Category Archives: grant writers

Grant Writers Are Not Magicians

Good grant writers can make a lot happen, but we’re not magicians. I’m surprised  at how often I’ve been asked to step far beyond the grant writer role and work miracles within an organization. Here’s a partial list of the things I’ve been asked to do:

  • Make up a program design when none exists.
  • Use language to make it look like an organization has been collaborating with other organizations for a long time when, in fact, it hasn’t.
  • Write letters of support for partners to sign that “say what we need them to say,” rather than what the partner really plans on doing.
  • Write about how the program will be integrated with other programs in the agency when the agency hasn’t told me anything about other programs or how they plan to integrate them.
  • Make up in-kind contributions.
  • Put a budget together with no information about actual personnel costs or fringe benefits.
  • “Fudge” needs data to exaggerate the agency’s need for the grant.
  • Read through thousands of pages of back up information with the expectation that I’ll then have all I need to write a grant for the organization.
  • Take one grant application and “re-purpose” it for other grants at no additional charge because “it’s basically the same thing.”

Some of these things are unethical. Some are fraudulent. Others are just unrealistic.

Yes, I am the Grant Goddess, and yes, I can make miracles happen.

But that doesn’t mean I should, or that I should be expected to in every circumstance.

Have you been asked to do anything unreasonable in your grant writing journey?

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New Federal Grant Opportunities

The federal government, under the auspices of The Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, Office of Family Assistance, has announced three new grant opportunities. These new grants are announced in the form of a “Funding Opportunity Announcement” for the Pathways to Responsible Fatherhood Grants program.

The programs are well-funded with $52,000,000 available for a Fatherhood program, $57,000,000 for a Marriage program, and $6,000,000 for an ex-prisoner Father’s program.

Links to each of the programs are provided below:
Pathways to Responsible Fatherhood Grants Program
Community-Centered Healthy Marriage and Relationship (CCHMR) Grants Program
Community-Centered Responsible Fatherhood Ex-Prisoner Reentry Pilot Project


Call us if you need help writing a grant for one of these opportunities. (530) 669-3600.

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

Where is Grant Writing Perfection?

I’m agonizing over a grant narrative.  It isn’t perfect yet.  I’m missing a key piece of data from the client.  There are a couple of sections that can be tightened up. The deadline is coming and it’s not perfect yet. I always have trouble decided when to put it to rest.

There are some big truths about grant writing I’ve learned through years of practice.

1.      Writing is never finished.
2.      You and your client rarely prioritize the grant in the same way.
3.      The further removed a partner is from the writing, the harder it is to get what you need from them.
4.      You must stop revising at some point at edit carefully.
5.      When a section of narrative is hard to tighten up (make crystal-clear and comprehensible) a graphic might help accomplish that.
Perfection in your written narrative is something you aren’t going to achieve.  You do though want to be perfectly accurate, perfectly edited, and perfectly on time!  You’ll always agonize as you send it that there was a section you could have improved upon.  There will always be that unhelpful partner that sends you a letter of support the day after the grant was due.
We all learn to live with a little imperfection in the world and grant writing is no different.

Related Posts:
Grant Writing is No Mystery
Grant Writing is like Lasagna

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

A Grant Writer’s Favorite Things

Grant writers can be hard to get to know because we spend so much time writing. I’ve put together a short list of favorite things that may help you understand us a little better. Please feel free to add to this list in the comments!

One Grant Writer’s favorite things:

1. The last page

2. Stamping original on the finished proposal

3. A Fed Ex tracking number

4. Clicking “submit”

5. Discovering the perfect quote in the literature

6. Tables of content

7. Unlimited appendices

8. Limited appendices

9. A new ink cartridge

10. An approval letter

11. A new RFP

12. An organized client

13. A completed checklist

14. A jam-free photocopy machine

15. A client who knows more about pdf’s than fax machines

I haven’t put these to a “Sound of Music” melody yet; but it’s in the works, as is the hiking clothing made from window coverings. (I’m finding that venetian blinds make scratchy shorts.)

