Quiz — Chapter 1: What Is a Grant?
Answer each question, then check yourself against the collapsible answer. Aim to explain your reasoning, not just pick a letter.
Question 1. Which of the following best defines a grant? (a) Money lent to an organization that must be repaid with interest. (b) Non-repaid financial support given to carry out a defined project, with obligations to deliver and report. (c) A donation given out of generosity with no expectations. (d) A payment for a specific deliverable defined entirely by the funder.
Answer
(b). A grant is not repaid (rules out a), comes with obligations to deliver and report (rules out c, a pure gift), and is driven by the applicant's project in service of the funder's mission rather than a funder-defined deliverable (rules out d, which describes a contract).Question 2. Your project does excellent work but does not fit a particular funder's stated priorities. According to the chapter, what is the most likely outcome and why?
Answer
Rejection due to **misalignment** — the most common cause of failure. No quality of writing rescues a misaligned proposal, because the funder gives money only to advance its own mission, and a project that does not serve that mission gives the reviewer no reason they can defend to fund it.Question 3. Define triage in the NIH review context. Does being triaged mean the science is bad?
Answer
Triage means an application ranked in roughly the lower half by initial reviewers is designated "not discussed," given a preliminary score, and set aside without full panel discussion. It does **not** mean the science is bad — it means the proposal did not rank highly enough among initial reviewers. It is information for a resubmission, not a verdict on the work.Question 4. Name the four major sources of grant funding and give one defining trait of each.
Answer
(1) **Federal agencies** — largest, most structured, peer-reviewed, compliance-heavy, reward rigor. (2) **Foundations** — varied, personal, relationship-driven, reward mission fit. (3) **Corporations** — strategically self-interested, reward visible benefit to the business. (4) **State/local government** — locally responsive, compliance-heavy, backbone of human-services funding.Question 5. True or false: Because a popular federal program funds only 8% of applicants, any individual well-aligned, well-written proposal has only about an 8% chance. Explain.
Answer
**False.** The headline rate is an average across a pool that includes many misaligned, unclear, and rushed proposals. A well-aligned, well-written proposal sent to the right funder routinely outperforms the average rate by a wide margin. The average odds do not describe an above-average proposal.Question 6. A nonprofit director says, "We just need a funder generous enough to support our mission." Diagnose the thinking error using a concept from this chapter.
Answer
This treats a grant like a gift and the funder like a charity. The **mission-transaction** reframe corrects it: funders do not give money to support *your* mission out of generosity; they invest to advance *their own* mission. The director should be asking which funder's mission their work advances, and how to show it.Question 7. Match each grant type to what its reviewer cares about most: research, program, operating support, fellowship.
Answer
Research → significance and rigor. Program → need and measurable outcomes. Operating support → organizational trust and track record. Fellowship → the person's promise and trajectory.Question 8. Give two distinct reasons (from the chapter) that a technically excellent proposal might still be rejected, neither of which is "the idea was bad."
Answer
Any two of: misalignment with the funder; an unclear ask the reviewer cannot summarize; weak structure/readability; insufficient evidence; starting too late; noncompliance with the rules (which can cause rejection unread).Question 9. What is the difference between restricted and unrestricted (general operating) funding, and why do nonprofits prize the latter?
Answer
Restricted funding may be spent only on the proposed project; unrestricted funding may be spent on whatever the organization most needs, including rent and salaries. Nonprofits prize unrestricted funding because it covers essential, hard-to-fund costs and gives them flexibility — which is exactly why funders give it less often.Question 10. In one or two sentences, state the chapter's central, hopeful claim about what separates funded from unfunded proposals.
Answer
The funded and unfunded are usually separated by the quality of the *asking* — alignment, clarity, structure, evidence, timeliness, and compliance — not the quality of the underlying work. Because those are learnable skills, funding is an outcome you can learn to produce, not a reward reserved for the most credentialed.Question 11. Distinguish direct costs from indirect (F&A) costs, with one example of each.
Answer
Direct costs tie to the project (e.g., a researcher's salary for project time, or participant payments). Indirect/F&A costs are real but diffuse costs of operating (e.g., the building, accounting, IT) that the project uses but cannot be tied to it line by line.Question 12. Why does the chapter argue that the proposal timeline is itself a quality factor?