Category Archives: grant writing

Q & A – How do foundations decide who to give grant money to?

I know this sounds like an elementary question to anyone who has worked in the non-profit field for any length of time.  But for many people who are just starting a non-profit, this is an important question.

The answer is complicated because there are actually many ways that a foundation will decide to give a grant.  The ones listed below are general in nature and not all criteria will apply to every foundation.  These are common, but the list is not exhaustive.

 
1. Field(s) of interest determined by the foundation’s board and defined in their bylaws.
 
2. Types of funding – Money isn’t money to a foundation.  If you want funding for a building, that’s a capital expense and not all foundations are willing to spend money on. Many foundations shy away from funding operating expenses although that restriction has eased a little in some cases with the state of the economy.
 
3. Relationships – Often a foundation will fund organizations and individuals they know and trust to do the most effective job with a grant.  Newcomers must establish these relationships over time and by proving they can do the job. Many foundations give a small grant in year one and assess performance, if an agency does well, sometimes subsequent requests can be larger.
 
4. Geography – Some foundations specify locations to give to excluding everyone else.  Some give nationally while others give internationally. It is important to look at previous grants funded to know where they will fund.
 
5. Types of Organizations – Foundations usually only give to other non-profit organizations so individuals have a harder time finding assistance from foundations directly.
 
Of course there are many factors that help determine the allocation of grant money.  These five are generally applicable to most foundations. It is imperative that grant seekers pay close attention to these five – at a minimum – in screening potential funding sources when seeking grants.
 
For more information about grant writing and non-profits see:
 
Grant Goddess Resources
Published by Creative Resources & Research http://grantgoddess.com

Wax On, Wax Off – Find Your Grant Writing Myagi like the Karate Kid

Your organization is under assault. United Way contributions are dropping. Donations have slowed to a trickle. Your endowment has taken a beating in the stock market. You need help; you need to write some grants.

If you haven’t written a grant before, you’ll need a mentor to teach you the skills. In the Karate Kid movies, the kid is getting beaten up – feeling victimized by his lack of ability to fight back. In the original movie, the kid turns to a mentor named Myagi who makes him do seemingly unrelated stuff to learn the skills he needs to defend himself.

Just as the Karate Kid needed to learn the fundamentals of martial arts, you need specific skills to be a good grant writer too. You need a mentor who insists that you put the wax on and take the wax off in the right way. You need someone to tell you what’s important and how to do it right. You need to practice those skills until they are ingrained in your writing, until they become habits.

A writing mentor isn’t there to baby you. He or she is there to support you in developing good habits that make you a success. A weak teacher allows bad habits to form leading to failure and frustration and maybe even getting beaten up further.

Find a grant writing mentor, persevere, learn, grow, strengthen your skills, and develop good grant writing habits. You’ll find success and your organization will benefit.  Who knows, you may find a whole new career!

Related Posts:
Let’s Face It, You’re a Lousey Writer
The Best Ways to Learn Grant Writing
Is Grant Writing Success Really Just About Luck?

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

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

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

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

The Ten Best Things about Being a Grant Writer

1. Being paid to write.

2. Finding money to fund energy and ideas.

3. Helping other people achieve their dreams.

4. Supporting worthwhile causes.

5. Competition.

6. Ability to work anywhere, literally.

7. The broad range of topics to write about.

8. Working with a variety of people, in a variety of locations, across a variety of agencies.

9. Working with highly motivated people on a mission.

10. Calling a client to tell them their grant was funded!

I heard a great example given last week in a meeting. The speaker told us all to write our name with our dominant hand, simple, easy. Now, he told us, write your name with your other hand. Hard isn’t it? I had to agree, my scribbled name attested to it.

He said to us that working where you are gifted is like writing with your dominant hand, it’s easier and it flows out of you. But trying to work outside your gifts will make your life feel like you’re writing with your other hand. It’s harder and less productive; it just doesn’t feel right.

Maybe the example hit home even more strongly for me since I am a writer, but it resonated for me. Grant writing feels like writing with my right hand, that’s probably the best thing about being a grant writer for me.
Related Posts:
Relax – Tell Your Story
Are You the Bear or the Salmon?

The Ten Best Things about Being a Grant Writer

1. Being paid to write.

2. Finding money to fund energy and ideas.

3. Helping other people achieve their dreams.

4. Supporting worthwhile causes.

5. Competition.

6. Ability to work anywhere, literally.

7. The broad range of topics to write about.

8. Working with a variety of people, in a variety of locations, across a variety of agencies.

9. Working with highly motivated people on a mission.

10. Calling a client to tell them their grant was funded!

I heard a great example given last week in a meeting. The speaker told us all to write our name with our dominant hand, simple, easy. Now, he told us, write your name with your other hand. Hard isn’t it? I had to agree, my scribbled name attested to it.

He said to us that working where you are gifted is like writing with your dominant hand, it’s easier and it flows out of you. But trying to work outside your gifts will make your life feel like you’re writing with your other hand. It’s harder and less productive; it just doesn’t feel right.

