Category Archives: non-profit

Preparing for the Grant Writing Process

Here’s some advice from non-profit consultant and grant writing expert, Derek Link, on preparing for the grant writing process and staying focused while you work on your grant:

It is entirely possible that as you read this that you are either taking a break from writing a grant, or that you are seeking inspiration as you prepare to write one. In either case, you are probably experiencing the anticipation of mental engagement with a narrative that becomes a consuming process throughout the narrative creation.

The grant writing process is mentally challenging so it’s wise to prepare yourself before you write and to think ahead about your writing process.

Here are some things I do that may be helpful for you to consider:

  1. Get enough sleep. You won’t get more quality writing done by staying up later.
  2. Eat the right foods. If you’re hungry or spaced out on Twinkies, your narrative may go off track.
  3. Take your normal exercise. Sitting and writing is hard on the body and if you get uncomfortable, it’s harder to write well.
  4. Set up a low distraction, comfortable place to write. No unneeded electronics, no kids chirping for snacks; it’s time to isolate and focus. Use good lighting and acomfortable chair. Have some snacks and beverages at the ready.
  5. Be organized before writing. Nothing is worse than getting into a rhythm on a narrative only to come to a screeching halt because some key piece wasn’t anticipated and is missing and since it is Saturday as you write, there’s no way to get it ‘til Monday.
  6. Set a realistic goal for the day. Know how much you want to complete of the narrative so you feel good about your writing. Finishing the narrative should only be your goal once. ( OK, maybe twice)!
  7. Go somewhere else to read your drafts. Two things I like to do with my drafts after I print one out to review: a) I like to go somewhere else to read it like a coffee shop or outdoors in summer, and b) I like to read it out loud to myself since I often get too close to the narrative to hear it in my head after a while.

Remember the dog in the animated cartoon “Up” that is introducing himself and suddenly a squirrel distracts him? Well you don’t need too many squirrels in your day to take you off-task while writing. Getting ready to write requires that you plan ahead to minimize distractions as much as possible, life happens but the squirrels can sometimes be kept at bay.

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Related Posts:
 
Time Management Tips for Grant Writers
 
Form a Grant Planning Committee
 
Facing the Blank Page
 
Relax….and Tell Your Story
 
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Try our GrantTips iPhone App!
 
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Published by Creative Resources & Research http://grantgoddess.com

The Anti-Creativity Checklist for Non-Profit Leaders

Lisbeth Cort, author of the blog, “Nonprofit Execs on the Edge” shared this excellent video for leaders about 14 things you should never say!!!

It’s an Anti-Creativity Checklist….

My Anti-Creativity Checklist from Youngme Moon on Vimeo.

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Vsit GrantGoddess.com for mroe advice for non-profit leaders.

Published by Creative Resources & Research http://grantgoddess.com

Superman, Where Are You?

We are facing a big deadline this week.  We have multiple grants due at the same time and everyone has his or her head down and nose to the grindstone, but we can always count on Derek to help us see the humor of it all.  Here are some humorous thoughts from non-profit consultant and expert grant writer, Derek Link, on slowing down time when deadline time is racing closer.

Time flies when you’re approaching a deadline. I’m pretty sure that Superman is the only being, real or fictional, who can turn back time. If you’re approaching a deadline – mere mortal that you are – here are a few places you can go where in my experience time can actually slow down.

  1. The DMV.
  2. Customer service calls to the phone company.
  3. Jogging on the indoor track at Sun City.
  4. Meeting with an IRS agent.
  5. A long line at the grocery store with a rookie cashier, a bad receipt tape, and a customer who’s using their debit card for the first time while arguing about the amount her single tomato was discounted.
  6. The post office at lunch.
  7. Watching the calendar after hiring a building contractor with a bunch of Better Business Bureau complaints.
  8. Technical support calls from – or to – India with “Roger”, “Jason”, or “Howard”.
  9. Auto dealerships after giving up your car keys.
  10. Driving and waiting for the “Code 3” police car to pass you knowing you were five mph over the limit.
  11. Waiting for a copier repairman or anything else on grant deadline day.

