Category Archives: Uncategorized

Grant Writing is No Mystery

A good grant writer does not leave much to the readers’ imagination. Page restrictions limit grant narratives and require a taut, limited narrative. A mystery writer seeks to spark the reader’s imagination but a grant writer seeks to answer all possible questions directly and early on.  A grant writer who writes grant narrative mysteries won’t be writing grants for very long.

Let’s compare grant writing to the rules of mystery writing.

1. In mystery writing, plot is everything – In grant writing the core is project design, but you can’t really say it’s everything. All parts of a grant are scored and since a nearly perfect score is what you need to get funding, you can’t say that one part of a grant is “everything.”

2. Introduce both the detective and the culprit early on –I like to open each grant with a short summary paragraph about what the grant will do and for whom. It sets the stage for the reader.

3. Introduce the crime within the first three chapters of your mystery novel – This is probably most like the purpose of your grant and here again, I like to introduce that immediately, certainly sooner, not later.

4. The crime should be sufficiently violent — preferably a murder – Yikes! Well, let’s say that your solution to the needs presented should be compelling, perhaps not murderously so.

5. The crime should be believable – Your goals and objectives must be believable in terms of addressing the needs presented, in terms of scope, in terms of budget, and so on.

6. The detective should solve the case using only rational and scientific methods – In this case, your project manager, principal investigator, of project director should be implementing activities that use rational, research-based, evidence-based methods to meet the needs described.

7. The culprit must be capable of committing the crime – Use real data and cite sources for needs data, cite sources for methods to be implemented that demonstrate to the reader that the proposal and the proposing agency are capable of, and likely to, “commit the solution”.

8. In mystery writing, don’t try to fool your reader – WOW, maybe mystery writing is a lot like grant writing. #1 rule in grant writing is to tell the truth. Lay it all out there clearly and succinctly and you will have made the best possible case for your proposal and when it’s funded, you won’t have trouble meeting your objectives!
9. Do your research – Amen!
10. Wait as long as possible to reveal the culprit – This is where grant writing and mystery writing are at polar opposites. If you wait until the end of your grant to reveal important details about your project, you’re sunk. A grant is not a mystery, and those that are receive low scores and don’t get funded.
There are other differences between writing a mystery and writing a grant. The amount of descriptive language contributing to setting and character development are minimized in writing a grant. It may be important to talk about the general setting of the place where the project will be implemented such as, “impoverished inner-city neighborhood.” A mystery writer may have the luxury of using a whole page to describe the dank alley in this neighborhood where the crime took place. A mystery writer may take pages to describe characters but in a grant this is typically replaced with an attached resume for the principal investigator.
Writing fiction and writing grants are not the same, but grant writers who also write fiction develop a variety of skills that cross over. Plain English that tells a story well is a common goal of both grant writing and mystery writing.
(Ten Rules of Mystery Writing taken from: http://fictionwriting.about.com/od/genrefiction/tp/mysteryrules.htm, accessed on 11/5/10)
Photo Credit – Marija Gjurgjan

By Derek Link

Technology is Changing Everything, Even Grant Writing Jobs

I was born in ’59, that’s right all you young whipper-snappers out there, in the fifties (but barely).  It means I’m fifty one but context can only provide a vision of how old that really is.  In 1959, Alaska and Hawaii became the 49th and 50th states (in honor of my birth), Barbie dolls were introduced by Mattel (the start of negative body images among women), Weird Al Yankovic, Magic Johnson, Kevin Spacey, and Val Kilmer were born while Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper, and Ritchie Valens died (Bye Bye American Pie).  Bobby Darrin’s “Mack the Knife” was the #1 song and the Beatles had not even invaded yet.  A lot has certainly transpired in the past 51 years.

Technology has continuously challenged me to keep up. Technology I remember in my house as a kid can be inventoried as: 1) a black rotary telephone (the ones with a round dial you used to put your finger in and actually dial), 2) a black and white television; 3) a toaster that burned the toast every morning, and 4) a hifi with radio and turntable. (I still get nostalgic when I hear someone scraping toast). Our black and white TV was replaced by a color model when I was in third grade. Television programs ended at around 10 or 11 and a test pattern with an Indian in the center was all you saw until around six the next morning.

