As we learned yesterday, the level of competition for grant writers is intense and the economy is making grant funding ever more competitive. Yesterday I discussed five key mistakes that must be avoided to win grant funding. Five more key mistakes to avoid are discussed below. Keep these in mind as you prepare for the 2011 grant writing season.

Mistake 6 – Improper formatting can lower your score. It hardly needs to be said that a grant writer must follow the FRP guidelines to the letter. If formatting requirements do not specify “no condensed font” it does not mean using a condensed font is a good space-saving idea. It isn’t. You’re only going to make the readers angry who are trying to score your grant. A grant writer’s first priority should always be to make the readers’ jobs easy. Condensed fonts only make reading a lot harder. Never submit a 32 page proposal when the limit is 30 pages. If you are so foolish – some may say bold – as to do this, one of two things will happen and they’re both bad. Either the proposal will be thrown in the trash – or – the excess pages will be torn off and thrown away leaving your proposal short of critical information and thereby lowering your score.

Mistake 7 – Making the readers’ job harder. No grant ever lost points for including a table of contents when one wasn’t specifically requested. A table of contents helps a reader jump around your grant easily to find something when they want to. You’ll make the reader’s job easier if you include a TOC and make certain that it follows the RFP outline.  Other ways to make the readers’ job of scoring a grant easier are to used the exact headings for each section that are used in the Request For Proposals (RFP), follow the exact organization of the RFP, include only what is required, and make all graphics black and white-friendly.
Mistake 8 – Poor editing can kill a proposal. It is hard to take a writer seriously when their making lots of mistakes in they’re writing an grammer is very awful and maybe its even simply wrong altogether and it could be making your job of reading a peace of narrative harder than it has to be because then yer gonna get scord reel lo and you don’t want that to happen do you?

Mistake 9 – Failing to explain graphics and tables in narrative form can leave readers confused. Have you ever looked at a piece of artwork that for all the world looks like a collection of empty tissue boxes stacked oddly with a spotlight on them. But the friend you’re with likes it and it makes you wonder what they might have been smoking in college? Often when we’re creating a visual image of something or creating a table of figures, it makes sense to the creator but others need a little help to understand it. Always include a brief description of the image or table to help the reader understand what it means and why it is significant to their understanding of the proposal.

Mistake 10 – A late application is a dead application. Some grants have postmarked deadlines, some have “on my desk” deadlines, and others have online submission time deadlines. If you miss any of these your grant won’t get scored at all, even if you wrote the finest proposal since Aristotle and your agency is more deserving of assistance than Mother Theresa.

You may be asking yourself after the last two days of morbid blogging about making mistakes whether you are brave enough to submit a grant application? Why of course you are! Now you know about ten key mistakes to avoid, so you’ll only have to guess about the other ten.  Maybe you’re already thinking to yourself, “Hey, they forgot about #13!” Please feel free to comment about other key mistakes we all need to avoid.

A grant writer today has a slim margin for error in their work. Most grant competitions are scored on 100 point scales and rarely do grants scoring below 90 ever get funded. More commonly, you must be near perfect, and if there are extra points for competitive priorities you have to earn those as well to get any funding.

Mistakes are not going to earn your agency a grant so you’ll want to avoid these five.
Mistake 1 – Poor planning with the client or by the agency. The finest grant writer in the world can’t write a convincing program narrative for a client who refuses to sufficiently plan the application. There are many details a grant writer needs from the people “on the ground.” When data and information is requested by a grant writer, it’s best to get it to the writer as soon as possible since lacking information may be holding up the writing process.

Mistake 2 – Trying to fit a round program into a square grant. In other words, if your mission does not fit the purpose of the grant, don’t try to convince the funding source that it does. A grant maker whose mission is whales isn’t likely to give a tuna grant a sandwich.

Mistake 3 – Hiring a grant writer based on lowest bid. In grant writing, as in buying watches, you get what you pay for. Buying a Rolex in Times Square from a guy in a trench coat for $30 means you’re getting a $5 knock-off, not a Rolex. If you employ a grant writer at bargain basement rates, you’re likely to get bargain basement services. Always choose to go with writers who can verify their success.

Mistake 4 – Cursory reading of the Request for Proposals (RFP). The RFP is the grant application instruction packet. This document will be used as the training outline for the grant readers. It contains most – not always all – the information you need to know to construct a fundable proposal. Never underestimate the importance of reading the RFP twice.

Mistake 5 – Lack of organization in proposal development. Always develop an outline based on the RFP that includes every required document, form, attachment, and appendix. Use this outline to compile the application and it should serve as a check-off list as the final document is put together.