Other posts you may enjoy:
Waxing Poetic About Grant Writing
Grant Writing is No Mystery
 
Photo Credit – alfonso diaz

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

Top Ten Reasons Why Your Grant Wasn’t Funded: Part II

This is a continuation of my previous post in which I outlined the first five reasons your grant may not have been funded.  So let’s jump right into it shall we?

6. You ran out of time and did a poor job on your budget narrative where you could have added deeper detail on the computers you wanted. (Details, details, details, that’s where the devil is.)

7. Your evaluation plan was shallow – you should have asked the consultant you plan to use to develop that section with you. (Tradition wisdom among mountain climbers is that 90% of the falls happen in the last 10% of the climb when people think they’re done and relax.)

8. You missed a webinar in which the funder gave explicit information necessary to be competitive – but it wasn’t a mandatory webinar. (Remember that the grant maker holds all the cards and may choose to show one when you least expect it.)

9. Your grant was submitted in the same geographic region as one from a more favorably fundable demographic group. (You can’t control for this but you can do the best job possible to demonstrate your client’s needs.)

10. Your grant lacked adequate research citations – perhaps too narrow in scope, out-dated, or authored by researchers whom one, or more, of your readers do not subscribe to. (Convene some experts, spend some time on the phone with one, spend some time in the stacks, whatever it takes to base your program on a solid foundation.)

Grant funding is difficult to obtain and when you throw in the human factor you’ll sometimes get a less-than-satisfactory result for a reason you can’t discern, or which in the reader comments seems prejudicial and unfair. That’s just the way the ball bounces. The best you can do is write a proposal that you are confident about, the rest is up to the readers who score your narrative.

Posts like this one:
 
What is a Grant Competition?
Grant Writing Rejection

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Top Ten Reasons Why Your Grant Wasn’t Funded: Part I

There are lots of possible reasons why a grant isn’t funded. Obvious ones are things like missing the deadline (I want no scuses Lucy), the funder ran out of money (recessions hit everyone), the dog ate your application (bad dog), etc. There are also subtle reasons and here are ten I’ve taken from my experience scoring grants and reviewing reader comments.

1. Your grant was reviewed by somebody from another state who has a grudge against your state. (Personally, I would never fund anything for Hawaii, they’re blessed with 360 degrees of beaches and 365 days of sun, what else do they need? Joking, joking, stop throwing coconuts.)

2. Your grant was reviewed by someone with a strong bias in favor of a particular methodology – and you didn’t use it in your program design. (In the old days you could get caught in the old Apple-PC debate!)

3. Your grant was reviewed by someone unfamiliar with the field you’re writing for – and you did not explain your program adequately for them to understand it. (The project director for agriculture in northern Iowa might be called in to read early childhood education grants.)

4. Your grant was the last to be reviewed by a frustrated triad of fractious – and unemployed – PhD’s competing to prove they’re qualified to serve on your dissertation committee. (Mail order PhD’s are particularly fractious and tend to stuff their computer bags with continental breakfast snails and Splenda® packets)

5. Your grant lacked the detail necessary to tie all the parts together – things like numbering the tables, figures, and graphics then providing a table for these elements. (Or you used too much of all of these things and did not explain your program in enough detail in narrative.)

Five more later…
 
Posts like this one:
Ten Quick and Easy Ways to Make Any Grant Application Better
Getting Past the What to the How

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3 Ways Non-Profits Build Trust with Grant Makers

There are literally tens of thousands of prospective foundations to sift through as you seek non-profit grant funding. Each foundation has its own timeline, guidelines, and fields of interest. All foundations have one thing in common, they look for evidence that your organization is trustworthy before giving you a grant.