Maybe the example hit home even more strongly for me since I am a writer, but it resonated for me. Grant writing feels like writing with my right hand, that’s probably the best thing about being a grant writer for me.
Related Posts:
Relax – Tell Your Story
Are You the Bear or the Salmon?

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

Eleven Ways to Earn Valentines as a Grant Writer

Grant Writers are either hero or goat depending on the outcome of our latest application. It is a fact of the profession that our best efforts to write a perfect grant are not always rewarded. Failure is not appreciated by clients and it can strain relationships. Around Valentines, you may be wondering “where’s the love?”

Here are ten ways to avoid excessive rejection and/or make lemonade from the lemons of grant rejection.

Limit disappointing grant rejections by:

1. Being clear up-front with each client about the competitive nature of the grant business.

2. Making no guarantees and have a frank discussion about the risky nature of submitting grant proposals.

3. Charging an ethical price for writing. (fair to you as well as your client)

4. Carefully work with the client on selecting what you will and won’t write so you are not inflating your client’s expectations falsely in terms of a) your ability in a specific field; b) the likelihood of receiving funding.

5. Involving the client in the writing process including approval of the final narrative it is submitted.

Making DELICIOUS Lemonade by:

1. Offering a free rewrite policy like Creative Resources & Research does.

2. Reviewing the readers’ comments with your client.

3. Assisting your client with planning processes to resubmit.

4. Identifying additional sources of funding that the grant could be re-tooled for and submitted to.

5. Assisting your client with a protest if warranted.

6. Writing a brief, objective summary of why the grant was rejected and send it to the client (if you know why). They can use this with their supervisors and Board members. It may help diminish the impression that you just did a crummy job of grant writing.

Grant rejection can erode the affection of your clients. If you’re in the business for any length of time you’re going to lose a competition every now and then straining even a good relationship with a client. This is a fact of life as a grant writing consultant so do your best to avoid writing unlikely proposals and when you do miss one, spend the time with your client to review, plan and rewrite whenever possible. This way you’ll build a partnership with your client that will stand the test of occasional grant rejection, and perhaps you’ll get some flowers and candy on Valentines Day.

Related Posts:
3 Lessons Learned from Failure
If It’s Not Right, Just Say No
Is There a Formula for Grant Writing Success?

Photo Credit : D. Sharon Pruitt

Eleven Ways to Earn Valentines as a Grant Writer

Grant Writers are either hero or goat depending on the outcome of our latest application. It is a fact of the profession that our best efforts to write a perfect grant are not always rewarded. Failure is not appreciated by clients and it can strain relationships. Around Valentines, you may be wondering “where’s the love?”

Here are ten ways to avoid excessive rejection and/or make lemonade from the lemons of grant rejection.

Limit disappointing grant rejections by:

1. Being clear up-front with each client about the competitive nature of the grant business.

2. Making no guarantees and have a frank discussion about the risky nature of submitting grant proposals.

3. Charging an ethical price for writing. (fair to you as well as your client)

4. Carefully work with the client on selecting what you will and won’t write so you are not inflating your client’s expectations falsely in terms of a) your ability in a specific field; b) the likelihood of receiving funding.

5. Involving the client in the writing process including approval of the final narrative it is submitted.

Making DELICIOUS Lemonade by:

1. Offering a free rewrite policy like Creative Resources & Research does.

2. Reviewing the readers’ comments with your client.

3. Assisting your client with planning processes to resubmit.

4. Identifying additional sources of funding that the grant could be re-tooled for and submitted to.

5. Assisting your client with a protest if warranted.

6. Writing a brief, objective summary of why the grant was rejected and send it to the client (if you know why). They can use this with their supervisors and Board members. It may help diminish the impression that you just did a crummy job of grant writing.

Grant rejection can erode the affection of your clients. If you’re in the business for any length of time you’re going to lose a competition every now and then straining even a good relationship with a client. This is a fact of life as a grant writing consultant so do your best to avoid writing unlikely proposals and when you do miss one, spend the time with your client to review, plan and rewrite whenever possible. This way you’ll build a partnership with your client that will stand the test of occasional grant rejection, and perhaps you’ll get some flowers and candy on Valentines Day.

Related Posts:
3 Lessons Learned from Failure
If It’s Not Right, Just Say No
Is There a Formula for Grant Writing Success?

Photo Credit : D. Sharon Pruitt

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

Grant Goddess Affiliate Program

Veronica Robbins has initiated a brand new Affiliate Program for web site owners and bloggers to earn commissions by promoting Grant Goddess products.

Site owners can gain approval to post ads for products like Veronica’s book, “101 Tips for Aspiring Grant Writers” or “Federal Grant Resources.” Affiliates earn a generous commission (50%) for each sale!

All that is required to become an Affiliate is to submit a short application with the web site URL’s where the applicant intends to promote the Grant Goddess products. It’s that easy!

Payments are process securely to site owners via PayPal an industry-leading, highly secure, and well-respected online payment processor.

Now is the time to make your online real estate pay you for all your time and effort! Sign up as an affiliate today!

More details on the Grant Goddess Affiliate Program are available here.

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