When you are writing a proposal, you want to use every resource available to make it as strong as possible. One of those resources is feedback before submission.

Feedback can strengthen a proposal, but only if it comes at the right time. If you ask for feedback too early, your idea may not be developed enough for useful responses. If you ask too late, you may get good advice -- but advice that is difficult or impossible to act on before the deadline.

The goal is to find a middle ground -- a point where the proposal is far enough along for meaningful feedback, but still flexible enough for changes.

There are reasons why feedback matters.

First, when we are close to an idea, we often cannot see what may be missing. This happens even at the expository or text level. How often have you proofread your own writing but later discovered a missing word? Something similar can happen at the proposal level. Important parts of the argument are missing or underdeveloped because you are so close to the work and you fail to see the gap. Your brain has filled in what is missing.

Second, the way the proposal is organized may make sense to you but not someone else. This is important because proposals often have reviewers with a diversity of backgrounds and styles. Some may be close subject-matter experts. Some may be in or near your discipline -- or completely outside it.

When this is the case, you need to strike a difficult balance. The proposal must be accessible enough for a non-expert in your area to follow its logic, while also giving technical experts confidence that the work is rigorous, well-designed and feasible. This balance can be hard to judge on your own. Feedback can help you see where the writing is too dense, where the logic needs more clarity, or where you need to add technical detail that builds confidence.

Feedback can also help with sections of the proposal that fall outside your primary technical expertise. For example, if you are writing an education plan, workforce development component, or describing another non-technical aim, input from someone with expertise in that area can be invaluable. They may be able to tell you whether the plan reads strongly from their disciplinary perspective, or whether added details would make it more compelling.

So that is the Why. Now let’s talk about the Who.

Some of the people you can ask are probably already obvious to you. These may include colleagues at a similar career stage, senior colleagues, or official mentors you may have been assigned.

Research Office staff can also be valuable critics. Depending on their role, they may be able to give feedback on structure, clarity, and responsiveness to the solicitation to assess whether the proposal is making a strong case.

You also may have friends or family who can read parts of the proposal and tell you whether they understand the big picture. They may or may not have technical expertise, but that does not mean their feedback is irrelevant. A non-expert reader can often tell you whether the motivation is clear, whether the project sounds important and where the writing becomes hard to follow. These may be the people who are available on short notice. Others may need more lead time -- but a spouse, friend, or family member can be willing to pitch in when the deadline approaches.

Most people know feedback would be useful. The harder part is making sure it actually happens.

When timelines are compressed, feedback is often one of the first things to be cut. People intend to get comments but the writing takes longer than expected, collaborators are slow to respond, or other parts of the submission take more time than planned. At some point you realize there is no longer enough time to ask someone to read.

This is why it is important to build feedback into the timeline from the beginning, especially during seasons when many of you are working on major proposals like NSF CAREER submissions.

Different readers will need different amounts of time. Some may be comfortable giving quick feedback with a one- or two-day turnaround. Others may need a week or two. And because they are doing you a favor, you may not be able to pressure them.

It is also important to think about what stage the proposal should be in when you ask for feedback.

There is no single answer that fits every situation. Sometimes the timeline or a reader’s availability will dictate what is possible. But as a general rule, it can be useful to seek feedback when the document is about 75 percent of the way to where you want it to be.

If you give someone something too underdeveloped, they may not be able to give meaningful feedback because they cannot see the full picture. But if you wait until the proposal feels nearly final, feedback may be harder to use. You may have already invested a lot of time polishing sections that now need to be changed, undone, or completely rewritten.

As a general principle, you want to do as little work as possible to get a useful reaction from someone.

For proposal drafts, that may mean asking for feedback on a project summary, abstract, specific aims or other standalone piece before you build out the full proposal. A project summary is a final product in its own right, but it is much easier to revise than a complete project description or narrative.

Feedback at that stage will strengthen your core idea before you have built the entire proposal around it.

In closing, feedback is not just a final proofreading. It is part of developing a stronger, clearer and more fundable proposal. The goal is to ask the right people -- at the right stage -- while there is still time to use what they tell you.

I made a short video explaining the research menu, which is a simple document you can use when reaching out to program officers. Instead of trying to guess the one perfect idea to send, a research menu lets you share a few possible directions and gives the funder something useful to react to. This can be an easier starting point than a fully developed white paper or concept paper. Our clients get great results with these!

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