What’s the minimum that I need to do to win a grant?

That’s an understandable question. Your time is very limited and you have a lot of stuff to do, so you want to make sure that you don’t spend too much time on a task, if you don’t have to.

The problem is that this approach is not conducive to getting grants.

Research grants are essentially free money, in that you don’t have any obligations to the funding agency and you don’t dilute the ownership of your company, so they can be a great source of funding. But free money is by no means easy money. While we all know that time is money, consider also that money is time: if you want to get money, you need to invest the time.

The demand for grants from NIH, DoD, and other funding agencies far exceeds the supply, such that getting federal grants is an exceptionally competitive endeavor. And as a rule of thumb, the larger the grant, the more difficult it is to get it. Essentially, this is the Olympics: only the best of the best get awarded, and they need to put in a lot of effort in order to do so.

Consider an athlete who asks their coach: What is the least that I need to do to win an Olympic medal? What is the minimum that I need to run? What is the lowest that I need to jump? What is the least that I need to lift?

What do you think the odds are of that athlete winning a medal? Even if they are excellent athletes, if this is their approach, then not only will they not win a medal, they won’t even make the cuts to compete. I doubt if they would even win a national or large scale regional competition.

Therefore, I’m afraid that the short answer to your question is: the minimum you need to do is not enough to get the grant.

Just like an Olympic hopeful, in order to win, you need to change the question that you’re asking. When applying for grants, instead of what’s the minimum you need to do, you need to start asking: what more can I do? Did I explain this clearly enough? Can I improve the grant any more with another round of revision? Can I identify any more problems that might come up in review that I can proactively address?

That is what your competitors will be doing (at least those who will be serious contenders, who might get the grant), so you need to make sure that you are better than them.