By Dr. Lori Brown

Grant partnerships represent great potential, and partnerships with institutions of higher education (IHEs) can offer numerous advantages: exceptional human resources, existing equipment or facilities, and first-class research capacity, to name just a few.  

To ensure that you realize the full potential of partnering with an IHE, you should first give special attention to the three E's----  expense, evaluation, and expertise.

Expense                                                     

Anyone seeking to partner with an IHE must remember that, if the college/university is the lead partner or a subawardee, it may require a portion of grant funds for "indirect costs." At large research institutes, indirect cost rates can be as high as 50%, compared to public school districts that may have a 1-5% indirect rate. Smaller colleges and community colleges typically fall in between, with indirect cost rates in the 20-30% range.

An indirect cost rate as great as 50% can gobble up federal grant funds quickly, leaving less funding for actual project activities. For this reason, organizations partnering with IHEs need to understand budgeting requirements and how they translate to dollar amounts. If you are planning to partner with an IHE, the budget and the IHE's indirect costs should be one of the first issues you address.

Evaluation

IHEs that have psychology or social science departments operating under the expertise of statisticians or program evaluators are often capable of assuming the formal role of grant evaluator, and that arrangement is not uncommon. But a conflict of interest may arise if the IHE assumes the dual role of grant evaluator and active training or services partner.  

If, for example, an IHE's department of education partners with a K-12 school for a math initiative, math professors may offer professional development to participating K-12 teachers in content and instructional practices. When one university department provides training and another department provides evaluation, you could have a conflict of interest----  or the perception of one.

A grant reviewer may pick up on this, wondering whether IHE evaluators would be biased toward the professional development work of their university colleagues. To avoid this issue, the university could assume only one core role in the grant effort, for example, taking the training role and identifying an outside evaluator.  

Expertise

Funding organizations often look to higher education professors and administrators to provide expertise to grant participants. This may include training, coaching, modeling, or other forms of adult learning. A community-based violence prevention group, for instance, may partner with an IHE's department of criminal justice to expand its knowledge of local violence patterns and trends.

In this type of partnership, it's important to know your experts. Is their knowledge current? Is their training effective? Will their participation in the grant program complement your efforts? Many funding agencies require that you implement "research-based" or "evidence-based" strategies, and the involvement of university or college faculty in providing these strategies may help bolster your case. For grant-funded training sessions, knowledge and teaching skills are just as important----  if not more important----  than academic scholarship.  

Generally speaking, having an IHE partner can make your grant proposal more competitive. Remember to exercise due diligence as you work with the IHE during the proposal development stage to ensure that you create a win-win situation ... good for you, good for the IHE.

Dr. Lori Brown is Senior Proposal Writer at Pearson. You may contact her at news@grantproseinc.com.   

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