So if time seems to be going too fast and your deadline is staring you down like an angry railroad union member at the helm of a locomotive, take yourself away to a place where time slows down. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could merge these time warps and make it slow down for important stuff and speed up for annoying stuff? Oh Superman, where are you!?

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Related posts:

Grant Writing and the Space/Time Continuum

Stress Relief through Laughter

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Don’t forget to visit GrantGoddess.com for tips and ideas to improve your grant writing skills!

Superman, Where Are You?

We are facing a big deadline this week.  We have multiple grants due at the same time and everyone has his or her head down and nose to the grindstone, but we can always count on Derek to help us see the humor of it all.  Here are some humorous thoughts from non-profit consultant and expert grant writer, Derek Link, on slowing down time when deadline time is racing closer.

Time flies when you’re approaching a deadline. I’m pretty sure that Superman is the only being, real or fictional, who can turn back time. If you’re approaching a deadline – mere mortal that you are – here are a few places you can go where in my experience time can actually slow down.

  1. The DMV.
  2. Customer service calls to the phone company.
  3. Jogging on the indoor track at Sun City.
  4. Meeting with an IRS agent.
  5. A long line at the grocery store with a rookie cashier, a bad receipt tape, and a customer who’s using their debit card for the first time while arguing about the amount her single tomato was discounted.
  6. The post office at lunch.
  7. Watching the calendar after hiring a building contractor with a bunch of Better Business Bureau complaints.
  8. Technical support calls from – or to – India with “Roger”, “Jason”, or “Howard”.
  9. Auto dealerships after giving up your car keys.
  10. Driving and waiting for the “Code 3” police car to pass you knowing you were five mph over the limit.
  11. Waiting for a copier repairman or anything else on grant deadline day.

So if time seems to be going too fast and your deadline is staring you down like an angry railroad union member at the helm of a locomotive, take yourself away to a place where time slows down. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could merge these time warps and make it slow down for important stuff and speed up for annoying stuff? Oh Superman, where are you!?

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Related posts:

Grant Writing and the Space/Time Continuum

Stress Relief through Laughter

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Don’t forget to visit GrantGoddess.com for tips and ideas to improve your grant writing skills!

Published by Creative Resources & Research http://grantgoddess.com

Some Grants Are Like Peanut Butter

Here we go again….. Non-profit consultant and expert grant writer, Derek Link, shares yet another food-related grant writing analogy.  What do you do when the words just get stuck in your head?

In all the time I’ve been writing grants, I find that some grants flow easily out of my brain to my computer and others get stuck to the roof of my mouth like a spoonful of peanut butter. I sit at the computer during those times like my old German Short-Haired Pointer “Tucker” eating peanut butter, just gumming and gumming and gumming but not able to free up the narrative.

It’s hard sometimes to figure out why I’m stuck with a grant, but often it’s because I don’t have a clear picture of the program I am writing. Oh, I know what the program is about, but I just can’t explain how it’s going to work. Here are a few things I try to get the narrative “peanut butter” off the roof of my mouth.

  1. Develop a logic model for the project. This forces you to outline your thinking in a sequential (and logical) way.
  2. Do a little reading about the topic area you are writing about. Sometimes that gives me the spark I need.
  3. Talk more to the client about the program design and get them to expound on how they see it working.
  4. Try to write the abstract. If you can’t write a summary of the project, this may explain the parts of it that you’re stuck on.
  5. Revisit your goals and objectives. Sometimes your objectives are just activities and if they are, you’ll get stuck because you won’t have anything new to write about in the program section.

So when you’ve eaten a big gob of peanut butter and its stuck to the roof of your mouth and you’re sitting at the computer trying to get unstuck, try one of these five ideas. Hope it helps!

