Category Archives: grant writing

Federal Government Grant Priorities…..Whose Priorities?

I was scanning the grant opportunities at grants.gov this morning, and I noticed something that I have noticed for years, but today it struck me a bit differently. I’m accustomed to seeing hundreds of grant opportunities that don’t apply to my clients.  Many are amusing (I’ve posted on Facebook about competitions for funds to save particular obscure animal species, etc.) and some are just incomprehensible. However, at a time when our economy is in trouble and people are suffering, some of the federal grant priorities seem just wrong.

Non-profit organizations that are often the last line of support for our most needy citizens are struggling for every dime these days, yet here are just a few of the hundreds of things that the government is choosing to fund instead:

Inventory of Cave Dwelling Animals in Wet Caves Grant – I think we could just go with last year’s inventory numbers, don’t you?

Azerbaijan New Media Project – This is $4,000,000 to support the development of new media and online communities in Azerbaijan. Supposedly it will help with the distribution of US aide there.

Establishing a Global System of Regional Wildlife Networks: Providing Support for Central American Wildlife – Wildlife here are so well protected that we have extra cash to be protecting wildlife in Central America?

Mexican Spotted Owl Grant – This announcement lists only “Mexican Spotted Owl” in the full description of the project.  Are we buying a Mexican spotted owl?  Several? Are we protecting it? Feeding it? Whatever we are doing to it, is it more important than $280,000 worth of food for the homeless?

Youth Empowerment Program in Kenya – $14,000,000 for this one, folks. I guess all of the youth in the US are empowered and well-educated, so it’s time to move on the youth of Kenya.

Decentralization Enabling Environment – I find this one to be particularly ironic. This grant provides $2,000,000 to a nongovernmental agency in Honduras to help develop the “environment necessary for decentralization of government services to the local level in order to better respond to citizen needs.” At a time when local organizations in the U.S. that do this very thing are suffering and the U.S. is going through a dramatic centralization of services and resources, we’re giving money to another country to do the opposite.

MERIDA Small Grant Program for Community Youth at Risk – This one is for community-based programs for at-risk youth in Panama. See my comment above about the Youth Empowerment Program in Kenya.

Please don’t misunderstand.  I am sure that there is some value in each of these programs. What kind of human being would I be if I didn’t think doing something to or with Mexican Spotted Owls was important or that we shouldn’t have an accurate inventory of wet cave dwelling animals?

Even so, I think we need to do a much better job of prioritizing.  Every family knows that you can’t have everything. Some things that you think are important have to be put aside or postponed until you can afford them in favor of funding things that are much more important.

As for the grants I just cited (and the hundreds of others like them), just whose priorities are those, anyway?

—————————————-

Click here to access two free webinars on the Basics of Program Evaluation.

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

How Positive Writing Makes a Better Grant

Yesterday on my Twitter account (Grant_Writer if you want to follow me) I received a tweet from someone I won’t name and the gist of the tweet was that this person was watching a single Mom struggling on a teacher’s salary to put a child through college – “sigh”.

Well, I thought this warped perspective must have some relevance or I wouldn’t have been meant to see it. Before pondering the significance of this to grant writing, I replied to the person’s tweet something to the effect that the person is indeed fortunate to be “struggling” with a “salary” (of any kind in this economy) and a “child in college” (what a great burden). Life could be so much worse.

Grants must be written from a perspective of abundance and positive energy. While there may well be some difficult circumstances that caused the grant to be needed, like extremely low reading levels among 4th grade students, or hunger and homelessness, or whatever the need may be, the reader wants to hear about the hope the grant provides for overcoming those circumstances. The reader wants to believe that your grant will resolve those issues, and that you are confident and competent to accomplish the objectives.

Writing that presents a “woe-is-me” attitude simply makes me want to jump off a bridge. I may well sympathize with the needs presented, and usually this is the strongest section of even a bad grant because most everyone can point out what’s wrong. But pointing out what is right that will lead to a positive outcome is the key.

Take my twitter “followee” as an example. This person could have tweeted something like, “So proud of my friend putting her child through college on a teacher’s salary-hurrah!” – Or – “My friend’s struggle to put her child through college on a teacher’s salary will pay off! She’s my hero!”

It’s all in the perspective, so choose to write grant narratives in a positive tone, one that promotes your energy, that clearly illustrates your fresh ideas, and that forcefully expresses confidence in your competent ability to overcome the current reality and create a better tomorrow!

By Non-Profit Consultant and Expert Grant Writer Derek Link

—————————-

Check out some grant samples at http://grantsample.com/ .