Transistor radios came out in the early sixties and I recall getting one for Christmas one year. These relied on a one-ear headphone that broke easily so we all learned how to strip wires and twist them back together which never worked. Digital calculators began making their way into the schools during the time I was in high school and these were an expensive novelty and only good for spelling words upside down since I never did my math homework anyway. Digital watches followed soon after.

Computers were obscure things back then. My Dad worked in programming at Paramount Pictures on the IBM UniVac and my Mom was a keypunch operator for a couple of years. But we had no idea about the computer age that was coming our way. I think only Bill Gates and a few of his pals were that omniscient in those years (drat our lack of vision).

Video games entered my life in my senior year of high school in1976 when we were given a Pong game that played on the television. We enjoyed it but there were claims that the game damaged the television screens so I think we got rid of it. Sometime after Pong, Pac Man games were introduced and the pinball machine never recovered its former glory.

I paid little attention to technology in college, all I needed was my portable Remington typewriter for writing papers. My post-college room mate owned an Apple IIe computer which was useful for writing my Masters thesis. I think during the process he upgraded to a MacIntosh computer which was a giant leap forward in technology and it actually used 3.5 inch disks rather than the 6 inchers that the IIe required.

I first used the Internet during my Masters work when I used an online database for research at a local university, the only place it was accessible. I would not even have an email address for another four years or so and would not really begin to use the technology for several after that.

My first cell phone was a Motorola bag phone that weighed about three or four pounds. I remember the first two times that I was really impressed with the cell phone technology. The first was when I was travelling by car in Ontario, Canada and the phone rang. It was my secretary in California calling me. Here I was about 2,500 miles away, wireless, and the phone rang nonetheless! The second time was when some teenagers were acting like fools in a car. I was mad so I placed the phone on my dashboard and picked up the receiver and waved it at the driver who quickly sped away.

Grant writing jobs have emerged from the technological dark ages along with everything else. My first grants were written on computer so I never suffered the task of writing a grant on a typewriter. I consider those old-time grant writers to be a bunch of tough old birds, like the pioneers who came to California across the Wolfskill Trail in Conestoga Wagons. Grant research in those days surely would have required grueling time in the library searching the stacks for relevant literature to quote, more like my Masters research required.  I’m soft and like it that way.

The vast Internet search improvements from Gopher to Google have made my job as a grant writer smoother and easier. It has also raised the bar for research to a whole new level. Grant maker research is also improved and getting notification of RFP’s no longer depends on the post office. Grant submission is increasingly an online process so the entire grant industry is moving inevitably toward a paperless norm, and speaking of paperless…

I arrived at home the other day to find an early Christmas present from a dear friend. The box was labeled Amazon and when I picked it up it rattled, so I thought I’d received a book. A book was inside, but it is more correct to say that I received books, thousands of books; my friend sent me a Kindle! This amazing little piece of technology can even read the books to me aloud! Although I am still learning all of its functions, I know that I can download books anytime and almost anywhere. It is amazing.

I don’t know where technology will take me next but I’m pretty sure it’s going to be more amazing than my new Kindle, Netbook, or laptop. It’s going to do more, cost less, and be more incredible than what I’ve even dreamt of. My main challenge is to adopt and implement new technology before it’s obsolete. I have an little seven year old HP handheld that is so out of date I can’t even give it away even though it’s WIFI enabled.

I look back at my life so far and I’m astounded that technology has progressed from the vacuum tube operating system in our black and white bunny-eared TV (remember those horizontal and vertical hold knobs?), to a black and white, chip-driven, wireless Kindle that can read to me, and all this in a little over 50 years. Mostly I’m grateful that I didn’t start writing grants when the writing wasn’t the hardest part of the process.

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

Technology is Changing Everything, Even Grant Writing Jobs

I was born in ’59, that’s right all you young whipper-snappers out there, in the fifties (but barely).  It means I’m fifty one but context can only provide a vision of how old that really is.  In 1959, Alaska and Hawaii became the 49th and 50th states (in honor of my birth), Barbie dolls were introduced by Mattel (the start of negative body images among women), Weird Al Yankovic, Magic Johnson, Kevin Spacey, and Val Kilmer were born while Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper, and Ritchie Valens died (Bye Bye American Pie).  Bobby Darrin’s “Mack the Knife” was the #1 song and the Beatles had not even invaded yet.  A lot has certainly transpired in the past 51 years.