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Related Posts:
 
Facing the Blank Page (Or, Beginning to Write)
 
Try a Change of Perspective
 
Some Thoughts from the Coach on Setting Your Intent
 
A Few Words from the Coach about Focus
 
 
Want more tips?  Visit GrantGoddess.com!

Some Grants Are Like Peanut Butter

Here we go again….. Non-profit consultant and expert grant writer, Derek Link, shares yet another food-related grant writing analogy.  What do you do when the words just get stuck in your head?

In all the time I’ve been writing grants, I find that some grants flow easily out of my brain to my computer and others get stuck to the roof of my mouth like a spoonful of peanut butter. I sit at the computer during those times like my old German Short-Haired Pointer “Tucker” eating peanut butter, just gumming and gumming and gumming but not able to free up the narrative.

It’s hard sometimes to figure out why I’m stuck with a grant, but often it’s because I don’t have a clear picture of the program I am writing. Oh, I know what the program is about, but I just can’t explain how it’s going to work. Here are a few things I try to get the narrative “peanut butter” off the roof of my mouth.

  1. Develop a logic model for the project. This forces you to outline your thinking in a sequential (and logical) way.
  2. Do a little reading about the topic area you are writing about. Sometimes that gives me the spark I need.
  3. Talk more to the client about the program design and get them to expound on how they see it working.
  4. Try to write the abstract. If you can’t write a summary of the project, this may explain the parts of it that you’re stuck on.
  5. Revisit your goals and objectives. Sometimes your objectives are just activities and if they are, you’ll get stuck because you won’t have anything new to write about in the program section.

So when you’ve eaten a big gob of peanut butter and its stuck to the roof of your mouth and you’re sitting at the computer trying to get unstuck, try one of these five ideas. Hope it helps!

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Related Posts:
 
Facing the Blank Page (Or, Beginning to Write)
 
Try a Change of Perspective
 
Some Thoughts from the Coach on Setting Your Intent
 
A Few Words from the Coach about Focus
 
 
Want more tips?  Visit GrantGoddess.com!

Published by Creative Resources & Research http://grantgoddess.com

Grants Are Like Sausage

Non-profit consultant and expert grant writer, Derek Link, must be hungry.  Last week, he shared with you how Grants Are Like Donuts. This week, he writes that grants are like sausage. Enjoy his post about the importance of processing and editing your final grant proposal:

Like making laws, writing grants is sort of like making sausage, a messy process not too appetizing to watch. Processing a grant, like making sausage, involves lots of parts getting thrown together, with tons of information being ground up into a palatable chunk of copy.

Have you ever chomped down on a piece of cartilage in your sausage? Kind of slows you down doesn’t it? But when sausage is properly ground, you probably don’t ever come across anything too chewy! Reading a badly written grant is kind of like that piece of cartilage that you have to stop and chew on a while.

Here’s a piece of copy from an actual grant that, in my opinion, represents chewy cartilage. This kind of chewy writing makes your brain do a lot of unnecessary and unpalatable mental chewing.

“LEP students at J. Doe elementary school have a high level of psychomotor and spatial/mechanical skills that will be utilized through computer assisted instruction to enhance language learning activities. In selecting LEP students for participation, attention was paid to the Special Education criteria required by the State Education Agency. Special Education students are diagnosed using appropriate instruments and will be served accordingly.”

I have to guess at what they were trying to say, but it sure was chewy! This grant should have been processed more, and by that I mean edited, reviewed, commentary invited, revisions made, and re-edited – then edited once more. Chewy grants don’t score well and don’t get funded. So be sure to process-process-process!

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Related posts from the archives:

Trust the Grant Writing Process

How Can the Grant You Just Finished Help Make You  a Better Writer?