Grant competitions are receiving more grant applications than ever due to the economic downturn so grant writers and agencies seeking grants must do everything within their power to submit flawless applications. Scoring in the top 5% – 10% or higher among the submitted proposals is mission critical in grant writing so grant development must be carefully executed to avoid these five mistakes.

Come back tomorrow to read about five more mistakes to avoid.

Driving home from a holiday visit in Southern California with family, I was challenged to avoid the growing number of large pot holes in our  freeway system. I drove in Mexico all that way south of Mexico City once and that’s what our freeways reminded me of. I was also reminded of grant writing pot holes as my tires crashed through the muddy voids.

I created a few pot holes during my grant career. I dug a big one in the process of writing a grant for a government agency in Puerto Rico. I dug this one because I wanted to be someone else.

My business partner and I landed an interesting contract to write for a government agency in San Juan. The contract involved travelling there for planning so I was excited and I wanted to make a good impression. This was Puerto Rico, land of Latin intrigue and romance: I wanted to look romantic. The problem was, I had turned 40 recently and was feeling insecure about the growing numbers of gray hairs on my head. I went to the grocery store and I bought a box of “Just for Men” and decided I’d give it a whirl before my trip. I was digging my pot hole.

I’d never used a hair color before. The night before I was to fly to Puerto Rico, I followed the directions word-for-word to apply the color. When I washed out the color and got out of the shower, I could see that my hair came out almost JET BLACK. This was horribly noticeable because my natural hair color is light brown. In a panic I rechecked the box which was printed as “brown”. I thought brown was brown but I learned later that there was a “Light Brown” color too. In the morning, it looked just as black as it did the night before, there was nothing left to do but get on the plane.

I met my business partner in Chicago for the trip down and the look on his face when he said, “You colored your hair huh?” told me that I looked like as much of an idiot as I thought. Suddenly I was losing self-confidence with each plate glass window I passed. The hair color was mismatched to me, even my eyebrows looked odd. I was sweating before I even got on the plane. I decided that one of the first things I’d do was go to a beauty shop near the hotel and get it colored professionally. Or I’d get another box of coloring that was the right color and re-do my hair before our meeting the next day.

We arrived in San Juan and checked in to our hotel agreeing to meet later at the pool beside the beach. I hurried into town to find a new hair color and found a shop. I was advised that lightening the color was not going to happen easily. In desperation, I bought a new box of “Light Brown” at a drug store and went back to my room to “fix” my problem. The second box of coloring did nothing except make my hair even darker.

The group of women I met the next day with made no comment on my hair. I was tempted to do an “Oprah”-style confession since women notice that type of thing but I knew my partner would kill me. I created this pot hole myself by trying to be someone other than who I was. The only thing I needed to be was a great grant writer. I’m sure that the gray hairs would have been less distracting to everyone than the POOF of black draped on my head like a deceased badger.

I decided in San Juan, Puerto Rico that being me was a lot safer than trying to be a hot Latin romantic writer of grants. I quietly filled in that hair color pot hole and moved along with life.  It occurs to me that the most jarring pot holes I’ve encountered aren’t the ones in the freeway but the ones I’ve dug for myself.

Driving home from a holiday visit in Southern California with family, I was challenged to avoid the growing number of large pot holes in our  freeway system. I drove in Mexico all that way south of Mexico City once and that’s what our freeways reminded me of. I was also reminded of grant writing pot holes as my tires crashed through the muddy voids.

I created a few pot holes during my grant career. I dug a big one in the process of writing a grant for a government agency in Puerto Rico. I dug this one because I wanted to be someone else.

My business partner and I landed an interesting contract to write for a government agency in San Juan. The contract involved travelling there for planning so I was excited and I wanted to make a good impression. This was Puerto Rico, land of Latin intrigue and romance: I wanted to look romantic. The problem was, I had turned 40 recently and was feeling insecure about the growing numbers of gray hairs on my head. I went to the grocery store and I bought a box of “Just for Men” and decided I’d give it a whirl before my trip. I was digging my pot hole.

I’d never used a hair color before. The night before I was to fly to Puerto Rico, I followed the directions word-for-word to apply the color. When I washed out the color and got out of the shower, I could see that my hair came out almost JET BLACK. This was horribly noticeable because my natural hair color is light brown. In a panic I rechecked the box which was printed as “brown”. I thought brown was brown but I learned later that there was a “Light Brown” color too. In the morning, it looked just as black as it did the night before, there was nothing left to do but get on the plane.

