Category Archives: Veronica Robbins

The Worst Reasons for NOT Writing a Grant

I hear all sorts of reasons for not pursuing grant opportunities. To be fair, they are very real for the person making the excuse at the time, and grant writing is not easy.  If it were, everyone would do it.  It’s difficult and time consuming.  There are some good reasons for not writing a grant, including a mis-match between your organization’s mission and the purpose of the grant program, changing organizational priorities, and the implementation of a well-developed fund development plan that calls for a focus on other sources of income. However, most of the reasons I hear are not the good ones.  Here are the worst reasons for not writing a grant that I hear most:

  1. We don’t have the time. Are you kidding me?  Who does have the time?  No one.  If you want to bring in additional resources to your organization, you have to make the time. It’s all about priorities.  Instead of saying you don’t have time, tell the truth.  Say, “We are choosing to spend our time doing other things.”
  2. We probably won’t get it. As my mother would say, with an attitude like that, you probably won’t. My mother also used to say, “No guts, no glory!” The bottom line is that if the purpose of the program is well aligned with your organization’s mission, and if you have a solid idea, you have a very good chance of being funded., but you definitely won’t get it if you don’t make an effort.
  3. The grant will just end in 3 years anyway. Believe it or not, I hear this one a lot.  Those who say this seem to forget that between now and three years from now, your clients will benefit from some great services. A lot can happen in 3 years (or 2 years or 5 years), and you can make a big difference in the lives of people over a year or two. Why would you give up that opportunity just because you may not have the resources to do it forever?
  4. We don’t have anyone who can write it.  This falls into the same category as “we don’t have the time.”  You probably do have someone in your organization (or a team of people) who can write it if you just restructure the schedule for a while. And don’t forget. you can hire professional grant writers to help if you need to.

Yes, there are some good reasons for not pursing some grant opportunities, but none of these fall into that category.  Get your priorities straight and focus on overcoming the barriers that prevent you from bringing n the resources your clients deserve.

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

The Best Ways to Learn Grant Writing

Let’s face it.  Grant writing is not rocket science, but people are always asking me how they can learn grant writing.. I consider it a craft because it includes elements of both skill and art, but anyone with good basic writing skills can learn to be a decent grant writer.  Of course, there are some notable characteristics and “secrets” of really successful grant writers, but those, too, can be learned for the most part. The most important thing is a willingness to learn.

So, what are the best ways to learn grant writing?

I learned grant writing by jumping in and writing one.  I was fortunate enough to be successful on the first try, but I would have kept trying anyway.  After a while, I found a grant writing mentor, an expert in the field who took me under his wing and taught me the craft. I learned many things from him beyond writing. While I strongly encourage people to take grant writing seminars and workshops, I didn’t take my first one until I was already a professional grant writer.  The individual attention, instruction, and support I received from my mentor was exactly what I needed.

If you don’t know someone you can ask to mentor you, you may want to take a grant writing course first.  That will increase the chances that you’ll meet a mentor (your instructor) and it will provide you with the basics of what you need to know to be successful, allowing you to maximize your time.

There are many grant writing workshops you can take; however, if you are serious about really learning the trade, I recommend that you take a full-blown course.  Our Grant Writing 101 course is an example of a comprehensive course that will give you an excellent foundation.

Once you have the basic foundation, the best way to improve your skill is to write.  Write grants.  Write many grants.  I suggest that you start with mini-grants.  They are quick and easy and you’ll get to experience some success quickly.

As you move on to larger grants, be sure to review the feedback from the funding source (regardless of whether or not you were funded) to learn from your mistakes as well as what you did well.

If you focus on taking advantage of the available learning opportunities, you’ll be able to learn grant writing in no time.

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Online seminar – Secrets of Successful Grant Writers.

Sign up now for Grant Writing 101. Start anytime you’d like, progress at your own pace, and learn in the comfort of your own home or office.

