I agree with Bill.  And, to a certain extent, I agree with Betty.  In the area of technical proposals, if you can't do the work, you can't write the proposal.  However, a grants development office doesn't have to write the proposal to be very useful.

Reading many of the position announcements on this listserv and crossing my desk, there seems to be a lot of call for accounting people in research administration.  As if research proposals are entirely made up of budgets.  I don't know who else is in those offices, but it would be unfortunate if there isn't anyone in development.

As a former faculty, PI, and technical editor, I have found that I have used my experience in all these areas to assist faculty in locating funding sources and designing, organizing, and  writing proposals.  I have written institutional proposals.  I have assisted in bringing our faculty together with investigators from other institutions.  While I only have a general knowledge of cost accounting standards, I know enough to understand when a PI is about to propose something messy enough to call in the budget people.

I, too, think about this subject a lot.

***************************************************
Sally Eckert-Tilotta, PhD, Assistant to the Director
Office of Research and Program Development
University of North Dakota
Grand Forks, ND  58202
email:  xxxxxx@mail.und.nodak.edu
tel:  701-777-2049
fax: 701-777-2504

>>> William Campbell <xxxxxx@UWRF.EDU> 04/23 7:25 AM >>>
Betty wrote:

...Overall, I believe in the "if you can't write it, you can't do it"
philosophy.  While a grants person (writer or facilitator, whatever you
call it) can pull together pieces, do boilerplate on institutional
resources, or do editing, a PI or PD should be the one doing the
writing.  S/he will have to run the program if it's funded. ...

I disagree.  When I became the grants director here (University of
Wisconsin-River Falls), my charge was to increase the amount of external
funding.  This institution had not been very active in the grants
business--only part time attention from an administrator, campus culture
mitigated against proposal-writing in many departments, not very many folks had
proposal-writing skills or experience or nerve.  I found that one of the best
ways to stimulate more production was to write and co-write proposals myself.
Bill Campbell
Director, Grants & Research
University of Wisconsin-River Falls
Telephone: 715/425-3195
FAX: 715/425-3185
email: xxxxxx@uwrf.edu