Technology has continuously challenged me to keep up. Technology I remember in my house as a kid can be inventoried as: 1) a black rotary telephone (the ones with a round dial you used to put your finger in and actually dial), 2) a black and white television; 3) a toaster that burned the toast every morning, and 4) a hifi with radio and turntable. (I still get nostalgic when I hear someone scraping toast). Our black and white TV was replaced by a color model when I was in third grade. Television programs ended at around 10 or 11 and a test pattern with an Indian in the center was all you saw until around six the next morning.

Transistor radios came out in the early sixties and I recall getting one for Christmas one year. These relied on a one-ear headphone that broke easily so we all learned how to strip wires and twist them back together which never worked. Digital calculators began making their way into the schools during the time I was in high school and these were an expensive novelty and only good for spelling words upside down since I never did my math homework anyway. Digital watches followed soon after.

Computers were obscure things back then. My Dad worked in programming at Paramount Pictures on the IBM UniVac and my Mom was a keypunch operator for a couple of years. But we had no idea about the computer age that was coming our way. I think only Bill Gates and a few of his pals were that omniscient in those years (drat our lack of vision).

Video games entered my life in my senior year of high school in1976 when we were given a Pong game that played on the television. We enjoyed it but there were claims that the game damaged the television screens so I think we got rid of it. Sometime after Pong, Pac Man games were introduced and the pinball machine never recovered its former glory.

I paid little attention to technology in college, all I needed was my portable Remington typewriter for writing papers. My post-college room mate owned an Apple IIe computer which was useful for writing my Masters thesis. I think during the process he upgraded to a MacIntosh computer which was a giant leap forward in technology and it actually used 3.5 inch disks rather than the 6 inchers that the IIe required.

I first used the Internet during my Masters work when I used an online database for research at a local university, the only place it was accessible. I would not even have an email address for another four years or so and would not really begin to use the technology for several after that.

My first cell phone was a Motorola bag phone that weighed about three or four pounds. I remember the first two times that I was really impressed with the cell phone technology. The first was when I was travelling by car in Ontario, Canada and the phone rang. It was my secretary in California calling me. Here I was about 2,500 miles away, wireless, and the phone rang nonetheless! The second time was when some teenagers were acting like fools in a car. I was mad so I placed the phone on my dashboard and picked up the receiver and waved it at the driver who quickly sped away.

Grant writing jobs have emerged from the technological dark ages along with everything else. My first grants were written on computer so I never suffered the task of writing a grant on a typewriter. I consider those old-time grant writers to be a bunch of tough old birds, like the pioneers who came to California across the Wolfskill Trail in Conestoga Wagons. Grant research in those days surely would have required grueling time in the library searching the stacks for relevant literature to quote, more like my Masters research required.  I’m soft and like it that way.

The vast Internet search improvements from Gopher to Google have made my job as a grant writer smoother and easier. It has also raised the bar for research to a whole new level. Grant maker research is also improved and getting notification of RFP’s no longer depends on the post office. Grant submission is increasingly an online process so the entire grant industry is moving inevitably toward a paperless norm, and speaking of paperless…

I arrived at home the other day to find an early Christmas present from a dear friend. The box was labeled Amazon and when I picked it up it rattled, so I thought I’d received a book. A book was inside, but it is more correct to say that I received books, thousands of books; my friend sent me a Kindle! This amazing little piece of technology can even read the books to me aloud! Although I am still learning all of its functions, I know that I can download books anytime and almost anywhere. It is amazing.

I don’t know where technology will take me next but I’m pretty sure it’s going to be more amazing than my new Kindle, Netbook, or laptop. It’s going to do more, cost less, and be more incredible than what I’ve even dreamt of. My main challenge is to adopt and implement new technology before it’s obsolete. I have an little seven year old HP handheld that is so out of date I can’t even give it away even though it’s WIFI enabled.

I look back at my life so far and I’m astounded that technology has progressed from the vacuum tube operating system in our black and white bunny-eared TV (remember those horizontal and vertical hold knobs?), to a black and white, chip-driven, wireless Kindle that can read to me, and all this in a little over 50 years. Mostly I’m grateful that I didn’t start writing grants when the writing wasn’t the hardest part of the process.

