My experience is in biology/medical research not the social sciences, and I worked with a well known PI, so grain of salt and all that, but I have rarely found

My experience is in biology/medical research not the social sciences, and I worked with a well known PI, so grain of salt and all that, but I have rarely found the operational specifics of the grant application to matter because the people at the NSF/NIH are rarely qualified to evaluate experiments and their scientific calidity on that level. Assuming we're not talking absurd cost differences (like a $200 thousand exploratory experiment vs a $10 million pre-clinical trial), then being able to hype the potential benefits of your research, having good political standing in your university/field, and having a well known name involved is far more important. Grants are sort of like college admissions at Harvard or Yale. There are about five to ten times too many qualified applicants than there are available opportunities and as a result the "best of the best" group, whose members are practically indistinguishable from each other, essentially becomes a random lottery pool for the available spots.