I met my business partner in Chicago for the trip down and the look on his face when he said, “You colored your hair huh?” told me that I looked like as much of an idiot as I thought. Suddenly I was losing self-confidence with each plate glass window I passed. The hair color was mismatched to me, even my eyebrows looked odd. I was sweating before I even got on the plane. I decided that one of the first things I’d do was go to a beauty shop near the hotel and get it colored professionally. Or I’d get another box of coloring that was the right color and re-do my hair before our meeting the next day.

We arrived in San Juan and checked in to our hotel agreeing to meet later at the pool beside the beach. I hurried into town to find a new hair color and found a shop. I was advised that lightening the color was not going to happen easily. In desperation, I bought a new box of “Light Brown” at a drug store and went back to my room to “fix” my problem. The second box of coloring did nothing except make my hair even darker.

The group of women I met the next day with made no comment on my hair. I was tempted to do an “Oprah”-style confession since women notice that type of thing but I knew my partner would kill me. I created this pot hole myself by trying to be someone other than who I was. The only thing I needed to be was a great grant writer. I’m sure that the gray hairs would have been less distracting to everyone than the POOF of black draped on my head like a deceased badger.

I decided in San Juan, Puerto Rico that being me was a lot safer than trying to be a hot Latin romantic writer of grants. I quietly filled in that hair color pot hole and moved along with life.  It occurs to me that the most jarring pot holes I’ve encountered aren’t the ones in the freeway but the ones I’ve dug for myself.

I had the most wonderful Christmas in years. My folks came down from Oregon and were so content to hang out and go to my local haunts for a couple of days. My son was with us for much of the time. We ate too much, and drank a little but just enough. We watched “The Grinch” (cartoon version of course) and “Scrooge” with Alastair Sim for my Mom, and a bunch of WWII historical documentaries that involved airplanes for my stepfather. I dodged watching a single episode of “House” or even one minute of Fox News (basic cable is a wonderful thing).

I tried out two new recipes on my guests and both turned out to be big hits. Chili ala Mark and Brian was tremendous and while I altered it a little bit, I mostly held true to the recipe and it was awesome chili. I also made potato pancakes for Christmas morning ala Good Housekeeping and these too turned out better than I could have hoped for when one considers my limited kitchen and culinary aptitude.

We compromised on our annual argument about opening gifts on Christmas Eve by allowing my son and stepfather to each open one gift while my mother and I held steadfast in the face of this flagrant challenge to tradition and we opted to open all of ours on Christmas morning.

Our family gathering held at my cousin’s place on Christmas day was equally wonderful with a huge ham dinner and a Rick’s Dessert Diner cake provided by my Mom to top it all off. We stood under the house eaves in the rain and smoked some cigars (recreational stupidity, not a habit), we drank some nice wine, and we played some Nintendo video Frisbee golf (badly) and enjoyed the company. We all decided not to exchange gifts and simply enjoy each others’ company.

I’d say that by comparison, this was one of the nicest Christmases I’ve had in my lifetime; I’d rank it in the top five. I still have to say that the best one ever was when I got my first bike at about age 7. It was a big red Sears cruiser with a headlight built into the frame. My red-headed girlfriend Rhonda would ride on the back until she caught her foot in the rear spokes putting an end to our on-bike romancing.

This morning I am back in the office working on various grant-related projects. It’s good to be here in the afterglow of such a wonderful time with family. I hope everyone had an equally terrific Christmas!

I had the most wonderful Christmas in years. My folks came down from Oregon and were so content to hang out and go to my local haunts for a couple of days. My son was with us for much of the time. We ate too much, and drank a little but just enough. We watched “The Grinch” (cartoon version of course) and “Scrooge” with Alastair Sim for my Mom, and a bunch of WWII historical documentaries that involved airplanes for my stepfather. I dodged watching a single episode of “House” or even one minute of Fox News (basic cable is a wonderful thing).

I tried out two new recipes on my guests and both turned out to be big hits. Chili ala Mark and Brian was tremendous and while I altered it a little bit, I mostly held true to the recipe and it was awesome chili. I also made potato pancakes for Christmas morning ala Good Housekeeping and these too turned out better than I could have hoped for when one considers my limited kitchen and culinary aptitude.

We compromised on our annual argument about opening gifts on Christmas Eve by allowing my son and stepfather to each open one gift while my mother and I held steadfast in the face of this flagrant challenge to tradition and we opted to open all of ours on Christmas morning.

Our family gathering held at my cousin’s place on Christmas day was equally wonderful with a huge ham dinner and a Rick’s Dessert Diner cake provided by my Mom to top it all off. We stood under the house eaves in the rain and smoked some cigars (recreational stupidity, not a habit), we drank some nice wine, and we played some Nintendo video Frisbee golf (badly) and enjoyed the company. We all decided not to exchange gifts and simply enjoy each others’ company.