Grant Writing by Accident

My high school counselor never told me I was especially good at technical writing. I’m not sure why he didn’t see my potential, but grant writing as a career never came up. To be honest, I can’t remember what he did tell me, but I’m 100% certain it had nothing to do with writing grant proposals and I wasn’t hearing what adults were saying too well anyway.

I am constantly amazed at the diversity of ways people earn a living. The tiniest fraction of these jobs make it onto counseling sheets. Counselors are, after all, living in a small part of the working world and for all intents and purposes sheltered from what’s going on in the business world. It isn’t their fault, they have an office and a job to do which prevents them from wandering about the way I have meeting people who do odd and interesting things.

For instance, I know a man whose business is to sell space on cell phone towers to companies that want to place an antenna there. I know a man who sells space in a secure data storage facility where companies can pay to keep their servers, (lots of medical companies use their services so the data is secured). I met a young woman who sells bandwidth for cell phones on undersea telephone fiber optic cables between continents (bet you thought cell phones were all satellites too!). I know a man who builds solar water heating panels, and an art gallery owner too. I’m pretty sure that none of these people got into those jobs by following advice based on the results of a high school aptitude test.

I know my grant writing job has something to do with what I did learn in high school, but nobody could have directed me here. My ability in grant writing was developed out of job necessity and interest. Grant writing requires a distinct set of skills that a high school guidance counselor would have a hard time assessing.
Grant writers must be; a) excellent at writing, b) skilled at research, c) excellent at reading technical documents, d) detail-oriented to a fine degree, e) excellent at verbal communication, f) excellent at planning, g) competent at graphic design, h) highly determined, i) good with people, and j) super-organized.
My success as a grant writer was not predictable because the job also requires intensive concentration. My dismal record in completing high school geometry homework would not have recommended a career requiring concentration. But perhaps my career was never meant to follow a linear path, maybe we’re all works-in-progress, or maybe I was just another “wing-nut” teenager (OK, I was).
Self awareness and having interaction with lots of people leads to discovery of new opportunities, that’s what led me to a grant writing job. I committed myself to learning and I found new opportunities. I even encountered people who were willing to help me. A grant writing job is one of thousands of possibilities for a person determined to develop their talents.  So even if you start off all tangled up with your foot on your head, you may still eventually get where you’re going.
Published by Creative Resources & Research http://grantgoddess.com

Grant Writing by Accident

My high school counselor never told me I was especially good at technical writing. I’m not sure why he didn’t see my potential, but grant writing as a career never came up. To be honest, I can’t remember what he did tell me, but I’m 100% certain it had nothing to do with writing grant proposals and I wasn’t hearing what adults were saying too well anyway.

I am constantly amazed at the diversity of ways people earn a living. The tiniest fraction of these jobs make it onto counseling sheets. Counselors are, after all, living in a small part of the working world and for all intents and purposes sheltered from what’s going on in the business world. It isn’t their fault, they have an office and a job to do which prevents them from wandering about the way I have meeting people who do odd and interesting things.

For instance, I know a man whose business is to sell space on cell phone towers to companies that want to place an antenna there. I know a man who sells space in a secure data storage facility where companies can pay to keep their servers, (lots of medical companies use their services so the data is secured). I met a young woman who sells bandwidth for cell phones on undersea telephone fiber optic cables between continents (bet you thought cell phones were all satellites too!). I know a man who builds solar water heating panels, and an art gallery owner too. I’m pretty sure that none of these people got into those jobs by following advice based on the results of a high school aptitude test.

I know my grant writing job has something to do with what I did learn in high school, but nobody could have directed me here. My ability in grant writing was developed out of job necessity and interest. Grant writing requires a distinct set of skills that a high school guidance counselor would have a hard time assessing.
Grant writers must be; a) excellent at writing, b) skilled at research, c) excellent at reading technical documents, d) detail-oriented to a fine degree, e) excellent at verbal communication, f) excellent at planning, g) competent at graphic design, h) highly determined, i) good with people, and j) super-organized.
My success as a grant writer was not predictable because the job also requires intensive concentration. My dismal record in completing high school geometry homework would not have recommended a career requiring concentration. But perhaps my career was never meant to follow a linear path, maybe we’re all works-in-progress, or maybe I was just another “wing-nut” teenager (OK, I was).
Self awareness and having interaction with lots of people leads to discovery of new opportunities, that’s what led me to a grant writing job. I committed myself to learning and I found new opportunities. I even encountered people who were willing to help me. A grant writing job is one of thousands of possibilities for a person determined to develop their talents.  So even if you start off all tangled up with your foot on your head, you may still eventually get where you’re going.