The Best Ways to Learn Grant Writing

Let’s face it.  Grant writing is not rocket science, but people are always asking me how they can learn grant writing.. I consider it a craft because it includes elements of both skill and art, but anyone with good basic writing skills can learn to be a decent grant writer.  Of course, there are some notable characteristics and “secrets” of really successful grant writers, but those, too, can be learned for the most part. The most important thing is a willingness to learn.

So, what are the best ways to learn grant writing?

I learned grant writing by jumping in and writing one.  I was fortunate enough to be successful on the first try, but I would have kept trying anyway.  After a while, I found a grant writing mentor, an expert in the field who took me under his wing and taught me the craft. I learned many things from him beyond writing. While I strongly encourage people to take grant writing seminars and workshops, I didn’t take my first one until I was already a professional grant writer.  The individual attention, instruction, and support I received from my mentor was exactly what I needed.

If you don’t know someone you can ask to mentor you, you may want to take a grant writing course first.  That will increase the chances that you’ll meet a mentor (your instructor) and it will provide you with the basics of what you need to know to be successful, allowing you to maximize your time.

There are many grant writing workshops you can take; however, if you are serious about really learning the trade, I recommend that you take a full-blown course.  Our Grant Writing 101 course is an example of a comprehensive course that will give you an excellent foundation.

Once you have the basic foundation, the best way to improve your skill is to write.  Write grants.  Write many grants.  I suggest that you start with mini-grants.  They are quick and easy and you’ll get to experience some success quickly.

As you move on to larger grants, be sure to review the feedback from the funding source (regardless of whether or not you were funded) to learn from your mistakes as well as what you did well.

If you focus on taking advantage of the available learning opportunities, you’ll be able to learn grant writing in no time.

——————————–

Online seminar – Secrets of Successful Grant Writers.

Sign up now for Grant Writing 101. Start anytime you’d like, progress at your own pace, and learn in the comfort of your own home or office.

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

Grant Writing Success is Just the Beginning

Hearing that your organization has been awarded a grant is exhilarating!  You want to tell everyone.  You want to celebrate your success.  Then it hits you —grant writing success is only the beginning.

That’s right.  While you were focused up to this point on all of the work involved in getting the grant, the real work hasn’t even started yet.  The “real work” is all about turning that vision into reality.  It’s at this point that you learn some valuable lessons about grant writing, and now is the time to make note of those lessons so you don’t have to learn them again, again, and again.

Here are some post-award lessons clients have learned that have helped them to be better grant writers:

  1. A realistic implementation plan and time line are important.  It sounded like a good idea at the time to say that you would get everything going within the first six months of the funding period, but now that you have the money, you understand how impossible that is.  It would have been much more helpful to have a realistic plan and time line to begin with.
  2. Accurate estimation of salary costs can save many headaches later.  Many grant writers like to squeeze more room into a tight grant proposal budget by including salaries at the low end of a salary schedule.,  The problem with that is you rarely hire people at the low end of the schedule.  If there isn’t enough wiggle room in the budget to be able to cut elsewhere, you can run into some real trouble when you don’t have enough money to hire all the people you said you would.  It makes more sense to use accurate salary estimates and develop a realistic program from the beginning.
  3. Planning the goals, objectives, and evaluation activities to fit the funding source’s requirements would have been helpful.  Doing a little bit of extra homework up front to align your project objectives with the required performance measures of the funding source (if there are any) can save many hours of extra work later.  The same goes with evaluation data collection and reporting procedures.  If the funding source has some requirements, learn about them before you write the proposal.  Then you won’t have to be scrambling and revising later.
  4. Communicating with all of the project partners and stakeholders in the grant development process saves a lot of explaining later.  Board members don’t like to be surprised by things that are in grant proposals – especially when they are asked about them in the community.  Keeping everyone in the loop and involved during the proposal development process saves time and effort later.

A little bit of advanced preparation can help your grant writing success be something you can really celebrate!

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There is still time to sign up for  Grant Writing 101!

Free webinar — 10 Tips for Effective Data Management

Free e-book – 12 Secrets of Successful Grant Writers

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

Grant Writing Success is Just the Beginning

Hearing that your organization has been awarded a grant is exhilarating!  You want to tell everyone.  You want to celebrate your success.  Then it hits you —grant writing success is only the beginning.