New non-profits may find it hard to get their foot in the door with a foundation. Here are three key things to pay attention to that will increase your chance of building trust with foundations so you can secure grant funding:

1) Build it – Build a solid base of local support before seeking grants. I define support as donors, volunteers, and partner organizations.
2) Account for it – Establish an accounting system that would make a CPA proud and then conduct an annual audit to prove it’s as good as you think it is. If you can prove you are trustworthy with small amounts of money, someone might trust you with larger sums.
3) Prove it – By this I mean collect evidence – hard data and anecdotal – to show your programs are working and are appreciated.

If you serve undernourished sea turtles then keep records on how many turtles you take care of this year. A variety of data may be collected such as how many you turned away (if any) for lack of support or how many survive and return to the sea. Ask for written statements from volunteers, take a survey of the community, work with local marine organizations, talk to the media about what you do, join the local Chamber of Commerce, take pictures, and post videos online. Find a volunteer who is a scrap booking enthusiast and let them run wild. You goal is to build a portfolio of evidence that you’re active and effective. Don’t forget to put all this evidence online!

Finding grants for a non-profit organization is a lot easier when you can validate the impact of your programs and prove you are skillful in managing them.

Related Posts:

How is Your Organization’s Governance Equilibrium?
Assessing Results: Are You a Quant or a Qualit?

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Grant Writing Mission: Demonstrate the Effect of Your Cause!

Lack of success in grant writing to foundations usually means that the applicant is trying to convince a grant maker that the agency’s cause IS the grant maker’s desired effect. In other words, a good cause isn’t enough, grant makers expect the cause to have an effect on their field of interest.  Many times the cause an applicant is promoting has no direct impact on the field of interest; there may a sliver of attachment but slivers of impact don’t generate grant money.

The correct approach is exactly the opposite. The convincing grant is the one that presents a cause that makes a grant maker say “BINGO, BULL’S-EYE, that cause has DIRECT IMPACT on my field of interest!” There must be clearly a demonstrable connection between the cause and the effect (on the field of interest).

Ways to improve your chances of securing grant funding:

1. Be absolutely clear about what your cause is. You must know what fields of interest your cause directly impacts. Your mission must inspire that “AHA! DIRECT IMPACT!” moment for the grant maker. Remember, round pegs in round holes and square pegs in square ones.

2. Validate the effect of your cause.  It does not matter if your cause is innovative or common the effect must be demonstrated.

3. Try to get in front of as many people as possible to talk about your cause. Expect to answer a lot of tough questions. Use these meetings to learn and to fine tune your arguments.  Use them to explore all possible linkages to the fields of interest your cause serves.

4. Rally people to your cause. Collaborate and give up some control! Don’t be afraid to reach out to potential partners. Don’t be afraid to bring in powerful Board members. Don’t be afraid to share the vision with others. Many organizations fail to thrive because there is a leader who climbs up on their philanthropic high horse and rides off without the constituents, the Board members, or even the staff! Feed your cause by sharing it and being inclusive; you’ll only starve it if you hold it by the throat.

Grants are given to agencies with a worthy cause that can demonstrate DIRECT IMPACT within a field of interest.  Agency leadership must be clear on what the cause is, who to include, what the impact is/could be, and where the likely funding sources are.

Related Posts:
Taking Your Grant research Beyoind the RFA
Grant Writing – Don’t Chase the Money
Photo Credit – Asif Akbar

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

Grant Writing Mission: Demonstrate the Effect of Your Cause!

Lack of success in grant writing to foundations usually means that the applicant is trying to convince a grant maker that the agency’s cause IS the grant maker’s desired effect. In other words, a good cause isn’t enough, grant makers expect the cause to have an effect on their field of interest.  Many times the cause an applicant is promoting has no direct impact on the field of interest; there may a sliver of attachment but slivers of impact don’t generate grant money.

The correct approach is exactly the opposite. The convincing grant is the one that presents a cause that makes a grant maker say “BINGO, BULL’S-EYE, that cause has DIRECT IMPACT on my field of interest!” There must be clearly a demonstrable connection between the cause and the effect (on the field of interest).