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

How Positive Writing Makes a Better Grant

Yesterday on my Twitter account (Grant_Writer if you want to follow me) I received a tweet from someone I won’t name and the gist of the tweet was that this person was watching a single Mom struggling on a teacher’s salary to put a child through college – “sigh”.

Well, I thought this warped perspective must have some relevance or I wouldn’t have been meant to see it. Before pondering the significance of this to grant writing, I replied to the person’s tweet something to the effect that the person is indeed fortunate to be “struggling” with a “salary” (of any kind in this economy) and a “child in college” (what a great burden). Life could be so much worse.

Grants must be written from a perspective of abundance and positive energy. While there may well be some difficult circumstances that caused the grant to be needed, like extremely low reading levels among 4th grade students, or hunger and homelessness, or whatever the need may be, the reader wants to hear about the hope the grant provides for overcoming those circumstances. The reader wants to believe that your grant will resolve those issues, and that you are confident and competent to accomplish the objectives.

Writing that presents a “woe-is-me” attitude simply makes me want to jump off a bridge. I may well sympathize with the needs presented, and usually this is the strongest section of even a bad grant because most everyone can point out what’s wrong. But pointing out what is right that will lead to a positive outcome is the key.

Take my twitter “followee” as an example. This person could have tweeted something like, “So proud of my friend putting her child through college on a teacher’s salary-hurrah!” – Or – “My friend’s struggle to put her child through college on a teacher’s salary will pay off! She’s my hero!”

It’s all in the perspective, so choose to write grant narratives in a positive tone, one that promotes your energy, that clearly illustrates your fresh ideas, and that forcefully expresses confidence in your competent ability to overcome the current reality and create a better tomorrow!

By Non-Profit Consultant and Expert Grant Writer Derek Link

—————————-

Check out some grant samples at http://grantsample.com/ .

Happily Slogging On!

Here are some thoughts from Non-Profit Consultant and Expert Grant Writer, Derek Link, on focus and perseverance:

Doing something difficult is always a trial of wills. You must enforce your will over the task, and over all other competing tasks. You must make a commitment that the task at hand is the one that matters most, and devote your focus on it entirely through the inevitably arduous march toward completion.

I’ve experienced this happy slog over and over in my life. Fortunately I got good advice about the slog along the way, and actually before I even began my first one (the university). I had a wonderful teacher in high school named Norm Barker. He was an architecture teacher and a terrifically talented person. He could do anything with his hands. I admired him because of those skills, and he was actually in my neighborhood so I got to see some of his handiwork first hand. He rebuilt a 1961 Porsche from paint to engine to upholstery, he built his own stereo speakers, he took an old wood-burning pot-bellied stove that he’d found in a field and welded up all the bullet holes and recast the missing parts and it was a thing of beauty when he finished.

What Mr. Barker taught me, in addition to some drafting skills, was that dedication to an endeavor produced good results. I recall that he was inspiring me to become an architect at one point as a student and he showed me a list of the courses at Cal Poly I’d need to take to become an architect. I remarked to him that I wasn’t good at math (truth be told, in high school I didn’t do my homework which mostly accounted for my poor math scores). He told me a valuable thing that sustained me throughout my Bachelor’s and my Master’s degrees: Mr. Barker said, “Derek, there’s nothing you can’t get through for one semester”. BRILLIANT ADVICE, Mr. Barker.

So, this is a long bird-walk to get to my topic of the Happy Slog. When you are in the midst of writing a grant and you’re feeling like you’ll never slog through it, just keep Mr. Barker’s advice in mind (with a little twist) “There’s nothing you can’t get through in three (fill in your deadline) weeks.” The deadline will come and go, so keep your mind focused and ignore all the competing distractions that are bound to come your way.

Slog on grant writers, slog on!

———————————-

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

Happily Slogging On!

Here are some thoughts from Non-Profit Consultant and Expert Grant Writer, Derek Link, on focus and perseverance:

Doing something difficult is always a trial of wills. You must enforce your will over the task, and over all other competing tasks. You must make a commitment that the task at hand is the one that matters most, and devote your focus on it entirely through the inevitably arduous march toward completion.

I’ve experienced this happy slog over and over in my life. Fortunately I got good advice about the slog along the way, and actually before I even began my first one (the university). I had a wonderful teacher in high school named Norm Barker. He was an architecture teacher and a terrifically talented person. He could do anything with his hands. I admired him because of those skills, and he was actually in my neighborhood so I got to see some of his handiwork first hand. He rebuilt a 1961 Porsche from paint to engine to upholstery, he built his own stereo speakers, he took an old wood-burning pot-bellied stove that he’d found in a field and welded up all the bullet holes and recast the missing parts and it was a thing of beauty when he finished.

