This book offers a practical, reviewer-centered approach to writing successful grant proposals for early-career faculty, researchers, and other professionals seeking competitive funding. It teaches readers from any discipline how to build clear, compelling arguments that reviewers will understand and support, improving the likelihood of funding success.

In tough funding climates, strong ideas are not enough. Successful grant proposals must make it easy for reviewers to see the significance of the problem, trust the proposed approach, and recognize the likely impact of the work. Grounded in what we know about how people think, remember, and make decisions, this book introduces “cognitive ease” as the psychological foundation for effective grant writing. The book uses real-world examples, applied exercises, and actionable, step-by-step guidance to help readers create cognitive ease for reviewers at every stage of the grant writing process, from grant proposal narrative development to responding to reviewer critiques and preparing a strong resubmission.

Readers learn how to write grant applications that are clear, persuasive, strategically organized, and responsive to review criteria and funder priorities, regardless of funding mechanism. Written in an engaging, accessible style, the book helps readers see grant writing as a learnable craft. With examples drawn from public health and other fields, the book’s techniques apply broadly to NIH grants, federal grants, foundation grants, nonprofit grants, STEM disciplines, the social sciences and humanities, and other funding contexts. 

Grant Writing Fundamentals Made Easy: An Early Career Guide is the go-to resource for early career academics, researchers, postdoctoral fellows, clinician-researchers, faculty mentors, grant writing instructors, and other professionals seeking guidance on writing stronger, more competitive grant proposals. It helps readers move beyond simply describing a project to crafting a grant proposal that reviewers can follow, trust, and ultimately recommend for funding.

Christine W. Hartmann, Ph.D. is a Research Professor in Public Health at the University of Massachusetts Lowell in the US and a former senior researcher with the US Department of Veterans Affairs. Her career has centered on federally funded research, scientific grant review, grant writing, and mentoring early-career faculty and investigators. Her scholarly expertise spans health services research, implementation science, quality improvement, organizational culture, long-term care, and aging services.

Dr. Hartmann has served as principal investigator on more than $20 million in competitive grants from the US National Institutes of Health and the Department of Veterans Affairs, including a Research Career Scientist award from the Department of Veterans Affairs Health Services Research Service. Her scholarship appears in numerous high-impact peer-reviewed journals. She has served on national and international scientific grant review panels, giving her direct insight into how reviewers evaluate grant applications, how proposals succeed or fail, and what early-career faculty and researchers need to understand about the review process. She has mentored early-career faculty, postdoctoral fellows, clinicians, and cross-disciplinary research teams, helping them secure more than $18 million in competitive grant funding.

In this book, she draws on decades of direct experience as a federally funded investigator, grant reviewer, mentor, and grant writing consultant to offer complementary perspectives on how successful grant proposals are developed and evaluated. Her approach focuses on helping applicants write grant proposals that are easier for reviewers to understand, trust, remember, and recommend for funding. In addition to her academic work, she consults on grant writing and engages in public-facing scholarship focused on improving research proposals. She is also the author of a memoir published by Vanderbilt University Press.