A few weeks ago my husband said he had a job lead for me. The VP of Engineering at his company, a manufacturer in Lancaster, PA, asked him if I was interested in helping his engineering dept. write SBIR/STTR proposals for the myriad of the defense departments. Since I am unemployed and felt under pressure to at least try, I met with the VP and said I would give it a try.
SBIR/STTR Kick-Off Meeting
I attended the meeting where the VP and the engineers chose the proposals that they were going to "do." The VP said that he wrote a similar proposal for the Office of Secretary of Defense so we decided that I would write that proposal. I had to find the original govt. proposal and compare it to the 2009 proposal. The proposals are somewhat similar but I decided that the VP or another engineer needs to come up with a new idea. The company is working with another company on a similar project so I suggested in an email to the VP that the info could be a starting point.
Research About Writing Proposals
The VP wants me to make the proposals "pop," too. I have done some research on writing govt. proposals and ordered a book specific to how to write them. He gave me an example of a GE proposal that used color and some fancy artwork and graphs. There are a lot of different books about writing business proposals that I found on the Internet but I don't want to spend anymore money until I get the $40 book I bought last week. I found a web site that offers SBIR proposal writing training but there aren't any seminars listed for this year. The web site owner said he could write proposals from scratch but would have to spend full days with the engineers at the plant.
My Emotions About This Project
I have no idea what I'm doing so my emotions fluctuate rapidly from "freaking out" to "who cares - I'll just do the best job I can." If it were up to me, I would have turned it down because I'm not an engineer and honestly don't know what I can offer for the $$ I'm getting paid except to take notes and write it to the best of my ability. I wish I was more of an artist because I think that's what the VP is looking for because he wants some "cool" illustrations. I should get going to feel at least I'm doing "something" to earn the $30/hour Thermacore is going to pay me.
Books and Seminars:
Handbook for Writing Proposals
Persuasive Business Proposals
www.rogercohen/sbir/SBIR_training
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