What Mr. Barker taught me, in addition to some drafting skills, was that dedication to an endeavor produced good results. I recall that he was inspiring me to become an architect at one point as a student and he showed me a list of the courses at Cal Poly I’d need to take to become an architect. I remarked to him that I wasn’t good at math (truth be told, in high school I didn’t do my homework which mostly accounted for my poor math scores). He told me a valuable thing that sustained me throughout my Bachelor’s and my Master’s degrees: Mr. Barker said, “Derek, there’s nothing you can’t get through for one semester”. BRILLIANT ADVICE, Mr. Barker.

So, this is a long bird-walk to get to my topic of the Happy Slog. When you are in the midst of writing a grant and you’re feeling like you’ll never slog through it, just keep Mr. Barker’s advice in mind (with a little twist) “There’s nothing you can’t get through in three (fill in your deadline) weeks.” The deadline will come and go, so keep your mind focused and ignore all the competing distractions that are bound to come your way.

Slog on grant writers, slog on!

———————————-

Grant Writing – Five Last Minute Things to Check

In the grant writing process, the final hours are the most stressful. That’s the time when you are conducting your final checks to make sure you have included everything that needs to be included, labeled everything correctly, corrected all errors, calculated everything correctly, and followed the instructions to the letter. It is also one of the most dangerous periods of the grant writing process because it’s easy to miss things in the rush to finish.

Here are a few last minute things to watch out for:

  1. Re-check all information on required forms. Go through all of the required forms, line by line, to make sure you entered the information correctly. It’s not uncommon to think that completing forms is so simple that you lose focus, and it’s easy to transpose numbers in phone numbers or enter email addresses or tax ID numbers incorrectly.
  2. Check all budget numbers – then check them again. Just like on your taxes, math errors are among the most common when completing grant application budgets.
  3. Review the program requirements and make sure they are all addressed (and labeled) in your narrative. If the program you are applying for has absolute and competitive preference priorities, be sure you have addressed them all and labeled your responses as such. Remember, you don’t want the readers to have any trouble at all finding your responses to program requirements.
  4. Fill in all blanks in your narrative. Sometimes people leave blanks in the narrative for page references or things they plan on filling in later. If you don’t go back through specifically looking for them, it’s easy to miss them.
  5. If you are submitting your grant electronically, open each section and to make sure the files are attached properly before you submit. I may be paranoid, but I always like to take one last look at every document before I click that “submit” button, just to be sure that the file I intended to attach is actually the one that was attached.

Successful grant writing is all about details. Taking a few extra minutes at the end of the grant writing process to check a few important details can make all the difference.

————————————-
 
Get a free dowload of our e-book, 12 Secrets of Successful Grant Writers.
 
 
 

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

Grant Writing – Five Last Minute Things to Check

In the grant writing process, the final hours are the most stressful. That’s the time when you are conducting your final checks to make sure you have included everything that needs to be included, labeled everything correctly, corrected all errors, calculated everything correctly, and followed the instructions to the letter. It is also one of the most dangerous periods of the grant writing process because it’s easy to miss things in the rush to finish.

Here are a few last minute things to watch out for:

  1. Re-check all information on required forms. Go through all of the required forms, line by line, to make sure you entered the information correctly. It’s not uncommon to think that completing forms is so simple that you lose focus, and it’s easy to transpose numbers in phone numbers or enter email addresses or tax ID numbers incorrectly.
  2. Check all budget numbers – then check them again. Just like on your taxes, math errors are among the most common when completing grant application budgets.
  3. Review the program requirements and make sure they are all addressed (and labeled) in your narrative. If the program you are applying for has absolute and competitive preference priorities, be sure you have addressed them all and labeled your responses as such. Remember, you don’t want the readers to have any trouble at all finding your responses to program requirements.
  4. Fill in all blanks in your narrative. Sometimes people leave blanks in the narrative for page references or things they plan on filling in later. If you don’t go back through specifically looking for them, it’s easy to miss them.
  5. If you are submitting your grant electronically, open each section and to make sure the files are attached properly before you submit. I may be paranoid, but I always like to take one last look at every document before I click that “submit” button, just to be sure that the file I intended to attach is actually the one that was attached.

Successful grant writing is all about details. Taking a few extra minutes at the end of the grant writing process to check a few important details can make all the difference.

