Critical Friends: Grant Writing Support
Strengthen Your Proposal. Clarify Your Vision. Increase Your Competitiveness.
Securing external funding is more competitive than ever—and even the strongest ideas benefit from trusted colleagues who can help refine how those ideas are communicated. Critical Friends: Grant Writing Support offers ECU faculty a confidential, collegial, and constructive space to receive high‑quality feedback on grants in development.
Whether you are shaping early ideas, polishing a near‑final draft, or aligning proposal language with agency priorities, our team of experienced grant writers is here to help you communicate your goals with clarity, precision, and impact.
Why Share Your Draft?
Even the most innovative projects can be overlooked if reviewers struggle to understand the scope, aims, or significance. Submitting your draft gives you the opportunity to:
✓ See your proposal through a reviewer’s eyes
We read your draft the way reviewers will—attending to clarity, structure, coherence, and alignment with funding priorities.
✓ Strengthen your narrative and messaging
Clear articulation of aims and compelling storytelling are central to successful proposals. We can help you refine both.
✓ Identify gaps, assumptions, or missed opportunities
Fresh perspectives can help illuminate areas where logic can be tighter, arguments can sharper, or evidence can be clearer.
✓ Boost competitiveness before you submit
Small adjustments—tone, organization, framing—often make the difference between “good” and “fundable.”
What You Can Submit
We welcome works‑in‑progress at any stage, including:
- Specific aims pages
- Project descriptions
- Full proposal drafts
- Letters of intent
Our team can read 5-7 pages of draft material and meet with you to discuss the documents and explore revision suggestions.
Use this form to request grant writing support.
How the Process Works
- Complete a brief survey using Formstack to indicate your interest and timeline.
- Upload your draft using a secure submission form.
- Share a few details about the grant program and your timeline.
- Schedule a meeting with our Critical Friends team based on your timeline.
- Receive feedback from experienced readers who are committed to supporting faculty success.
- Revise with confidence using clear, actionable suggestions tailored to your goals.
Our feedback emphasizes clarity, coherence, narrative strength, and alignment with funder expectations—not disciplinary judgment or gatekeeping.
Who We Are
The Critical Friends team consists of practiced reviewers, experienced grant writers, and faculty colleagues who understand the pressures and challenges of proposal development. Our role is simple: to help you communicate your ideas in their strongest possible form.
Our team of highly successful grant writers has competed for and won grants from the US Department of Education, the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, as well as prestigious groups like Blue Cross/Blue Shield, the Parkinson’s Foundation, and the Mattie Miracle Foundation. We have also served as reviewers for various local and national funding agencies and are familiar with the types of projects across multiple disciplines that receive funding through clear, concise grant applications. We’re excited to share our experiences with grant writing and reviewing with our colleagues at ECU.
What to Expect
When you submit your grant draft, we will identify 2-3 members of our team who can provide effective and timely feedback on your project. As experienced readers and writers, we recognize that feedback on drafts works best when it is specific and actionable, and when it is provided with warm and encouraging language. Once the review team receives the draft, we will set up a Teams meeting with the writer to discuss the draft, ideally within a two-week period. During a feedback session, writers should expect to be asked clarifying questions on parts of the grant goals/aims, timeline, etc that are unclear to the CF team, followed by suggestions for how writers might more effectively articulate their project so that the varied members of a review committee can understand how the grant project will advance the mission of the grant or agency funding the project. Our goal is to help writers best frame their important work so that readers can quickly see the impact/value of the project.
Questions About the Process or How We Can Help?
If you’re unsure if Critical Friends is right for you at time or your just wanting to learn more about what you can expect from the process, email Dr. Will Banks (banksw@ecu.edu), Director of the University Writing Program.