That’s right.  While you were focused up to this point on all of the work involved in getting the grant, the real work hasn’t even started yet.  The “real work” is all about turning that vision into reality.  It’s at this point that you learn some valuable lessons about grant writing, and now is the time to make note of those lessons so you don’t have to learn them again, again, and again.

Here are some post-award lessons clients have learned that have helped them to be better grant writers:

  1. A realistic implementation plan and time line are important.  It sounded like a good idea at the time to say that you would get everything going within the first six months of the funding period, but now that you have the money, you understand how impossible that is.  It would have been much more helpful to have a realistic plan and time line to begin with.
  2. Accurate estimation of salary costs can save many headaches later.  Many grant writers like to squeeze more room into a tight grant proposal budget by including salaries at the low end of a salary schedule.,  The problem with that is you rarely hire people at the low end of the schedule.  If there isn’t enough wiggle room in the budget to be able to cut elsewhere, you can run into some real trouble when you don’t have enough money to hire all the people you said you would.  It makes more sense to use accurate salary estimates and develop a realistic program from the beginning.
  3. Planning the goals, objectives, and evaluation activities to fit the funding source’s requirements would have been helpful.  Doing a little bit of extra homework up front to align your project objectives with the required performance measures of the funding source (if there are any) can save many hours of extra work later.  The same goes with evaluation data collection and reporting procedures.  If the funding source has some requirements, learn about them before you write the proposal.  Then you won’t have to be scrambling and revising later.
  4. Communicating with all of the project partners and stakeholders in the grant development process saves a lot of explaining later.  Board members don’t like to be surprised by things that are in grant proposals – especially when they are asked about them in the community.  Keeping everyone in the loop and involved during the proposal development process saves time and effort later.

A little bit of advanced preparation can help your grant writing success be something you can really celebrate!

—————————

There is still time to sign up for  Grant Writing 101!

Free webinar — 10 Tips for Effective Data Management

Free e-book – 12 Secrets of Successful Grant Writers

Grant Writer Stalked by Client

I knew it would happen eventually. It was just a matter of time before my public presence on social media would push me over the line from happy grant writer and evaluation consultant working in the solitude of her office to victim of a stalker client.

It happened quietly one day last week. I was busy writing a report and I took a break for a few minutes.  During that break, I updated my Facebook status, checked Twitter, and responded to a comment on my blog. Then I heard the little twinkle sound my computer makes when I get a comment to a Facebook status update.  When I’m working, I usually ignore them until later, but since I wasn’t engaged back into my report writing task yet, I took a look.

It was my client.  She wanted to know why I wasn’t working on her report. That’s when I knew my life had changed.

Part of the skill of a good consultant is helping every client believe s/he is your favorite and most important client (in this case, my stalker actually is one of my very favorites). They want to believe (and, truthfully, you want them to believe) that you have nothing else to do other than their work, and you certainly don’t have anything more important to do than their project.  I’ve had a client text me after midnight on a Saturday night asking when he’d see a draft that was promised for Monday. Of course, I sent a return text with a polite response that indicated there was no higher priority in my life than his project.

There’s no escaping it.  The very tools that have allowed me to communicate better with my clients and get the word out about my services also make it easier for my clients to express their needs, desires, satisfaction, and (gasp!) dissatisfaction.

And it makes it easier for them to stalk me from the comfort of their homes or offices.

Now that I know I’m being stalked, I have to be more careful about my social media and other online habits. It’s not enough to get the work done, but now I also have to avoid the online appearance that I’m not working.

To my stalker (and you know who you are and I’m sure you’re reading this) – I wrote this after hours late at night and electronically scheduled it to be released this morning.  As you read this, rest assured that I am busy working on your project, and only your project, the most important project I have on my desk.

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Read A Writer’s Journey.

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

Grant Writer Stalked by Client

I knew it would happen eventually. It was just a matter of time before my public presence on social media would push me over the line from happy grant writer and evaluation consultant working in the solitude of her office to victim of a stalker client.

