SBIR Proposal Writing Basics: Writing Less Takes More Time
Gail
& Jim Greenwood,
Those
of you who have perused the Department of Defense’s latest SBIR solicitation
(FY06.3) already know this, but for everyone else here’s a heads up:
The Air Force has decided this year to participate in two solicitations.
For as long as we can remember, USAF has only been in one DOD SBIR
solicitation per year, so this represents a significant departure from the past.
Certainly this is good news for those of you interested in making USAF
one of your customers.
If
you are going to submit a Phase 1 proposal to the Air Force, please note an
important requirement in their instructions:
your proposal is limited to 20 pages (versus the long-time norm among
USAF and most agencies of 25 pages). This
requirement is found in the USAF-specific instructions at the start of their
portion of the DOD FY06.3 solicitation; all DOD components have such
requirements that supplement (and take precedence over) the general DOD proposal
instructions found in the front of the solicitation.
“Great,”
you say regarding the Air Force 20 page limit, “that means I will save some
time because I don’t have to write as much.”
Sorry, it probably is not going to work that way.
Good writers know that it usually takes longer to write shorter documents
(including proposals) than lengthy ones. Words
have to be chosen very carefully, complicated sentences have to be simplified,
hard decisions have to be made about what to omit from the proposal without
lessening its competitiveness.
Some
advice as you write your 20 page maximum Phase 1 proposal to Air Force:
First,
plan to include on your proposal team an editor who can go through the draft
proposal and cut out needless redundancies,
rewrite unnecessarily lengthy and complicated verbiage, and generally
sharpen up the proposal.
Second,
consider using the on-line cost proposal form, rather than doing your own
spreadsheet following the old DOD format specified in the solicitation.
The on line form, regardless of how many pages it takes to print, only
counts as one page. It also is
designed for SBIR/STTR proposals, whereas the old DOD format is a generic one.
Third,
note that DOD counts any attachments (except the Company Commercialization
Report) towards the page limit, so be very judicious about including them.
For example, if you have 2 letters of support from potential customers or
strategic partners, keep them brief and put both on one page.
Fourth,
before you start writing, set a budget for the number of pages you will include
in each section of your Air Force proposal, and then stick to it.
Here is a suggestion on how we would allocate our 20 page limit to the
required sections:
Cover
sheet
1 page
Abstract
1
ID/significance
2
Technical
Objectives
1
Work
Plan
4.5
Related
Work
2
Future
R&D
1
Commercialization
strategy
2
Key
personnel
2
Facilities/equipment
1
Subcontractors/consultants
1
Support
for similar work
. 5
Cost
proposal
1
This might be adjusted for a particular proposal; for example, if you have no subs or consultants on your project, then the 1 page saved there could be moved to Key Personnel to more thoroughly show you have all the required expertise in house.
Best
of luck to all of you submitting proposals under the FY06.3 DOD solicitation.
And don’t forget to contact the topic author before the black out
period begins on September 13, 2006.