Proposal Writing and Grant Making Workshop

In September 2023, the Center of Excellence for Energy, funded by the American people through USAID, hosted a Proposal Writing and Grant Making workshop to teach faculty and other senior researchers skills that are critical to designing successful research projects and writing grant proposals to fund them. Led by Dr. Zachary Holman, Vice Dean for Research and Innovation within the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering at Arizona State University, the workshop supported faculty and other senior researchers in developing skills that are critical to designing successful research projects and writing grant proposals to fund them.

“It is important for faculty to write proposals for obtaining grants from industry and international funding agencies and venture development,” says Dr. Sayfe Kiaei, Center of Excellence for Energy project director and Arizona State University professor. “The Proposal Writing Workshop, developed by Dr. Holman who is an expert at writing proposals that get funded, taught Egyptian faculty at our partner universities key concepts to consider when writing proposals and organizing projects. This will support the sustainability of the center as faculty engages with industry to get research approved and funded.”

During the workshop, Dr. Holman taught proposal writing concepts and processes, such as Need, Approach, Benefits, and Competition to help faculty develop a value proposition. Dr. Holman discussed setting end-of-project goals and working backwards to create milestones and Gantt charts and then gave participants time to develop these concepts for their own projects. He also discussed the importance of partnerships, especially between higher education and industry.

“I was impressed by the innovative research ideas that the Egyptian faculty brought to the workshop,” relayed Dr. Holman. “The skills taught in the workshop will help the faculty shape those ideas into fundable and executable projects that will have impact on Egyptian energy infrastructure.”

The workshop was followed by individual meetings between participants and Dr. Holman to discuss proposal development. During these meetings, Dr. Holman was able to guide participants in creating in-depth proposals with a marketing edge to assist them in applying for and receiving research funding.

This program is part of the center’s efforts to advance higher education capacity in energy through curriculum development, research innovation, and increased partnerships between higher education, energy industry and governmental agencies in order to support Egypt in reaching its goal of 42% renewable energy by 2035. Arizona State University has been operating the Center of Excellence for Energy since 2021 in partnership with its Egyptian partner universities: Ain Shams University, Mansoura University, and Aswan University.

Learning outcomes:

• Validation and refinement of problem statements using customer discovery
• Creation of Gantt charts that provide projects with structure (scope of work)
• Budgeting to match a scope of work
• Selecting partners to achieve project goals
• Using storyboarding to generate graphical outlines of proposals
• Writing for the reviewer
• A draft proposal that embodies the above learning

If you have questions, please contact [email protected].