I’d say that by comparison, this was one of the nicest Christmases I’ve had in my lifetime; I’d rank it in the top five. I still have to say that the best one ever was when I got my first bike at about age 7. It was a big red Sears cruiser with a headlight built into the frame. My red-headed girlfriend Rhonda would ride on the back until she caught her foot in the rear spokes putting an end to our on-bike romancing.

This morning I am back in the office working on various grant-related projects. It’s good to be here in the afterglow of such a wonderful time with family. I hope everyone had an equally terrific Christmas!

It might be a little late to think about this if you’ve already made it onto Santa’s Naughty List. If you’re in that unfortunate situation this year, you’ll need to pay attention to these tips for the coming grant year so you avoid another lump of coal next December 25.

In order to make Santa’s Nice List as a grant writer, here are some things to do in your grant work:

1. Always tell the truth in your narrative.

2. Always follow the RFP outline carefully.

3. Always proof and edit until your narrative is perfecto.

4. Always follow the formatting requirements.

5. Always charge an ethical fee.

6. Always complete all of your contract obligations.

7. Always help other grant writers out.

8. Always make your deadlines.

9. Always remember to thank your clients and keep them informed about new opportunities.

10. Always use the services of a good editor.

11. Always deliver an electronic copy of the narrative to your client.

12. Always keep careful grant submission evidence.

13. Always keep your electronic files organized.

14. Always leave milk and cookies for Santa.

Santa is probably putting the finishing touches on his Naughty List for this year so I’m not sure if you have time to make up for any lapses, but it’s never too late to get started! Giving your clients everything they deserve will definitely put you high on Santa’s Nice List. I hope Santa brings you exactly what you want for Christmas.

Nobody takes their broken car to a used car salesman for repair. People don’t take their watch to Taco Bell for a new battery. We all look for people who have expertise, credentials, and a successful background to prove they can do the job. A spokes model may make a compelling pitch, but it is unlikely they’ve ever written a grant.
Our company, Creative Resources and Research, offers grant writing courses. We provide these courses in a seminar format on site and we develop curriculum, videos, and materials for a series of online courses.

We use our rich experience in grant writing to develop materials and training scripts; our training is not creative writing. If you purchase grant writing training from Creative Resources and Research, you can be assured that you are getting top quality information created by successful, practicing grant writers.

We have decades of combined experience as full time grant writing professionals. We also held jobs that required grant writing for many years before entering the field full time. We know grant writing backwards and forwards because we’ve written hundreds of successful proposals. Nearly all of the grants we’ve written have been for annual amounts of $100k or more, and some were for totals in the millions of dollars. We have secured nearly 160 million in grants for our clients since 2000.

We’ve written grants for local and state governments and even for the government of Puerto Rico. We’ve scored grants for State and Federal government agencies. We’ve written grants for non-profits and for-profits. We’ve written business plans in Southern California and business proposals in South Africa. We’ve written marketing copy, web copy, and we can even run the copy machine. We’ve done every part of the grant process many times over.

Our experience in grant writing is built on long hours of hard work and diligence. It is built on excellent mentoring. It is built on a network of professionals who give us feedback and share with us about the field. We are still learning, but we are accomplished grant writers. We are not pretenders. We are not beginners.

We respectfully suggest that buying grant writing training from a spokes model makes as much sense as having your watch repaired by Taco Bell. If you want to learn how to write excellent grant proposals, you’ll choose to learn grant writing from experts. At Creative Resources and Research we are grant writers first, teachers second, and spokes models last (or not at all depending on who you talk to).

Nobody takes their broken car to a used car salesman for repair. People don’t take their watch to Taco Bell for a new battery. We all look for people who have expertise, credentials, and a successful background to prove they can do the job. A spokes model may make a compelling pitch, but it is unlikely they’ve ever written a grant.
Our company, Creative Resources and Research, offers grant writing courses. We provide these courses in a seminar format on site and we develop curriculum, videos, and materials for a series of online courses.

We use our rich experience in grant writing to develop materials and training scripts; our training is not creative writing. If you purchase grant writing training from Creative Resources and Research, you can be assured that you are getting top quality information created by successful, practicing grant writers.

We have decades of combined experience as full time grant writing professionals. We also held jobs that required grant writing for many years before entering the field full time. We know grant writing backwards and forwards because we’ve written hundreds of successful proposals. Nearly all of the grants we’ve written have been for annual amounts of $100k or more, and some were for totals in the millions of dollars. We have secured nearly 160 million in grants for our clients since 2000.