Gauging the Success of a Proposal Writer

If you’re seeking a proposal writer for your organization, assessing their success is mission critical. Rising stars of the grant world can become falling stars with one bad grant season. But how do you gauge success of a proposal writer? Many of us measure our success by the percentage of grants we are successful in securing for clients. We also keep track of the total dollars we’ve helped clients secure over time. Some proposal writers shy away from these kinds of measurements because they may have a low percentage of success just starting out or perhaps they haven’t been writing long enough or for large enough grants to have amassed an impressive bottom line for clients yet.
 
In the present economy, the only way not to have your batting average drop as a proposal writer is not to write any grants. It’s a tough environment right now and with money so tight a lot more agencies are submitting applications than ever before. The percentage of proposals funded is bound to drop. But the percentage of grants funded does tell me two things which are not equally valuable measures of success. First, and more important, the percentage of successful applications tells me how well a proposal writer writes grants. The second thing it tells me is how carefully they select what they will write and whether they are willing to take risks for clients. What an overall percentage does not tell me is whether a grant writer has experience and/or success in writing for a particular grant maker or program. This is important to know because there are some grant programs which I am batting 1000 (100% success, yeah baby!) and there are others which I’ve written to once which were not successful (0% success, whoa Nellie!). A proposal writer who has an overall success percentage that’s low (say below 50%), or who won’t tell you what it is, should be able to give you other proof that they are successful.
 
Another way a proposal writer demonstrates success is in the amount of funding they have secured for their clients. A new grant writer will have trouble showing a lot of money secured because they’re new. But a proposal writer who has survived say ten years in the business should have a sizeable portfolio of clients and grants secured. You do want to know what’s in the portfolio because if they have secured 50 million dollars that could be all from one grant! Their percentage could be around 5% if that 50 million dollar grant was one of twenty they’ve written and nineteen of the twenty were declined! You may still want them to write for you if it’s to the same program they were successful in, but you may not! Remember too that the portfolio of clients is a proprietary matter and a proposal writer does not have to share that information with you, and they may have clients who prefer not to have their business relationship used for promotional purposes.
 
In the end, you want to hire a successful proposal writer who is a good fit for your organization and who can demonstrate their proficiency through a history of success. Measuring success can be a little tricky but if you remember these three questions, you’ll probably make a good decision.
  1. Do they have a recent history of success?
  2. Do they have evidence?
  3. Do they have successful experience with the source you want to apply to? Or at least in the topic area of the grant?
A proposal writer who tells you they don’t keep score is failing to do that for a reason! I’d be asking them why before I hired them! Grants are submitted into competition so there are winners and losers. The only way to make a living as a proposal writer, or as an agency that depends on grants, is to be on the winning side most of the time.
 

Gauging the Success of a Proposal Writer

If you’re seeking a proposal writer for your organization, assessing their success is mission critical. Rising stars of the grant world can become falling stars with one bad grant season. But how do you gauge success of a proposal writer? Many of us measure our success by the percentage of grants we are successful in securing for clients. We also keep track of the total dollars we’ve helped clients secure over time. Some proposal writers shy away from these kinds of measurements because they may have a low percentage of success just starting out or perhaps they haven’t been writing long enough or for large enough grants to have amassed an impressive bottom line for clients yet.
 
In the present economy, the only way not to have your batting average drop as a proposal writer is not to write any grants. It’s a tough environment right now and with money so tight a lot more agencies are submitting applications than ever before. The percentage of proposals funded is bound to drop. But the percentage of grants funded does tell me two things which are not equally valuable measures of success. First, and more important, the percentage of successful applications tells me how well a proposal writer writes grants. The second thing it tells me is how carefully they select what they will write and whether they are willing to take risks for clients. What an overall percentage does not tell me is whether a grant writer has experience and/or success in writing for a particular grant maker or program. This is important to know because there are some grant programs which I am batting 1000 (100% success, yeah baby!) and there are others which I’ve written to once which were not successful (0% success, whoa Nellie!). A proposal writer who has an overall success percentage that’s low (say below 50%), or who won’t tell you what it is, should be able to give you other proof that they are successful.
 
