Our Funding Pitch

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

A couple of people have recently asked, "How do you go about asking for money?" Applying for grants from NSERC, the NSF, and other agencies is something they understand (though it never actually worked for me), but cold-calling people, or emailing them out of the blue, isn't something most academics have ever done.

I'm now doing another round of this, and since this is supposed to be an open-everything project, I've posted the short pitch I use as a starting point when approaching someone new. I hope you find it useful, and of course, feedback is always welcome.