Ways to improve your chances of securing grant funding:

1. Be absolutely clear about what your cause is. You must know what fields of interest your cause directly impacts. Your mission must inspire that “AHA! DIRECT IMPACT!” moment for the grant maker. Remember, round pegs in round holes and square pegs in square ones.

2. Validate the effect of your cause.  It does not matter if your cause is innovative or common the effect must be demonstrated.

3. Try to get in front of as many people as possible to talk about your cause. Expect to answer a lot of tough questions. Use these meetings to learn and to fine tune your arguments.  Use them to explore all possible linkages to the fields of interest your cause serves.

4. Rally people to your cause. Collaborate and give up some control! Don’t be afraid to reach out to potential partners. Don’t be afraid to bring in powerful Board members. Don’t be afraid to share the vision with others. Many organizations fail to thrive because there is a leader who climbs up on their philanthropic high horse and rides off without the constituents, the Board members, or even the staff! Feed your cause by sharing it and being inclusive; you’ll only starve it if you hold it by the throat.

Grants are given to agencies with a worthy cause that can demonstrate DIRECT IMPACT within a field of interest.  Agency leadership must be clear on what the cause is, who to include, what the impact is/could be, and where the likely funding sources are.

Related Posts:
Taking Your Grant research Beyoind the RFA
Grant Writing – Don’t Chase the Money
Photo Credit – Asif Akbar

Four Grant Writing Ethical No-No’s

There are actually many ethical issues involved in grant writing, many more than I expected when I first began my journey as a professional grant writer. Here are four of the most common ethical issues you need to avoid if you are a professional grant writer:

  1. Lying in a proposal.  I have to admit that I have always assumed that everyone would know that lying in a grant proposal is ethically wrong, but you’d be surprised how many times I have heard people try to justify it. Don’t try to exaggerate your need for the grant or include program activities that you don’t intend on implementing. Just tell the truth.
  2. Reusing narrative written for another client. It’s very tempting, especially when you’re overworked and tired, to just lift some narrative that you wrote for another client for the same grant last year to put in someone else’s narrative this year. Don’t do it.  If you get caught (especially by a reader scoring the grant), you risk not being funded, but it’s just plain wrong anyway. If you are being paid for original narrative, write original narrative.  If you can’t think of another way to say what you need to say, don’t take the job.
  3. Poaching funding sources.  I heard this horror story when I met with a local non-profit administrator last week. A private funding source had invited the non-profit to submit a proposal.  This particular funding source does not accept unsolicited proposals.  The non-profit asked its grant writer (an outside consultant) to write a proposal to this funding source.  The grant writer wrote a proposal and submitted it. A couple of weeks later, the non-profit administrator got a phone call from the funding source saying that the grant writer had actually submitted several proposals – the one the funding source had requested as well as proposals on behalf of several other organizations the grant writer worked with.  None of these other proposals were part of the solicitation.  The grant writer had just taken it on herself to try to squeeze in some of her other clients in competition with the client making the original request.  I’m sure she assumed they would not know or find out.  To make matters worse, the representative from the funding source told the non-profit administrator that of the several proposals submitted by that grant writer, the weakest one from from the original agency requesting the work. The non-profit organization that originally asked the grant writer to submit the proposal was ultimately not funded.
  4. Telling a client that they can pay for grant writing services out of the grant when they can’t. There is some debate in the field about whether charging a contingency fee for grant writing services is ethical or not.  Some people insist that contingency fees are unethical, but then call it a “bonus” for getting funded and call that ethical. The real issue, though, is not whether or not it’s a contingency fee, but where that fee comes from. If you tell someone they can pay the fee out of the grant when they can’t, you have essentially lied to them. Very few funding sources allow you to pay for grant writing services out of a grant itself (there are, however, some that do). 

The bottom line is that integrity matters. Trying to cut ethical corners may seem like a profitable decision at the time, but in the end it is not the way to build a successful grant writing career.

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