While working at the University of Florida (UF) Libraries from 2009 to 2022, I authored and co-authored hundreds of grant applications for submission to local, regional, national, and international sponsors. During that time, all these proposals were shared in, the UF Institutional Repository, an open access repository available to anyone at any time.

These grant applications included budgets ranging from less than $2,000 to many millions. Why was this simple act of making these resources available important to the fields of librarianship, collection development, digitization, access and preservation, exhibits, museums, and collaborations? As a genre of grey literature, exposing grant applications to the world can have a tremendous impact on all these fields and beyond. They have the power to share information embedded in a request for funding unlike any other document type. Their narratives present a case and a project plan for how to solve a specific problem or how to build a project or program, etc., that may not exist. It’s a very precise plan to carryout work and justify the expense of this work, while combining the efforts of the project team and its partners to use existing assets that otherwise might not be utilized for the proposal’s specific purpose.

Grant applications submitted by faculty or staff in institutions of higher education are, after all, the intellectual property of its authors, project team members, and project leader or principal investigator. In the nonprofit sector, however, they are the property of the applicant organization. As such, it is up to these individuals and organization leaders to decide whether or their application materials should be freely shared. Frequently and unfortunately, the decision is not to share unless required to do so by the sponsor (e.g., sometimes when the sponsor is a governmental entity, and the funding source is tax dollars).

When grant proposals are not shared, the loss of learning, potential for increased awareness, and possible replication cannot be remedied, unless a personal request is made (to gain access) by an interested party who has discovered the grant application’s existence and contacts the principal investigator or project leader directly. However, when the decision is made to share the application broadly, the benefits are incalculable. The content of an awarded application has the potential to generate new partnerships and projects, replicate best practices, or to solve problems that others are also experiencing. It can and should be cited as a reference in future proposals submitted by other applicants to build or expand on the work shared in the original proposal. Assets that were once hidden can be brought to light and repurposed for new collaborations. The personnel engaged in an awarded application can be seen as experts and recruited to advise or participate in related grant-funded projects through new partnerships. The possibilities are truly endless.

Here is a case that illustrates these benefits. The first One Button Studio was created through technology fee funding at Penn State in 2013, to enable DIY video and audio production in an empty room within the library. The library staff who submitted the proposal shared it online and included automation specifications for how the studio would be constructed along with ways to simplify use by all students regardless of their self-recording and production knowledge or physical abilities. Because the proposal and specifications were shared broadly online, there are now hundreds of One Button Studios in academic libraries across the US. For example, a team of humanities librarians at the University of Florida Libraries were awarded Emerging Technologies Program funding to create a One Button Studio in Library West in 2015. To view the proposal and other documents click here.

Replicability of a good idea can only happen through this level of full disclosure. Each library employee that learned about the Studio’s existence through the proposal and specifications shared online was able to repurpose these documents to submit their own grant applications to a variety of sponsors that now have supported One Button Studios. These include internal library grants programs, statewide LSTA (Library Service & Technology Act) funds, or other technology public and private funders. Having access to awarded grant applications at one’s fingertips reduces the barriers that might cause a reinventing-the-wheel scenario. One major benefit is knowing the budget requirements typically involved in creating these studios, thus reducing the time involved in developing a fundable proposal. Sharing these types of prototype proposals demonstrates the generosity of Penn State’s library staff, while reinforcing the role of libraries as trusted stewards and purveyors of information as a means of growing new knowledge.

An example of how a project can be expanded by having access to the original proposal is the story of the Diverse Bookfinder. Originally the project was awarded by the Institute of Museum & Library Services (IMLS) to Bates College for the purpose of creating a Catalog Analysis Tool that would evaluate the quality of BIPOC characters featured in picture books. College of Education librarians at UF discovered the tool and initiated a conversation with the Bates College Principal Investigator, Krista Aronson, that led to her sharing the original proposal with the UF librarians. The result was a new partnership that produced a second awarded IMLS proposal, this time to UF with Bates as its primary partner, to expand the Tool to include middle grade and young adult books. Having the original budget to work from along with existing Diverse Bookfinder for picture book descriptive text facilitated the preparation of the second proposal narrative and budget. Without access to the original proposal, the project would likely have been delayed or might never have materialized because of the time and effort it would have required to plan the second complex project from scratch.

When grant proposals contain scientific research study goals and methods, there exists a legitimate case for not sharing these types of proposals voluntarily. I have learned from colleagues that grant applications which include scientific research methods of any type can lead to replication without permission from the original project team members. One such case appeared on Twitter where an applicant who was declined found her methodology in a proposal written by one of the panelists who had reviewed her grant application, without having been cited. The thread included other stories of scientific methods presented in grant applications that lacked citations to the original grant application authors.

But when the proposal does not include basic or applied research methods then it can be classified as non-scientific research. In the areas of scholarly research, community development, professional development, planning, preservation and accessibility, exhibitions, etc., each of these types of proposal ideas or projects are unique to the situation, location, organization, and future trajectory of the applicants. The National Endowment for the Humanities has already acknowledged that its support is largely outside the realm of scientific research (as referenced in recent Notification of Funding Opportunities for Artificial Intelligence in the Humanities) and is more along the lines of scholarly inquiry. Likewise, the IMLS supports a wide variety of grant programs with limited awards in the National Leadership applied research category—meaning that many of its awarded proposals can be defined as “other sponsored activities” and thus excellent candidates for sharing.

Normally, if you want to become aware of the awards being made by any grantmaker, you can register to receive its newsletter or press releases. These announcements are excellent ways to gain awareness of awarded grants that demonstrate the current priorities of sponsors and the directions in which they are moving. However, these lists of awards generally provide merely a glimpse into the awarded proposals’ content—usually sharing only basic information such as the applicant entity, its location, the award amount, and a summary of the awarded project.

The question arises, why are grant proposals not widely shared? One reason might be that many applicants or grantmakers don’t think about the value of sharing them; it could be that they view grant applications in general as simply a vehicle by which to acquire funding—having no value beyond this narrow purpose. For instance, it came to my attention that the library dean at a highly respected university had created an internal mini-grant program to incentivize development of diversity activities throughout the library. When I contacted the library staff person leading this effort to inquire about how to access the awarded applications, their response was that the idea of sharing them had never occurred to the committee members charged with reviewing the proposals.

Or, could it be that applicants are afraid they will lose a competitive advantage by sharing their proposals? To this concern I would say there is no hidden magic formula that can be copied from a grant proposal by other applicants that would create an unfair competitive scenario or could jeopardize the awarded project team’s chances of acquiring future grant funds to support their next steps resulting from their already funded work. Unless an individual or team seeks to deliberately plagiarize others’ work, which has occurred during grant review processes or through other unintended action, there are more positive benefits to sharing proposals than not. In fact, plagiarizing an awarded proposal that remains hidden from view leaves the original authors more vulnerable than had they made it broadly available.

So, please, go forth and share your grant applications. There is so much to be gained by the original project team as well as others participating in grantseeking endeavors. And if you plan to use the work of others through access to their grant applications, then always cite them. They deserve to receive credit for their original proposals.