Lab Life

Top Five Reasons ACS Student Communities Grant Applications Get Rejected

Is your graduate student organization (GSO) trying to start a new seminar series but running into funding problems? Does your international student chapter need support to send a student to an ACS meeting? ACS offers three student communities grants to support these kinds of activities, but dozens of applications are rejected for avoidable reasons.

These are the top five reasons applications get rejected and how you can make sure yours is approved.

1. Oops, wrong grant

Each student communities grant has a unique purpose. If you apply for the wrong one, your proposal is sure to get passed over. So start by familiarizing yourself with each grant.

  • Professional Meeting Grant
    This grant offers USD $225–$2,000 for meeting participation. Use this grant to help GSO and chapter members attend professional conferences, either virtually or in person.
  • Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Respect (DEIR) Grant
    The DEIR grant provides up to USD $750 to support activities that help your group, community, or institution create more inclusive and respectful spaces. Use it for endeavors such as recruiting members of various backgrounds and perspectives, attending DEIR workshops, or sponsoring activities to highlight the work of chemists from underrepresented groups. 
  • Community Engagement Grant
    This grant provides up to USD $1,000 to strengthen the bonds within your GSO/chapter or your connections to the community at large. Use it to fund recruitment events, outreach activities, or career workshops.  

    If the activity you want funded fits the goals of more than one grant, you can tailor the approach to each application by clearly highlighting its alignment with the grant’s goals.  

2. Missing details

Grant applications specify the information and items you need to provide. Be sure to check—and triple check!—that you follow all of the requirements. You could have a beautifully outlined budget for an outreach activity, but if you don’t identify all the potential hazards as requested, your community engagement proposal probably won’t make the cut.

“It is really good to refer to the guidelines repeatedly,” says Farnaz Heidar-Zadeh, faculty advisor to the ACS Student Chapter at Queen’s University in Canada. “Usually these guidelines and descriptions are translated into an evaluation rubric that the selection committee uses for ranking.”

Don’t skip questions, even if you can’t answer them in detail. “If they are asking for something and you are not talking about it at all, it can come across as not putting effort into writing a good grant,” says Heidar-Zadeh. Instead, address it head-on.

When the GSO at the University of Michigan applied for the ACS Student Communities DEIR Grant to fund their Chemists with Chronic Illnesses and Disabilities Seminar Series, it was the first time anyone in their department addressed the topic. Instead of ignoring the grant requirement to describe previous efforts in the area, they explained that this was a new area for them, giving clarity to the review panel.

Some activities require more money than a grant offers. You can leverage this scenario to strengthen your proposal. When the chapter at Queen’s University applied for a DEIR Grant to fund a series of display tables and a sit-down dinner in recognition of the department’s efforts around Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Indigenization (EDII), co-president Dan Reddy knew they needed more than $750. So, they obtained grants from additional funders and referenced them in the proposal.

Having additional funders strengthens the proposal in two ways. First, it shows that you have put a lot of thought and planning into your idea. Second, it provides an implicit endorsement of your idea by the other funders.

Just remember that if a grant has a maximum award amount, stick to it. No matter how compelling your proposal, it’s not a good idea to ask for $2,000 from the $1,000 Engagement Grant.

3. Vague responses

The best way to demonstrate your proposal’s potential is to share concrete details and examples. Specificity is an indicator to reviewers that you have really thought through what you are doing and how you will carry out your plans.

The University of Michigan’s DEIR grant application included such details as the length of the seminar series, where it would be held, and other logistical concerns. They demonstrated that they were taking event planning seriously and explained how they would follow through on their plans.

Capturing specific details also helps when preparing the budget, which is a common grant application requirement and a total deal breaker if not done with care. “If they ask you for a budget, put in the effort,” says Heidar-Zadeh. “Try to get some quotes, for example, if you are applying for a grant to organize an event.”

When applying for his grant, Reddy didn’t know how many tables he would need because he wasn’t certain how many guests would attend or how many awards would be shared. In such cases, it’s totally OK to make educated guesses or lump some of the more minor items together into an “additional expenses” category. Funders know that some details are subject to change. Just be prepared to explain these changes later in your grant report.

On the flip side, don’t invent writing prompts. If you are applying for the Professional Meeting Grant, for example, you can simply say, “The six group members will attend ACS Spring 2025 in San Diego” without providing a detailed agenda of each member’s activities. Just make sure that all of the details in that simple response are correct.

4. Bad timing

Most professional grants have deadlines, and late proposals typically aren’t considered. It takes time to process, review, and respond to a proposal; if approved, additional time is needed for the funds to reach the submitter. The most common reason Professional Meetings Grants get rejected is that the requests are received only 1–2 months ahead of the travel, when it takes 3 months to fund them.

Even if a grant has a rolling deadline, it still has limited funds. Applying early means your proposal will be considered before funds run out.

Allowing for time to speak with others is especially important. You’ll want to confer with members of your own group and any other collaborators to make sure that everyone shares the same vision for the activity. You may also need to track down vendors for quotes or experts in the activities that you are planning.

Applying early also leaves wiggle room in case of emergencies, like a reference letter coming in late or a computer crashing.

5. Doing it alone

If you are a leader in your chapter, you don’t have to go it alone. Group members and your advisor can help you generate ideas for the grant. You could also divide up the writing among multiple members if one person doesn’t want to do it all.

Reddy, who is the co-president of his chapter, wrote his team’s DEIR grant. But he received significant input from group members along the way. The group created an online document so that everyone could see it evolve and offer feedback. “It’s nice to have the diversity of perspectives, especially when planning a DEIR event,” says Reddy.

Once you have a complete draft, having another pair of eyes on the proposal can do wonders to catch mistakes or missing details that could make or break the application. Enlist as much help as you need so you don’t miss an opportunity to get the project off the ground.

With some advance planning, you can get a grant to help your GSO or international student chapter do great things!

Is your ACS membership up to date?

ACS grants are only awarded to active chapters and GSOs (chapters that have submitted a report within the past 3 years and that have six or more ACS student members with the premium package membership). Only current ACS members with premium package memberships can submit the proposals.