Another way a proposal writer demonstrates success is in the amount of funding they have secured for their clients. A new grant writer will have trouble showing a lot of money secured because they’re new. But a proposal writer who has survived say ten years in the business should have a sizeable portfolio of clients and grants secured. You do want to know what’s in the portfolio because if they have secured 50 million dollars that could be all from one grant! Their percentage could be around 5% if that 50 million dollar grant was one of twenty they’ve written and nineteen of the twenty were declined! You may still want them to write for you if it’s to the same program they were successful in, but you may not! Remember too that the portfolio of clients is a proprietary matter and a proposal writer does not have to share that information with you, and they may have clients who prefer not to have their business relationship used for promotional purposes.
 
In the end, you want to hire a successful proposal writer who is a good fit for your organization and who can demonstrate their proficiency through a history of success. Measuring success can be a little tricky but if you remember these three questions, you’ll probably make a good decision.
  1. Do they have a recent history of success?
  2. Do they have evidence?
  3. Do they have successful experience with the source you want to apply to? Or at least in the topic area of the grant?
A proposal writer who tells you they don’t keep score is failing to do that for a reason! I’d be asking them why before I hired them! Grants are submitted into competition so there are winners and losers. The only way to make a living as a proposal writer, or as an agency that depends on grants, is to be on the winning side most of the time.
 
Published by Creative Resources & Research http://grantgoddess.com

Wrestling with a Grant Narrative

In my younger days I was a wrestler and later a wrestling coach; I must confess that I was a lot better at the latter than the former.  These days I only wrestle with grant narratives but it’s almost as draining and there are actually a lot of similarities.
The Take Down – In wrestling you start on your feet in round one and you’re pretty fresh.  In grant writing you start on your feet too.  You’re optimistic and not winded yet, you start by testing your opponent, in this case the RFP.  You grapple a little, do some hand fighting, figure out some angles of attack and see if you can take your opponent down.
The Ride – Let’s say you are unfortunate and your opponent takes you down to the mat. Their job is to keep you there and not allow you to escape.  The RFP can make you feel that way sometimes because a lot of times it sounds like you’re being asked to repeat the same information over and over again.  Well this isn’t really true, it is usually a matter of being asked to give bits of details in a sequential manner.  But when the RFP has got you down, it is sometimes hard to figure out how to get away from it.
The Escape or Reversal – If you keep studying your opponent and keep on moving from the bottom, you can often find a way to escape or to reverse him.  Just like an RFP has the secrets to winning the grant if you keep studying it, you’ll find ways to escape the confusion and reverse your fortunes if you keep moving through the RFP.  You can use what you learn about your opponent to write a narrative that brings you victory, but if you stop moving, you’ll probably get pinned.
The Tilt – Once you’ve escaped the confusion or reversed your position and now are master of the RFP, you can begin to finish it off.  You’ve now got control of the details, you understand all the angles, you know what you have to do to win.  You can now grind that RFP down and write a winning grant so get ready for the pin.  Now is the time to start tipping your opponent over and finish it off.
The Pin – The ultimate victory in wrestling is to turn your opponent over and pin their shoulders to the mat against their will.  This is the coup-de-gras in wrestling.  You want to excerpt that level of mastery over the RFP, pin it to the mat and don’t let it up.  The match is over when the referee slaps the mat and hollers “PIN!”, then you get up in victory to get your arm raised and shake the hand of your opponent.
Writing a good narrative requires wrestling with the RFP, wrestling with the narrative, and ultimately outlasting your opponents just like a wrestling match.  You have to use skill, intelligence, technique, and it takes a lot of endurance.  You better be in shape and you better know your stuff or you’re bound to end up on your back.

