestones, or adjusting scope bounds as negotiated requirements.?

Be solutions-oriented in offering potential remedies to satisfy their concerns. At the same time, know when to politely hold your ground on elements core to the central hypothesis being tested.

Institutional Budget Checkpoints

With grant board sign-off obtained, the next major gate is financial—getting institutional leadership to agree the money can reasonably flow through for your project's budgetary needs. Even in cases where funding has already been awarded, institutions must still scrutinise and approve the final budget through their own financial oversight processes.

Your first step is collaborating closely with grants and contracts accounting staff to ensure all costs conform to institutional and sponsor policies on allowable expenses. Are you properly accounting for equipment depreciation schedules? Are you accurately calculating staff effort distributions across funding sources? Be prepared to justify need for major capital purchases like high-end instrumentation.

One often overlooked aspect is appropriately budgeting for any required cost-share commitments using institutional funds. You'll need to clearly demonstrate available money for providing facilities, equipment, or personnel effort that must be contributed as a condition of the award. This may require obtaining executive-level approvals to secure those contributors.

Larger proposals frequently get reviewed by an institution's board of trustees or executives for scrutiny over potential financial risks and liabilities. Be ready to articulately defend expenditures that may raise eyebrows - excessive subcontractor fees, significant equipment or renovations, expensive travel demands, etc. Build a compelling case for affordability and return on investment by highlighting funding longevity, prestige factors, and revenue generation opportunities.

Throughout all budgeting discussions, connect frequently with your grants office to understand change options in expenditure forecasts or line-item flexibilities permitted by funders. No research project's budget endures unchanged through its full lifecycle.

Navigating the Ethical Minefield

Securing financial approvals is a major step, but now you enter one of the most crucial gauntlets - satisfying the ethics reviewers overseeing research protocols involving human or animal subjects. Institutional review boards (IRBs), ethics committees (ECs), and institutional animal care and use committees (IACUCs) employ rigorous standards in assessing potential risks and weighing them against scientific benefits.

The submission materials required are extensive - detailed protocols, consent forms, participant materials, biosketches, training certifications, and more. A key is writing these documents crisply with clear, plain language explanations that even a non-expert can understand. Don't obfuscate with excessive jargon. Clearly illustrate robust plans for minimizing risks and protecting subject welfare, privacy and autonomy.

If your study involves vulnerable populations like children, prisoners, or the cognitively impaired, expect considerably more scrutiny over your proposed safeguarding measures. Have supplementary experts on hand to address inevitably committee concerns over their legal protections.

Animal research faces similarly intense ethical vetting. Your IACUC submission requires comprehensive details on housing, veterinary care plans, minimizing pain/distress through appropriate sedation, scientific justification for species/numbers of animals, and commitment to principles like replacement, reduction and refinement.

Don't underestimate the demands for extensive revisions, clarifications and amendments. Ethics reviewers analyze protocols exhaustively to ensure regulatory compliance. Maintain a cooperative tone, avoiding confrontation. But also firmly advocate for scientifically valid aspects being questioned unnecessarily.

These ethical checkpoints are in place to ensure the highest standards. Though frustrating, approach them as a constructive process of improving your research design and protective measures. It's worth persistence to satisfy these vital committees.

Assessing and Mitigating Risk

With financial and ethical approvals secured, another crucial hurdle awaits - comprehensive risk assessment to certify your project meets all health, safety, and regulatory standards. Institutions are obligated to thoroughly evaluate potential hazards and ensure stringent mitigation plans are in place before giving that final green light.

For research involving hazardous agents like pathogens, toxins, or non-ionizing radiation, you'll need signoff from the institutional biosafety committee (IBC) or radiation safety office. Provide exhaustive documentation covering engineering controls, personal protective equipment, decontamination procedures, transportation logistics, training programs, and contingency planning. Consult closely with safety professionals on meeting regulatory codes.

If your work utilizes potentially restricted technologies, materials, or data, there may be export control regulations that govern their use and dissemination. Your institution's export control office will scrutinize whether a license or approval is required for foreign national involvement, international shipping/travel, or publishing/sharing controlled information. Develop a technology control plan proactively addressing any potential "deemed export" implications.

Environmental health and safety is another major checkpoint. Ensure robust protocols for properly handling hazardous chemicals and radioactive materials. Detail provisions for air emissions monitoring, waste management, incident reporting, etc. Providing safety training documentation for all personnel involved is critical.

While rigorous, these reviews are in place to safeguard personnel, facilities, the institution, and environmental/community safety. Develop positive relationships with EHS/risk professionals, inviting them for inspections and frank discussions of your protocols. Their expertise can be invaluable for plugging gaps. Take their advice as an opportunity to reinforce a culture of safety and mitigate any liabilities.

With proper planning and open communication, you can productively guide evaluators toward approving a comprehensively de-risked research initiative everyone feels secures about proceeding with.

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About the author

Dawid Hanak is a Professor of Decarbonisation of Industrial Clusters at the Net Zero Industry Innovation Centre , Teesside University . He brings the world-leading expertise in process design, techno-economic, and life-cycle assessment to drive innovation in industrial decarbonisation. He led the successful delivery of research and commercial projects in industrial decarbonisation, attracting over ￡4m of external funding. As a trusted advisor to businesses, think tanks, and public bodies, Dawid is passionate about sharing his knowledge and empowering others.

He also founded Motivated Academic , a platform where researchers, engineers, and consultants can access resources and training to advance their research and business skills.

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