It happened quietly one day last week. I was busy writing a report and I took a break for a few minutes.  During that break, I updated my Facebook status, checked Twitter, and responded to a comment on my blog. Then I heard the little twinkle sound my computer makes when I get a comment to a Facebook status update.  When I’m working, I usually ignore them until later, but since I wasn’t engaged back into my report writing task yet, I took a look.

It was my client.  She wanted to know why I wasn’t working on her report. That’s when I knew my life had changed.

Part of the skill of a good consultant is helping every client believe s/he is your favorite and most important client (in this case, my stalker actually is one of my very favorites). They want to believe (and, truthfully, you want them to believe) that you have nothing else to do other than their work, and you certainly don’t have anything more important to do than their project.  I’ve had a client text me after midnight on a Saturday night asking when he’d see a draft that was promised for Monday. Of course, I sent a return text with a polite response that indicated there was no higher priority in my life than his project.

There’s no escaping it.  The very tools that have allowed me to communicate better with my clients and get the word out about my services also make it easier for my clients to express their needs, desires, satisfaction, and (gasp!) dissatisfaction.

And it makes it easier for them to stalk me from the comfort of their homes or offices.

Now that I know I’m being stalked, I have to be more careful about my social media and other online habits. It’s not enough to get the work done, but now I also have to avoid the online appearance that I’m not working.

To my stalker (and you know who you are and I’m sure you’re reading this) – I wrote this after hours late at night and electronically scheduled it to be released this morning.  As you read this, rest assured that I am busy working on your project, and only your project, the most important project I have on my desk.

———————-

Read A Writer’s Journey.

Get a Free Program Evaluation Consultation.


In the Grant Writing Business, the Customer is Always Right…Even When He’s Not

We got some really good news this weekend.  I learned that one of the federal grants I wrote last spring was funded. This was not the only good news we have received or will receive from the latest grant writing season, but it was particularly satisfying because of how much this client really needs the program we wrote.

Because the client is in such need to get the program going, the program administrator hit the ground running today to get the budget in the system and get the program up and running as soon as possible.  His plan hit the skids, though, as soon as it hit the desk of the head of the fiscal department who informed him that the amounts we had budgeted for personnel and benefits were too low.  So, he set up a conference call between me, the fiscal person, and himself to try to work it out.  I gave the best advice I had for revising the budget quickly so they could get going.

Then my client (the program administrator) said something interesting.  He said,”I don’t know how this happened because I know we gave you the correct numbers when we were in the grant development process.” That’s one of those moments when what you want to say and what you know you have to say are different. What I wanted to say was, “Are you kidding? I can prove that we used the numbers you sent.  I have the old emails….”  But no, that’s not what came out of my mouth.  I knew this was a “fall on your sword for your client” moment.  I really hate those moments, but I said it anyway, “I’m really sorry.  I can’t explain how we made such an error, but I can certainly help you move forward from here and I’ll do my best not to put you in this position again.”

Like in every other business, in grant writing, the customer is right, whether or not he really is.  Preserving the relationship is the important part, not being right.

This has been a particularly hard lesson to learn for me because I really, really like to be right.  Don’t get me wrong – I have no problem standing up to my clients when they need some corrective direction in the planning or evaluation processes, but those of in business for ourselves need to be able to discern when it’s appropriate to correct the client, and when it’s appropriate to help them look better with their own organization so the relationship can continue smoothly.

——————————–

Want some free grant writing tips on your iPhone?  Check out our FREE Grant Tips iPhone App!

Free webinars – The Basics of Program Evaluation, Parts 1 and 2.

There is still time to sign up for Grant Writing 101, our online grant writing course.  Learn grant writing on your time, in the convenience of your own home or office. Get a free e-book, 12 Secrets of Successful Grant Writers, just for looking into it.

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

In the Grant Writing Business, the Customer is Always Right…Even When He’s Not

We got some really good news this weekend.  I learned that one of the federal grants I wrote last spring was funded. This was not the only good news we have received or will receive from the latest grant writing season, but it was particularly satisfying because of how much this client really needs the program we wrote.

