Female researchers in the United States who participate in grant-writing 'bootcamp' workshops report greater subsequent funding success, according to a study published in June (J. L. Smith et al. BioScience 67, 638–645; 2017). Participants attended one of three 6-week bootcamps over an 18-month period in the past 5 years at Montana State University in Bozeman. A year later, they had submitted a significantly higher number of grants than those who did not attend a bootcamp. They had also won more grants, increased the number of proposals on which they were principal investigator and raised their overall funding. The authors attribute the outcomes to the high quality of the proposals submitted after training, rather than only to an increase in the number of submissions. The bootcamp was designed to support female researchers' feelings of autonomy, competence and connection. The authors say that dissatisfaction with research support is a major reason that women leave university research careers, and suggest that grant-writing bootcamps might help to retain and advance female academic researchers.