KEEP YOUR AUDIENCE IN MIND
Three or more reviewers are assigned to your application. This is good and this is bad. The good part is that all aspects of your application should be covered. The bad part is that the more people who review you application the higher the probability that one will find a problem that does not exist.
If you have submitted before, then you know from the reviewers’ comments that they missed some key points that you made, blew a minor throw away comment out of proportion, or made uninformed judgments.
The reviewers work very hard for almost no compensation. They probably average about 2.5 hours per application. For 9 applications, that is about 2.5 days of work, which does not include coming to the review meeting. The meetings are usually 1 day plus travel time. In all they spend close to 4 days of their time on the review process. For this effort they receive about $600 of compensation (after expenses) or somewhere around $20/hour. Many meetings are run over the internet now, but still, they spend a lot of time for a small amount of compensation.
It is my consistent experience that 70% of reviewers put forth a respectable effort and about 20% put forth an incredible effort.
However, remember that it is up to you as an applicant to understand the limitations of the review process. Expect that the reviewers will not spend more than 2.5 hours with your application. How well can a reviewer who does not know your specific area completely evaluate your application in 2.5 hours? That is a good question.
Here is an exercise for you to consider: give your application to a colleague in another area from your own, but with enough general expertise to be able to review the application, with a visit or two to the web for some background info. Ask that person to spend no more than 2.5 hours on the review and then come back and tell you where to simplify and cut out information. This will improve your application.
Having information in the application will not help you if it keeps the reviewer from getting to or remembering the key pieces of information.
Another important point is the organization of the application. Be sure it is organized such that the reviewer can easily skim over the application and not get lost.
You can get a densely written application funded, but it will get funded less often than it otherwise would for its given intrinsic scientific and technical merit.
For more information on this subject, click on this link: High Level SBIR/STTR Grant Writing Techniques.
If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me or go to SBIR-STTRgrantshelp.com.
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