[OHM] Fwd: OHM grant proposal

[Jeff Meyer]

Karl -

This insider's perspective is fantastic. Very helpful.

There's much we can do about the lack of a start-up grant on our own, but
the partnership angle is interesting.

We'll need to be very attentive to the rest of the advice. Another piece of
feedback we've received (from David R?) is that the panel members' feedback
can differ from the project officers' feedback. So... Your notes are gold.

For the odds, well... To paraphrase Wayne Gretzky... you never make a shot
you don't take. : )

- jeff

On Friday, December 26, 2014, Karl Grossner <karlg at stanford.edu> wrote:

> Hello OHMers, happy holidays -
>
> A friend and colleague who has followed the discussion of NEH grant
> possibilities for OHM wrote me to share some thoughts drawn from their
> experience as a review panel member for a recent round of DH Implementation
> Grants. I thought they were pretty relevant, so copied them in below. My
> biggest takeaway is the need for innovation in humanistic inquiry, which
> confirms what some have suggested -- framing the effort as supporting a
> particular historical study, and simultaneously a proof-of-concept. This
> may fit a 'start-up' grant model better than an implementation one at this
> stage.
>
> Karl
>
> ------------------------------
>
>    - The Implementation grants are ‘Low Risk / High Reward’ That is,
>    project ideas may be fabulous, however, funded projects in the
>    ‘Implementation’ round already have some element of success and stability.
>      “Implementation” means just that.  They will fund projects that are
>    already up and running in some form.  The funding is to enhance or
>    elaborate what has already been done.
>
> Stronger proposals are those that have:
>
>    - Evidence that PIs are already in a successful partnership, such as
>    having co-authored or presented on the project jointly prior.
>    - Have already obtained ’support’ for the project which could be NEH
>    Start Up funds, or campus or other external funding, or recognition of any
>    sort.
>    - Statement of Innovation concerns innovation in both technology and
>    humanistic inquiry - really creative innovations in both areas.
>
> The percentages of grant winners in past years is approx. 15%.  Very
> slim.  My panel reviewed 18 proposals (out of 54? submitted).  Of those 18,
> 4 were outstanding, 11 were good and showed promise for future
> developments, 3 were turkeys.  Only 1 of the 4 that my panel ranked as
> outstanding went on to receive funding, and that particular one had
> obtained NEH Start Up funds previously.  The other few that NEH funded in
> this round were reviewed by the other panels and I don’t have background on
> those.  We were told that many successful grants had be submitted
> previously, so it often takes more than one try (I am sure you are aware of
> that).
>
> Preservation, sustainability and data management of the project are
> important and requires thought and planning.  This was a weakness of many
> of the middle level proposals.  The higher ranked proposals mostly used
> their library or state-level repository partnering, and included many
> details about how the storage, preservation, etc would work.
>
> ….  it is helpful to talk to the NEH grant officers throughout the writing
> process to make sure, firstly, that the idea is appropriate for the grant,
> as well as to get a pre-review.
>


-- 
Jeff Meyer
Global World History Atlas
www.gwhat.org
jeff at gwhat.org
206-676-2347

OpenStreetMap: Mapping with a Human Touch
osm: Open Historical Map (OHM)
<http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Open_Historical_Map> / my OSM user page
<http://www.openstreetmap.org/user/jeffmeyer>
t: @GWHAThistory <https://twitter.com/GWHAThistory> / @OpenHistMap
f: GWHAThistory <https://www.facebook.com/GWHAThistory>
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