Grants
Tailored grant-writing service, quoted per brief. Methodology grounded in the published research on what separates funded from unfunded proposals — not consultant intuition. Three tiers from Letter-of-Intent to multi-aim program grant.
Scoping brief in 1 business day. Delivered in 5–25 business days per tier — committed in your SOW.
Methodology
Six findings from peer-reviewed studies of grant-review behaviour. Each one shapes where we spend the package effort.
Reviewers form their impression early — typically from the Specific Aims page, which the assigned reviewer summarises to the panel in roughly five minutes and which most non-assigned panellists read while skimming the rest (NIH study-section guidance). We allocate roughly a third of total package effort to this single page across multiple rewrite passes.
Across ~123,000 NIH R01 applications, the Approach criterion is the strongest predictor of an application's Overall Impact score and its odds of funding (correlating with overall impact at about r=0.84), with Significance second; Innovation, Rigor and Environment weigh less (Eblen et al. 2016). We weight drafting effort toward a rigorous, feasible Approach and a compelling Significance accordingly.
Across NIH, NSF, ARC, and Wellcome competitive schemes, proposals with non-trivial preliminary data are funded at materially higher rates than those without (multiple agency self-reviews). We help you surface and structure what you already have — pilot results, prior publications, unpublished figures — so the reviewer sees feasibility, not aspiration.
Reviewers anchor on alignment with stated funder priorities. Mining the funder's recently-awarded grants in your domain (NIH RePORTER, NSF Awards, ARC Data Portal) surfaces the phrasing and framing that signals fit. Every package starts with a 1–3 page funder brief built from this analysis.
Most major funders place at least one non-specialist on the panel. Plain-English abstracts and lay summaries are scored separately and propagate the proposal's framing to the decision discussion. We draft these to grade-12 readability without sacrificing technical accuracy.
Under-budgeted proposals look naive; over-budgeted ones look greedy. Reviewers cross-reference budgets against the aims to test feasibility. We draft a budget narrative that justifies each line against the work it funds, calibrated to your funder's award-size distribution.
Deliverables
Multiple rewrite passes against the funder's exact format. Tight, hypothesis-driven, written to survive the 5-minute first-pass read.
We mine recently funded grants in your domain from the funder's public award database. The language patterns + framing get baked into your draft.
Line-itemed budget with justification narrative. Biosketches reformatted to current funder format (NIH biosketch, NSF biographical sketch, ARC ROPE).
Before you submit, we run the draft through independent critique passes (rigor, fundability, plain-language). You see the top risks and fix them at home.
Draft language for each collaborator letter you'll need. You secure signatures; we save you the cold-start writing time.
Programmatic verification of page count, font, margins, citation format, embedded figures, every CFP-defined requirement. No format-violation desk rejections.
Who this is for
If you recognise yourself here, the methodology and tier pricing below were designed with you in mind — not the ten-person grants office at a top-50 R1 university.
Early-career PI · solo or 1–2 staff
You're an assistant professor or solo PI without a senior mentor to red-pen drafts and without an institutional grants office to do the first pass. Other applicants have both.
Fits:Standard package — 11 business days, Specific Aims through 3-pass refinement, plus reviewer simulation before you submit.
Established PI · 3+ active grants
You have the science. What you don't have is the 80–120 hours needed to draft the next R01 while running an active lab. Your time is better spent on supervision and grant strategy.
Fits:Major package — 25 business days, multi-aim coordination across 25–50 pages, 5-pass refinement, you supervise + sign off.
Industry researcher · biotech / startup / corporate R&D
You're applying for ARC Linkage, NHMRC partnership, SBIR/STTR, or another government scheme. Your work is strong, but the academic-grant format and reviewer culture are unfamiliar.
Fits:Standard or Major — we translate industry rigour into funder vocabulary; reviewer simulation flags what an academic panel will probe.
Scope
Tier is matched to grant complexity, not your institution's size. Pricing scoped against the funder, the page count, and the work that specific grant requires — we send a fixed quote within one business day of your enquiry, before any work starts.
Seed / LOI
Delivered in 5 business days
Quote on enquiry
≤$50k requested
Fits: Letter of Intent, pre-proposal, small foundation grant, pilot grant
Standard
Delivered in 11 business days
Quote on enquiry
$50k–$500k requested
Fits: NIH R03 / R21, NSF Standard, ARC Discovery Indigenous, NHMRC Ideas, mid-size foundation
Major
Delivered in 25 business days
Quote on enquiry
$500k+ requested
Fits: NIH R01, NSF CAREER, ARC Linkage / Discovery, NHMRC Investigator, Wellcome Discovery, ERC, multi-PI program
Resubmission credit
If unfunded, 50% of the quoted fee credited toward a resubmission package using the reviewer feedback.
Follow-on credit
25–30% of the quoted fee credited toward your next grant with us within 90 days.
Every fee agreed up front
We agree the fee in writing before any work begins; no surprise charges.
You own your result
Full assignment of your deliverable and your data. No embargo on what we build for you. Your name on the grant, no Empirica byline required.
7-day refund window
Unhappy with the first deliverable? Full refund within 7 days, minus any third-party data costs. No questions.
24-hour response
Every email gets a reply or status update within 24 hours on business days. Critical when you're on a funder deadline.
Full version with all ten sections (scope, IP, refund mechanics, confidentiality, payment, what we don't do, termination, governing law) at /services-terms →
Coverage
Every package starts by mining the funder's public award database (NIH RePORTER, NSF Awards, ARC Data Portal and equivalents) for recently funded grants in your domain. Not on this list? Ask — we evaluate fit before saying yes.
Request
Tell us the funder, the call, the deadline, and the rough specific aim. We'll reply within one business day with the scoping brief, the recommended tier, a fixed quote, and a Stripe invoice link if you want to proceed.
Who you'll work with
Founder & Chief Executive Officer
“Good research is built from creativity, breadth, and empathetic learning from others.”Meet the team
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