We’ve written grants for local and state governments and even for the government of Puerto Rico. We’ve scored grants for State and Federal government agencies. We’ve written grants for non-profits and for-profits. We’ve written business plans in Southern California and business proposals in South Africa. We’ve written marketing copy, web copy, and we can even run the copy machine. We’ve done every part of the grant process many times over.

Our experience in grant writing is built on long hours of hard work and diligence. It is built on excellent mentoring. It is built on a network of professionals who give us feedback and share with us about the field. We are still learning, but we are accomplished grant writers. We are not pretenders. We are not beginners.

We respectfully suggest that buying grant writing training from a spokes model makes as much sense as having your watch repaired by Taco Bell. If you want to learn how to write excellent grant proposals, you’ll choose to learn grant writing from experts. At Creative Resources and Research we are grant writers first, teachers second, and spokes models last (or not at all depending on who you talk to).

I’ve found that there are basically two kinds of people working in the world. There are those with the desire to make “it” happen, and those who enjoy the comfort and stability of the status quo. The “it” is what makes life interesting as a freelance grant writer. The whole risk-reward equation is invigorating, motivating, and adrenaline-inducing.

Whether I have worked inside an agency or outside of one, I’ve been the type of person who wants to make it happen. It didn’t matter if I was making it happen for other people, for the agency I worked for, or for myself, I enjoy the ongoing challenge of promoting a worthwhile person, idea, or project.

Grants offer me the chance to make a difference. I can help someone obtain funding they need to promote an idea, program, or project. That’s a pretty cool position to be in and it’s what I have always been best at doing. I’m good at getting people to the table and facilitating the discussion. I’m good at negotiating compromise and seeking ways around, over, and under barriers. I love it, probably in part because it’s all about using language effectively.

The grant writing process is the process of using both verbal and written language effectively to write successful proposals that promote change. When I held leadership positions, I used to say that change is so hard for people that you can’t change a light build without dissent. Grant projects are like that on a grander scale in which lots of light bulbs usually need to be changed. Grant projects can move big ideas forward but grants almost always mean change will happen. The work of that change often falls on staff outside of those employed by the grant.

Negotiating agreement with people impacted by a grant program is a big deal if the grant is going to be successfully implemented. I’ve seen many grants written through the years that did not involve meaningful input from the “stakeholders” (ugh, we need a new word for that, sounds like a waiter at Ruth’s Chris). These grants got bogged down from Day One as people woke up to the reality of all this new work! “Holy guacamole!” they’d say, “I never agreed to do that!?”

I observed helplessly as these grants failed to gain the momentum needed for change and failed to meet their objectives. Lots of money got spent, but resistance to change prevented anything meaningful from happening. More negotiation was needed before applications were made.

The results of a badly negotiated grant program are terrible. A few of the consequences I’ve seen are the loss of good staff; often these are the same people who brought the idea to the table in the first place. These highly motivated, creative and dedicated people who lose heart and move on to more adaptable environments. The staff hired to replace them are often less committed and more willing to “water-down” the activities and objectives to accommodate the level of resistance they meet.

Another terrible consequence is that the agency may be less willing to pursue future grant proposals or suggest real change. The burn of a grant gone wrong can hurt the agency for a long time so it’s important to negotiate well with everyone the changes impact. This does not mean that all objections must be overcome, that rarely happens. Sometimes a grudging acknowledgement is the best you’re going to get, just be prepared for a few mules.

In spite of that, lay it all on the table so people can’t say they didn’t know what was coming. There’s always going to be unintended consequences but good planning can minimize those. Plus, nobody will be able to honestly say that those consequences were concealed to push a grant agenda forward (some may still say it but you’ll have meeting minutes to prove it just ain’t so).

Making it happen is an exciting feature of grant work. But obtaining funding and successfully creating change are not the same things, the latter does not necessarily flow from the former. Grant writers who volunteer to become involved in the planning process can have a positive influence on outcomes. A grant writer who has been around a while can point out planning pitfalls, suggest program alternatives, and give a fresh perspective to difficult issues of implementation. I find that my many years of project implementation experience make me a valuable resource around the table when grant planning is taking place. Not only that, the information I collect by participating makes my narrative concrete so the time is well-spent.

People in the insurance industry who bring in clients are called “producers.” I’ve always liked that term and apply it to what I do in terms of working with clients. I like to make it happen and produce clients. I like to write grants that make it happen for others. Grant writing is rewarding work in many ways and it takes positive thinking to make “it” happen.