Examples of successful creative grant/fellowship/scholarship applications?

December 9, 2008 12:23 PM

Where can I find examples of successful applications for grants, fellowships and scholarships related to writing and/or international research, along the lines of Fulbright, NEA, etc?

I'm especially interested in programs applicable to longer (book-length) nonfiction projects, and grant amounts in the $thousands more than $hundreds.

posted by gottabefunky to media & arts (6 comments total)

If you go to or are near to a college or university with a graduate program, there is typically a graduate fellowship office. The graduate fellowship office at my school is specifically there for my school's students, but you can just walk in and ask for their fellowship book for examples of successful fellowship applications.

They have a huge one filled with often very dated examples for the National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship, which can be related to international research or writing, as long as you are a U.S. Citizen. The NSF requires that you be in graduate school, but is one of the most generous fellowships available at $30,000 a year (plus they pay your school fees).

Philip Guo's site is vastly useful on the NSF, though does not contain any examples of successful applications.

This site aggregates other NSF-related advice with some specific examples.

I got an NSF and posted my successful application (as well as the reviewers' notes) on my web site, (Warning: self-link) as well as a number of other examples of successful applications (Further warning: all the apps are pdfs)

Another fellowship you might be interested in, depending on where you are in the world is the Watson Fellowship. It has narrow criteria: you need to go to one of the schools on its list, and you need to be in your senior undergraduate year. However, the Watson is very broad- if you get one, it allows you to do one year of entirely self-directed research somewhere that is not the United States. The way I describe it to people is they give you around $23,0000 to go do something interesting.

Last self-link - I also have my successful Watson Fellowship application up on my website.
posted by RachelSmith at 12:50 PM on December 9, 2008

Program officers, particularly those in federally-funded programs, are very likely to send you examples of successful applications upon request. At my old job, we would routinely get successful NEH fellowship applications to use as examples for interested faculty members.

As RachelSmith said, if you're at a university, get in touch with your sponsored programs office or the research center that is most closely aligned with your discipline. They'll have examples and may be able to get even more for you. Also, your university may have a subscription to Community of Science, particularly its funding database. Don't be fooled by the name; it includes opportunities from pretty much any discipline you can think of.

(Even if you're not enrolled or a staff member, if your local university has COS and publicly accessible computer terminals, you should use those computers to access COS. That sounds kind of cheap/odd, but COS is seriously worth it.)
posted by cog_nate at 1:57 PM on December 9, 2008

Unfortunately I'm not at a university, and the research would be more scholarly (literary/history) than scientific. But thanks for the advice so far.
posted by gottabefunky at 2:15 PM on December 9, 2008

This online course about fundraising for artists has some samples built into the course work that are totally free to download:
http://courses.fracturedatlas.org/index.php/course/viewCourse/id/14

(Since you mentioned the NEA I assume you're interested in arts related funding)
posted by lucidreamstate at 4:38 AM on December 10, 2008

Sorry... Didn't realize that there were no auto-links on here. Here is the Link to the Fundraising Course for Artists.
posted by lucidreamstate at 4:39 AM on December 10, 2008

The NEH may comply with freedom of information act requests. Begin your quest here.

I know for a fact that the NIH (national institute of health) will release funded grants, but the process takes 6-8months!

Depending on your university, the office of sponsored programs/sponsord research etc may be able to help

Grants.gov, may have examples buried there a good place to start looking. Here's a big list of humantites grants: those sites may have some lead off points too.

Good luck!
posted by lalochezia at 8:28 AM on December 10, 2008