————————————-
 
Get a free dowload of our e-book, 12 Secrets of Successful Grant Writers.
 
 
 

Grant Writing Deadline Purgatory

I’m floating in grant writing deadline purgatory right now.  Actually, I’m not totally in grant writing purgatory. I am skating on the edges of it, but I’m close enough to see it, inhale the stale smell of it, and feel its panic.

When you are fully engulfed in grant writing deadline purgatory, you have done most of what you can do to complete a grant proposal, but you are stopped from fully completing it due to some situation beyond your control.  Unfortunately, the situation gremlins that can keep you in purgatory are numerous.  You may be waiting for a client or some stakeholder to get you some last minute feedback on the narrative.  You might be waiting for some final letters of support or signatures on a Memorandum of Understanding. You may be waiting for someone to clarify some budget issues for you. Sometimes, you’re all ready to submit, but the online electronic portal for submittal is down and you are waiting for it to go live again.

When you’re in grant writing deadline purgatory, you hover.  You try to find something to do with yourself.  You watch the clock. You wonder why you ever got into this line of work. You speculate on what life would be like if you were a mail carrier or flight attendant, or you fantasize about what all the people on the outside (outside your office incarceration) are doing.  You wait.

Today, as I said, I am skating on the edges of grant writing deadline purgatory.  I have three grants due Monday that are in various stages of completion. Two are in some level of deadline purgatory, and I’m waiting for others.  The third won’t be in purgatory until tomorrow, so there’s still plenty I can do today.

——————————

Click here to get your free copy of our e-book 12 Secrets of Successful Grant Writers.

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

Grant Writing Deadline Purgatory

I’m floating in grant writing deadline purgatory right now.  Actually, I’m not totally in grant writing purgatory. I am skating on the edges of it, but I’m close enough to see it, inhale the stale smell of it, and feel its panic.

When you are fully engulfed in grant writing deadline purgatory, you have done most of what you can do to complete a grant proposal, but you are stopped from fully completing it due to some situation beyond your control.  Unfortunately, the situation gremlins that can keep you in purgatory are numerous.  You may be waiting for a client or some stakeholder to get you some last minute feedback on the narrative.  You might be waiting for some final letters of support or signatures on a Memorandum of Understanding. You may be waiting for someone to clarify some budget issues for you. Sometimes, you’re all ready to submit, but the online electronic portal for submittal is down and you are waiting for it to go live again.

When you’re in grant writing deadline purgatory, you hover.  You try to find something to do with yourself.  You watch the clock. You wonder why you ever got into this line of work. You speculate on what life would be like if you were a mail carrier or flight attendant, or you fantasize about what all the people on the outside (outside your office incarceration) are doing.  You wait.

Today, as I said, I am skating on the edges of grant writing deadline purgatory.  I have three grants due Monday that are in various stages of completion. Two are in some level of deadline purgatory, and I’m waiting for others.  The third won’t be in purgatory until tomorrow, so there’s still plenty I can do today.

——————————

Click here to get your free copy of our e-book 12 Secrets of Successful Grant Writers.

Grant Writing is like a Bicycle Built for Two

So this morning I am walking to the coffee shop to drink coffee and use free wifi when a guy pedals past me on a bicycle built for two .…alone.
My first thought was that his girlfriend may be lying somewhere scratched and angry up the road but when I didn’t find her I began to feel sorry for the guy.
I wondered to myself if this wasn’t some sort of e-harmony  experiment gone awry.  Their online disclosures may have missed his fantasy for whisking her away on his bicycle; perhaps she had balked and rebuked his penchant for pedantic pedaling.
In any case, my mind soon turned to grant writing, as it frequently does, and I thought about clients I’ve had who after learning about the bicycle built for two that we needed to pedal together in order to get the work of the grant done, had similarly balked at sharing the load.
Completing a grant application successfully is a partnership between the writer and the client not unlike riding a bicycle built for two.  The client should steer the process to make sure that the grant goes where they want it to go.  They also need to pedal along with the writer –  there’s work for both to do.
So long as both parties pedal hard and long, the bike will take them to the desired destination: grant submission and with a little good fortune, full funding!
So writers and clients need to jump on that bicycle together, pedal hard, and steer well.  Don’t leave your grant writer sweating and pedaling along solo or the grant may not reach its destination successfully.  The writer, like the solitary guy on his bike this morning, may get tired, and let’s face it, the journey is more enjoyable with someone to chat with along the way.
By Derek Link, Non-Profit Consultant and Expert Grant Writer
———————————-
Download our free Top Ten Grant Writing Tips webinar!

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