After you have completed the proposal to the best of your ability, consulted with colleagues and ORD officers, collected all the signatures and supporting materials, after you've reread your proposal once again, have run it through the spell checker, and have prevailed upon a colleague to give it another reading -- when you're positive it's perfect, you give it to ORD, who will submit it to the funder. You've done all this, and you've met the deadline. You experience a profound sense of pride and relief.

Now comes the review, a step in the search for funding that is out of your hands, once you've finished writing the proposal. The term " review" refers to the process by which the funding agency determines whether or not they wish to support your proposal. Before you begin writing a plan for a project, it's helpful to have some idea of how the review process works, and also to consider some factors that may expedite the process and produce a more favorable evaluation of your proposal.

Review procedures vary. Some agencies complete the process quite quickly, while others may take up to a year. Some funders choose to review in-house, some use outside reviewers, and others employ some combination of these. Some agencies forward the completed proposals to selected individual reviewers with instructions about what to look for. Others have on-site, peer-review teams, and some employ elaborate systems by which points are assigned to the various elements of a proposal. If your target agency has a point system, it is only sensible for you to focus your energy on those aspects in your proposal that will garner you the most points. Do your proposal planning accordingly.

After the initial screening, the proposal is examined by a staff team or review board, in the case of foundations, or by peer reviewers, for government proposals. If a project is especially large, there may be a site visit. Agencies also do fiscal, legal, and administrative reviews.

Corporations, which do not normally fund basic research, appraise proposals at the executive level. The process is noncompetitive, since secrecy is important, and turnaround time is fast. Networking is essential, because corporations do not usually issue requests for proposals.

Foundations have program officers, who do the initial screening, and boards or panels, who do the final selection. Turnaround time may be 3-4 weeks. Competition is keen, with only about one in ten being funded, and networking can contribute to success.

Government systems vary with the agency. Individual peers or teams of peers do the reviewing, decisions and reporting may take the better part of a year, and competition is very sharp. The process is usually fair, although politics may enter in, but networking is not a major factor in achieving success. Those proposals that the reviewers have rated as worthy of funding are ranked, and awards continue until the money runs out. You may suggest reviewers, and you may also suggest the opposite, that certain people not serve as reviewers. You may also request copies of the review form, evaluation criteria, point systems, and successful proposals, all of which are in the public domain under the Freedom of Information Act.

The National Science Foundation provides an example of how one governmental agency's peer-review process works. The reviewers are under severe time pressure, and serving as a reviewer can be fatiguing. Sequestered for 3 or 4 days, each person may read as many as 40 proposals of some 50 pages each. The readers work in panels of 6 by disciplines with a range of subspecialities, which are also divided into sub panels of 3 people.

The reviewers cull out perhaps 10 proposals, which are then read by the other sub panel. Each person ranks each proposal as excellent, very good, good, fair, or poor. Certain grading limitations apply. For example, the reviewers may be empowered to assign a rating of excellent to only 10% of the submissions and be able to rank only 15% of them as very good. In practice, almost no proposals receive a rating of poor. Reviewers must provide constructive comments on unsuccessful proposals.

Reviewing can be an exhausting, pressure-filled experience. You as a proposal writer need to keep that in mind. You need to remember that reviewers are real people who want to do the best they can for everyone concerned within the limited span of time that they are given to do their work.

Give the reviewers a break through your writing. Make life as easy as you can for them. For example, you might call the program officer of the agency to ask for names of possible reviewers and their level of expertise so that you can adjust the amount and level of technical detail you include in your proposal accordingly. If you are writing for a panel of reviewers, you might also take varying preferences into account. Eighty-five percent of successful proposal writers have had contact with the agency program officer before submitting. It pays to prepare.

Make your proposal easy to read. Formatting is important. Divide your material up with appropriate and easy-to-find headings for the various sections. Include brief statements of evaluation criteria so that reviewers can check items off their lists as they read. Make it easy to skim and skip sections by using subheadings, italics, boldface, underlining, color highlights, whatever devices your technology affords. One in three reviewers is visually oriented. Be judicious with this sort of thing, however; you don't want your proposal to end up looking like a comic book or a hodgepodge of titles, subtitles, indentations, subindentations, bullets, and asterisks. Whenever possible, rely on reader shorthand, like lists, maps, and charts.

All this sort of thing can help you. It's important to remember, however, that, while graphic devices can highlight information and thus provide ready support for what you say, effective persuasion demands narrative for justification. Narrative excels in linking cause and effect, in delineating a problem and demonstrating results. You need always to keep in mind a basic writing tenet: Lead your reader through the thought process. Narrative does that best.

Rely on the active voice. For example, say, "Use active verbs," instead of "The passive voice should not be used." Say, "The agency requires reviewers to," instead of "Reviewers are required by the agency to," The active voice is less wordy, clearer, and much more forceful.

Always be positive. Avoid, for example, putting down a professional colleague who has worked on a similar project. Emphasize the need for your proposal, what you can do with your particular qualifications, the resources you have at your disposal--the good things you have going for you. Accentuate the positive, as the old song goes, and eliminate the negative. Reviewers will think better of you for it, and by extension, of your proposal.

If you get turned down, call the agency program officer, and ask for the reviewers' comments. Federal agencies are required to provide them at your request, but foundations are not so obligated. Having suggestions from the program officer and the reviewers' comments to refer to give you a considerable amount of consulting service, and it's all free for the asking. Offer your services as a reviewer. That's another good way of finding out how things go in the proposal reviewing world. ORD officers can help you get started as a reviewer.

Try again! Address the particular reasons your proposal was rejected, rewrite, and resubmit. Show evidence in a cover letter that you have made substantial changes. Your chances of funding are much higher the second time around. It's hard not to take rejection personally, but think of it this way. It was not you who were rejected; it was your proposal, and for reasons that you can remedy. Set about doing so. Tomorrow will be a better day.

For additional help in refining the plan, refer to Persuading a Prospective Funder to See Things Your Way: Writing Tips, elsewhere in this handbook.