Because the client is in such need to get the program going, the program administrator hit the ground running today to get the budget in the system and get the program up and running as soon as possible.  His plan hit the skids, though, as soon as it hit the desk of the head of the fiscal department who informed him that the amounts we had budgeted for personnel and benefits were too low.  So, he set up a conference call between me, the fiscal person, and himself to try to work it out.  I gave the best advice I had for revising the budget quickly so they could get going.

Then my client (the program administrator) said something interesting.  He said,”I don’t know how this happened because I know we gave you the correct numbers when we were in the grant development process.” That’s one of those moments when what you want to say and what you know you have to say are different. What I wanted to say was, “Are you kidding? I can prove that we used the numbers you sent.  I have the old emails….”  But no, that’s not what came out of my mouth.  I knew this was a “fall on your sword for your client” moment.  I really hate those moments, but I said it anyway, “I’m really sorry.  I can’t explain how we made such an error, but I can certainly help you move forward from here and I’ll do my best not to put you in this position again.”

Like in every other business, in grant writing, the customer is right, whether or not he really is.  Preserving the relationship is the important part, not being right.

This has been a particularly hard lesson to learn for me because I really, really like to be right.  Don’t get me wrong – I have no problem standing up to my clients when they need some corrective direction in the planning or evaluation processes, but those of in business for ourselves need to be able to discern when it’s appropriate to correct the client, and when it’s appropriate to help them look better with their own organization so the relationship can continue smoothly.

——————————–

Want some free grant writing tips on your iPhone?  Check out our FREE Grant Tips iPhone App!

Free webinars – The Basics of Program Evaluation, Parts 1 and 2.

There is still time to sign up for Grant Writing 101, our online grant writing course.  Learn grant writing on your time, in the convenience of your own home or office. Get a free e-book, 12 Secrets of Successful Grant Writers, just for looking into it.

Rantings of an Opinionated Grant Writer

I try to keep the posts of this blog positive and informative, and I do my best to keep my whining to a minimum, but today I have a few rants to put out there in the world.  Maybe someone will be able to learn from them.

Every now and then someone tells me, “Veronica, maybe you shouldn’t be so outspoken about your opinions.  Won’t you risk losing business?”  Maybe, but I like to remember what Bill Cosby said — “I don’t know the key to success, but the key to failure is to try to please everyone.”

So, here are the rants running through my mind today:

  1. Why do the people doing the best work in the community seem to have the hardest time to getting money to fund their work?  I see it over and over again. Small non-profits that are really doing amazing work who struggle to stay afloat while large organizations with tremendous waste seem to have more cash than they can use. Of course, I know the answer to the question.  There is much more to the funding equation than just doing good work. And never forget the other explanation:  Life isn’t fair.
  2. Speaking of tremendous waste.  I have a client (a public agency) that is giving $700,000 back to the federal government at the end of a four year grant period because they have a lousy fiscal accounting system and they didn’t spend all of the $6 million grant they were awarded.  It’s not that they couldn’t use it or that there isn’t plenty of need in their community, but the combination of poor accounting, poor communication among administrators, and incompetence has essentially stolen almost three quarters of a million dollars from folks who desperately need the support.  As the grant writer and evaluator for that program, I’m disgusted.
  3. Speaking of being disgusted, I’m currently working with a school district that seems to be doing everything it can to keep the public away.  One day they say they want parents more involved, and the next day they take actions to make it harder (sometimes nearly impossible) for parents to be involved. Then we loop back full circle to their finger pointing at parents for not being involved.  Enough already!
  4. I was at a meeting yesterday discussing some pretty significant changes to a local school for students who have been expelled from their regular public schools.  We were discussing incentives for students and I had the wild and crazy idea to ask the students what incentives would inspire them. I got that condescending, “awwww, the poor woman doesn’t understand the real world” look from one of the school administrators present.

OK, I’d better stop now.  I think I’ve been reading Cranky Blog too much.

Now I’ll get back to my regularly scheduled positive and uplifting posts……

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