Wrestling with a Grant Narrative

In my younger days I was a wrestler and later a wrestling coach; I must confess that I was a lot better at the latter than the former.  These days I only wrestle with grant narratives but it’s almost as draining and there are actually a lot of similarities.
The Take Down – In wrestling you start on your feet in round one and you’re pretty fresh.  In grant writing you start on your feet too.  You’re optimistic and not winded yet, you start by testing your opponent, in this case the RFP.  You grapple a little, do some hand fighting, figure out some angles of attack and see if you can take your opponent down.
The Ride – Let’s say you are unfortunate and your opponent takes you down to the mat. Their job is to keep you there and not allow you to escape.  The RFP can make you feel that way sometimes because a lot of times it sounds like you’re being asked to repeat the same information over and over again.  Well this isn’t really true, it is usually a matter of being asked to give bits of details in a sequential manner.  But when the RFP has got you down, it is sometimes hard to figure out how to get away from it.
The Escape or Reversal – If you keep studying your opponent and keep on moving from the bottom, you can often find a way to escape or to reverse him.  Just like an RFP has the secrets to winning the grant if you keep studying it, you’ll find ways to escape the confusion and reverse your fortunes if you keep moving through the RFP.  You can use what you learn about your opponent to write a narrative that brings you victory, but if you stop moving, you’ll probably get pinned.
The Tilt – Once you’ve escaped the confusion or reversed your position and now are master of the RFP, you can begin to finish it off.  You’ve now got control of the details, you understand all the angles, you know what you have to do to win.  You can now grind that RFP down and write a winning grant so get ready for the pin.  Now is the time to start tipping your opponent over and finish it off.
The Pin – The ultimate victory in wrestling is to turn your opponent over and pin their shoulders to the mat against their will.  This is the coup-de-gras in wrestling.  You want to excerpt that level of mastery over the RFP, pin it to the mat and don’t let it up.  The match is over when the referee slaps the mat and hollers “PIN!”, then you get up in victory to get your arm raised and shake the hand of your opponent.
Writing a good narrative requires wrestling with the RFP, wrestling with the narrative, and ultimately outlasting your opponents just like a wrestling match.  You have to use skill, intelligence, technique, and it takes a lot of endurance.  You better be in shape and you better know your stuff or you’re bound to end up on your back.
Published by Creative Resources & Research http://grantgoddess.com

Getting Past the What to the How

I find that one of the biggest challenges in writing grants is to write about how things are going to get done instead of simply what is going to get done. I seem to fall into the trap of describing what and it takes me about three drafts before I insert enough detail into my narrative to describe how the project is going to get done.  It can be frustrating!

The problem is that a good grant describes in detail how the project will be implemented. So merely describing the what is going to confuse the readers who are scoring your proposal (and confused readers are NEVER a good thing). I’m currently writing a museum grant and I have no problem writing a list of what is going to get done but describing how it is going to get done and why it is a good idea to do it that way is another issue entirely. That is where the brain needs to really kick into gear and think, plan, describe, outline, illustrate, elucidate; and in short, eliminate vague and weak language which can always adequately describe the what.  What language is easy.

In example – Here is a good WHAT statement – The museum will build a new exhibit about penguins. If I move on from here without describing how, or if I don’t describe it later – somewhere – in the proposal, the readers are left to wonder, “So you’re building a penguin exhibit and your Museum is in Phoenix, Arizona. So how are you going to get penguins to Phoenix, keep them cold, get fish to feed them, keep their little dancing feet happy?” If you haven’t answered any of those questions describing how these things will get done then your readers are left questioning whether or not you can accomplish what you said you would do.  They should question it too!
 
So now facing a weekend ahead, and almost the last weekend before the grant is due, there is no time to waste because the narrative must be perfectly descriptive of how, and why, the project I am proposing is sound, well-thought-out, well-planned, supported by research, based on multiple sources of input, aligned with the funders priorities, targeting an appropriate audience, etc. etc. etc.

Grant writers often face the task of describing how these projects will be implemented with limited input from clients. This makes the task of grant writing challenging but also makes it an interesting intellectual exercise. How the project should be implemented for any individual client depends on many factors and those can be elicited through conversations and discussions with the client. How the project should be implemented based on best practices and sound research is something that can be determined through online research, discussion with experts, reading articles, blogs, and informative websites.

Anyone who has conducted any level of research online or otherwise can attest to the time-intensive nature of the task. It isn’t always easy to find the right resources and it takes time to read them, digest the information, and translate it all into a grant narrative. So getting to the how the project implementation and design can take a lot longer than someone outside the grant writing field might understand.

Well it’s getting late for a Friday, so I will close this post and leave the rest of the research and writing for tomorrow.