14 | Don’t Bury the Lede of a Grant Proposal

Best Practices

Journalists frequently repeat the adage “don’t bury the lede,” and this advice works well for grant proposals too. The lede^[1] refers to the opening lines of a story that give the reader a preview of what is to come. When someone buries the lede, they position the most important parts of the story well beneath other minor details. Start paying closer attention to the ledes in science news stories online and what constitutes a good lede will become clear.

Does the lede give the gist of the who, what, where, when, why, and how? Does the lede create curiosity and a desire to keep reading? If yes, then the author wrote a good lede.

A well-structured lede about an important problem aligned with the research priorities of a funding announcement or review panel can be a huge asset in the Specific Aims section of a National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant proposal. In particular, such a lede can compel busy reviewers, who often have to read dozens of proposals, to delve into your proposal more closely. Additionally, it may even help them to recall your proposal more readily during the latter parts of the review process.

Scientists struggle to write good ledes because that is not how they have been trained to write. In a scientific paper, the motivations for the research and the logical arguments underpinning the interpretations of the results are divulged little by little as build-up to a grand conclusion—the very antithesis of using a lede. To start writing ledes for grant proposals, it may help to focus on what makes the research impactful and highlight that upfront. For example, does the research have the potential to improve survival outcomes in patients with hard-to-treat cancers, or will it help doctors to personalize treatments so that the most effective ones can be used? Stating such long-term goals upfront will make the proposal more attractive to funders, who may miss these important impact statements when they are positioned lower in a proposal.

Below are examples of effective ledes drawn respectively from a news story and a successful grant proposal:

The World Health Organization (WHO) is taking on the world’s worst killer, laying out its first plan to conquer hypertension—a level of high blood pressure that affects one in every three adults globally. That figure has doubled since 1990. It’s now up to 1.3 billion people.^[2]

Over the past two decades, excess dietary intake and low physical activity have contributed to an increase in the prevalence of childhood obesity in the United States, affecting a third of children and disproportionately impacting minority and economically disadvantaged children. Given that obesity is a risk factor for health outcomes later in life, including cancer, early obesity prevention efforts are critical for population health.^[3]

Like all things, writing good ledes for your grant proposals will become easier with practice.