Good Grant Writers Are Like Wedding Planners

Published by Creative Resources & Research http://grantgoddess.com

Grants Are Like Sausage

Non-profit consultant and expert grant writer, Derek Link, must be hungry.  Last week, he shared with you how Grants Are Like Donuts. This week, he writes that grants are like sausage. Enjoy his post about the importance of processing and editing your final grant proposal:

Like making laws, writing grants is sort of like making sausage, a messy process not too appetizing to watch. Processing a grant, like making sausage, involves lots of parts getting thrown together, with tons of information being ground up into a palatable chunk of copy.

Have you ever chomped down on a piece of cartilage in your sausage? Kind of slows you down doesn’t it? But when sausage is properly ground, you probably don’t ever come across anything too chewy! Reading a badly written grant is kind of like that piece of cartilage that you have to stop and chew on a while.

Here’s a piece of copy from an actual grant that, in my opinion, represents chewy cartilage. This kind of chewy writing makes your brain do a lot of unnecessary and unpalatable mental chewing.

“LEP students at J. Doe elementary school have a high level of psychomotor and spatial/mechanical skills that will be utilized through computer assisted instruction to enhance language learning activities. In selecting LEP students for participation, attention was paid to the Special Education criteria required by the State Education Agency. Special Education students are diagnosed using appropriate instruments and will be served accordingly.”

I have to guess at what they were trying to say, but it sure was chewy! This grant should have been processed more, and by that I mean edited, reviewed, commentary invited, revisions made, and re-edited – then edited once more. Chewy grants don’t score well and don’t get funded. So be sure to process-process-process!

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Related posts from the archives:

Trust the Grant Writing Process

How Can the Grant You Just Finished Help Make You  a Better Writer?

Good Grant Writers Are Like Wedding Planners

Grants for Individuals – A Funding Sasquatch?

Non-profit consultant and grant writing expert, Derek Link, provides some clarity about the availability of government grants for individuals:

I get phone calls, emails, and tweets from people who need a grant for something they want to do like open a coffee shop. These contacts come from individuals, private citizens, who are not affiliated with a non profit organization. These well-intentioned folks just have an idea and need some money to implement it.

The problem is that grants for individuals are kind of like Sasquatch – Many people believe they exist, but nobody I know has ever seen or captured one. Because of this I put grants for average individuals into the “myth” category, it doesn’t mean they don’t exist, it just means I’ve haven’t seen any that give money to start a business. The two individual grants I am aware of are, 1) college grants that you apply for through a college financial aid office, and 2) grants for high level research scientists.
I know there are people who would argue with me and they’d probably take me out to their garage to show me plaster impressions of RFP’s and/or whip out a photo album with fuzzy pictures of big hairy grant checks. But until I see the beast for myself, I will remain a skeptic.
The main reason I am hesitant on this subject is that I have a suspicion the people perpetuating the myth are making money from it. I suspect these people are the unsavory characters I’ve seen on television who work hard at selling books full of free government information.
I know I am sounding a little like Simon Cowell after a weak American Idol performance, but that’s because I don’t like snake oil salesmen. It bugs me when people are misled by a false promise of easy money. Good opportunities take hard work in my experience, and they’ve only come knocking after I was well-prepared for them.
If you want to be a business owner, prepare yourself. Go to classes about being an entrepreneur, read blogs about business, read the Wall Street Journal, join the chamber of commerce, etc. And while you’re preparing, save some money so when you go and ask for help, you’ll have credibility because you have some skin in the game.
If Sasquatch is out there, it’s going to take some looking. Get online and do some research on government websites where they have free information about grants. Try grants.gov where all the federal grants available are listed, go to a federal business assistance center, go to the chamber of commerce, and if all of these sources don’t turn up an individual grant for you then, write a business plan and look for investors.
Having a dream is great! Finding someone to finance the dream is almost as hard as finding Sasquatch.

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Interested in grants for your non-profit organization of school?  Contact us at GrantGoddess.com!

Published by Creative Resources & Research http://grantgoddess.com