When I write about research funding, I often emphasize its hidden curriculum.

Many things about the funding process are not formally taught. PIs can benefit from learning how agencies work, how program officers think, how priorities shift and how to interpret funding announcements. Plus, how to determine fit and position their work accordingly.

All this helps you become more sophisticated in how you think about funding strategy.

That said, I now want to discuss something much simpler – outreach volume.

Many spend a great deal of time in search of the best possible contact at an agency or other organization — looking for overlapping interests, similar backgrounds, evidence that a person might understand one’s work, or other signs that the fit is potentially strong.

Then they craft an email and hope that one message opens the door.

However, there is a difference between thoughtful outreach and over-investing at the very top of a funnel. While I do not suggest sending generic, careless messages or contacting people with no connections to your research area, you likely need to be contacting a higher number of people than you currently are. This is where the funnel metaphor is useful.

At its top, you may be looking through staff directories, searching LinkedIn, reviewing agency pages or using keywords related to your field — not a deep dive on everyone. You are looking for signs of possible fit. Then you send a message that is relevant, respectful and clear.

Once someone responds, they move further down the funnel. Here it makes sense to read more about that person’s background, look more carefully at their portfolio, prepare for a meeting and think more deeply about how your work connects to theirs.

In other words, the level of effort should grow only as the level of interest increases – the opposite of spending a large amount of effort before anyone has responded.

Researchers understand this in other contexts. You know that a sample of 1 or 2 does not tell you much about a population. Yet with outreach one might send one or two emails, get no response and conclude that the approach failed.

The problem may simply be that N is too small.

There are multiple possible reasons for outreach non-response. The lack of replies from a very small number of recipients is not by itself statistically meaningful. This is why follow-ups matter, as well.

For many forms of outreach, the first email is not the entire attempt. A polite follow-up is often what produces the response. A delay is not because people are being rude. It is because inboxes are crowded and schedules matter.

You need not follow up forever. After a first message and perhaps one or two follow-ups, it is reasonable to stop and try again months later if the contact still seems important.

But if you are sending only a single email and then giving up, you may be stopping before the outreach has had a fair chance to work.

This is also why tracking matters.  Are you measuring your outreach and its results?

How many people did you contact last month? How many follow-ups did you send? How many responses have you received? How many conversations resulted? If you can keep all of these in your head, your outreach volume may be too low.

You want enough activity that you need a spreadsheet or other simple system to track names, dates, organizations, follow-ups and outcomes.

With the semester ending and faculty moving into summer, this is a good time to consider whether your outreach volume is aligned with your funding goals.

The right number depends on your field, your funding urgency, the size of the relevant funding ecosystem and the type of opportunities you are pursuing. For many PIs, contacting five people per week would be a reasonable experiment.

For some, five may be too high. For others, it may be too low. The more important question is whether you are contacting people only occasionally or only when a deadline is approaching, or whether outreach has become a regular part of how you build your funding pipeline.

This is not about replacing strategy with brute force. It is about recognizing that thoughtful outreach still needs sufficient volume.

Sometimes the next step is not to keep refining the email or searching for the one perfect prospect, but rather to increase outreach and see which doors open.

Have you checked out our playlist of interviews with former program managers? These conversations include valuable insights into how funding decisions are made and how researchers can approach agencies more effectively.

If you were busy over the last couple of months and did not get a chance to watch them, start with this interview featuring Dr. Rohith Chandrasekar, a former DARPA program manager, on how to get funded by DARPA.

Need to get your research funded, this year? Check out our 12-week program to get you there.

Check out our storefront where you can access our free Unlocking DOD Funding for University Researchers course and other resources, including for faculty applicants.

Ready to book a call to discuss how our program can support faculty at your institution? Let’s chat!