CHILD DEVELOPMENT

RESEARCH APPLICATIONS

We hope to make applying for a grant fairly painless and fairly quick!  However it will help us a great deal if you could follow the simple rules below when sending in a research application.  For all other applications, please click here to go to our Main Applications page.

Process

Applying to partner with us is a two-stage process. In the first instance, please email a short concept piece to applications@waterloofoundation.org.uk as an attachment. This can be up to 4 pages long and should be headed with the name of your organisation and the name of the project. It must include: 

1. Information about who you are:
1. The name of the Principal Investigator, and of other researchers involved
2. Your institution’s name, address and (where applicable) charity number
3. Contact details of the person to reply to:
   1. Email
   2. phone number
   3. address
4. A link to your website
5. Sources of advice you have used during the development of your proposed project
6. The cv of the Principal Investigator
2. Information about your project:
1. Theoretical and scientific rationale
2. Practical importance of the topic, and who will benefit
3. Research design, such as control procedures, proposed sample and recruitment channels, proposed outcome measures and method of analysis. We are interested in whether the design you have chosen is the most appropriate for the topic, so do give an explanation of why your proposed method is most appropriate
4. How ethical issues have been addressed
5. Costings
6. Timescale
7. A summary of job descriptions for any posts included in the application
8. Any other sources of funding involved
9. What will happen if your application to partner with us is unsuccessful
3. Information about the expected impact of your project
1. The key beneficiaries of the project – who they are and how many there are
2. Where you expect to disseminate this academically
3. How you will disseminate this to allied professionals and to individuals affected by the condition
4. How you will disseminate this to the public community at large

Applicants successful at this stage will then be contacted by the Grants & Research Officer for further assessment. This will include questions specific to your application.

The small print

Before you apply, it is important that you know what we expect from you. We consider our partner scientists to be exactly that, and to be our partners. This means that we expect you to keep us informed with your research findings and dissemination as these things happen, and to comply with our six-monthly reporting requirements.

Our hope is that working with us will enable you to collect data in order to apply for larger grants. Occasionally, the scope of a project is such that we can fund the full project, but this is the exception rather than the rule. This means that we expect you to follow up our project with funding applications to other bodies. We expect you to inform us of future grants which our data has helped you obtain, and of the findings of these future projects.

Good science is known rather than hidden away, and we expect our partner scientists to disseminate their findings. This means that we expect you to seek to disseminate your findings within the scientific community, to allied professionals, to individuals affected by the condition, and to the public community at large. We expect to see information about such events involved in monitoring reports, and where possible, would like invitations!

Lastly, a quick word about timings. We expect ethical approvals to be in place before our grant will be awarded. If you are planning to recruit participants from organisations such as the NHS, then we likewise expect NHS contracts and honorary contracts to be in place before our grant will be awarded.