How can you write a better grant application than me?

It’s your research, so it would be a shame if other people were able to write a “better” grant application than you. Our service allows you to have competent people working on your project under your direction, so the chances of success are higher. It gets done faster and it takes less effort on your part.

We don’t get clients from well-established and well-funded labs. Those labs already have people who can do that kind of work “in-house”. The established PIs have been doing it for a long time, therefore they are good at it. In addition, they may know their grant reviewers as the world of compartmentalized science is shockingly small. Our clients are international assistant professors or busy clinicians who also do research. When you work with us, you get those extra lab members who are good at writing.

How do I know that your service is indeed confidential and that you will not reuse my grant for someone else’s application?

Our goal is to provide such a service that you decide to work with us again. Our business benefits from that. Even though grant review is being done anonymously at the NIH for example, it’s not that difficult to figure out who does what and what one plans to do in the future. I

It is quite unlikely that we will have both you and your competition as clients. You don’t need to entrust us with writing the full grant. We can do the general writing while you focus on the sensitive specifics. Therefore no, we do not reuse grant applications. In addition, if you happen to be a great client, we will simply not work with your competition. We will be happy to sign an NDA agreement if it is not in conflict with our Terms of Service.

What is the cost of this service?

It is difficult to quote a service without knowing what needs to be done. Providing there is sufficient time to discuss ideas and write them down. The cost will depend more on how much work needs to be done than how big the grant is, although these things happen to be positively correlated.

We don’t drag-on to make up more billable hours. You will be provided with a quote and the number of revisions included in the quote. We won’t change the quote if it turns out that it takes more time than we anticipated. The most important thing is the timeline. We are a small company and the need for this service is never spread out evenly throughout the year. We will appreciate it if you give us more time to do the work. This will also result in a lower quote.

There are some alternative fee structures:

1. We charge you a minimal fee for the grant writing service and then take a percentage of the grant IF it is awarded. This sounds like a win-win situation but it’s more complicated than it seems. Your department/university may not allow this kind of arrangement as we found out the hard way. A contract co-signed by the department head or a decision maker in the accounting department will be required.
2. The grant is for a startup company or some industry collaboration where Grantigen could benefit as a co-applicant. In this case, we could consider a fee waiver should you choose to team up with us on a project we really like.
3. If we have worked in the past whether through some academic collaboration or know each other from conferences, the fee structure can be adjusted to allow more flexibility as the project develops.