Yes, It May Be "Old School," but Plan Before You Write

I think the ubiquitous use of word processing computer programs has made people forget the importance of planning before you write.  In the old days of grant writing using a typewriter, you really had to think through your writing first because correcting errors was not very easy.  Even when it became easier to correct minor errors, you couldn’t move paragraphs around or restructure the text without retyping the whole page or section.

So what did we do back then? We developed an outline before we started to write.  We did the research, fleshed out the ideas, and filled in the outline until we were pretty sure about what we wanted to write and the order in which we wanted to write it. Then we wrote a first draft – sometimes by hand, sometimes on the typewriter. Revising the first draft consisted of marking it all up and then carefully retyping the document with all of the re-writes and corrections made.

Sure, it seems like it’s a lot easier to compose on the computer, and it’s absolutely easier to make changes, but it has also created a generation of really lazy grant writers and program developers. Instead of really developing the ideas in a proposal and drafting an outline for a plan before writing, folks just start writing with a few ideas in place, knowing they can fill in the rest later. The result is often incomplete, disjointed ideas, and plans that don’t make logical sense.

Also, even  though it’s easy to make changes using a computer, reworking a 50 to 100 page program narrative with multiple complex design changes is definitely not easy. In fact it’s easier just to hold off on the writing until the planning is complete and the ideas have been solidly developed.

Many of those early steps in the writing process – like outlining – may seem like a throw back to the old days of typewriters, but they are really not.  They are the cornerstones of idea development. They can make the difference between a really good grant proposal and a sloppy one.

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Would you like some great grant writing resources that can help take your writing to a higher level?  Become a member of GrantGoddess.com.

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

Yes, It May Be "Old School," but Plan Before You Write

I think the ubiquitous use of word processing computer programs has made people forget the importance of planning before you write.  In the old days of grant writing using a typewriter, you really had to think through your writing first because correcting errors was not very easy.  Even when it became easier to correct minor errors, you couldn’t move paragraphs around or restructure the text without retyping the whole page or section.

So what did we do back then? We developed an outline before we started to write.  We did the research, fleshed out the ideas, and filled in the outline until we were pretty sure about what we wanted to write and the order in which we wanted to write it. Then we wrote a first draft – sometimes by hand, sometimes on the typewriter. Revising the first draft consisted of marking it all up and then carefully retyping the document with all of the re-writes and corrections made.

Sure, it seems like it’s a lot easier to compose on the computer, and it’s absolutely easier to make changes, but it has also created a generation of really lazy grant writers and program developers. Instead of really developing the ideas in a proposal and drafting an outline for a plan before writing, folks just start writing with a few ideas in place, knowing they can fill in the rest later. The result is often incomplete, disjointed ideas, and plans that don’t make logical sense.

Also, even  though it’s easy to make changes using a computer, reworking a 50 to 100 page program narrative with multiple complex design changes is definitely not easy. In fact it’s easier just to hold off on the writing until the planning is complete and the ideas have been solidly developed.

Many of those early steps in the writing process – like outlining – may seem like a throw back to the old days of typewriters, but they are really not.  They are the cornerstones of idea development. They can make the difference between a really good grant proposal and a sloppy one.

—————————-
Would you like some great grant writing resources that can help take your writing to a higher level?  Become a member of GrantGoddess.com.

Two Great Opportunities for Grant Writing Resources Are Slipping Away

Two big opportunities are coming to an end in the next few days, so I thought I’d send out an announcement so you can take advantage of them before it’s too late.

First, the opportunity to become a member at GrantGoddess.com for the early-bird membership rate of $9.99 per month (or $99.99 per year) ends on Monday.  Beginning June 1st, the membership price will go up to $19.99 per month (or $199.99 per year).  It’s a bargain at the regular rate, but why miss this great chance to lock in the reduced pri9ce forever?

Members get unlimited access to articles, webinars, videos, and other resources on grant writing, grant seeking, program evaluation, and non-profit development. This summer, we’ll be offering our first, full-blown online grant writing course, and members will get the first chance at registration and a dramatically decreased registration fee.  Go to the member information page to get more information and to sign up before June 1st.

As if that’s not enough, if you become a member between today and 11:59 p.m. on May 31st, I’ll also give you a FREE copy of my book, 101 Tips for Aspiring Grant Writers!  If you live within the United States, I’ll pay for shipping, too!

And here’s another opportunity — If you go to our Grant Goddess Facebook page and click on the “Like” button at the top of the page by midnight tonight (5/28), you’ll have a chance to win of TEN free books I’ll be giving away! Tomorrow morning, I’ll be randomly selecting 10 friends/fans from that page and contacting them to send them a free 101 Tips for Aspiring Grant Writers book!  If they live in the U.S., shipping will be free, too.

Our Grant Goddess Facebook page focuses on electronic and multimedia resources for grant writing.  We post grant tips, sources, inspiration, and other interesting tidbits. It’s 100% free and it’s focused on providing information, not selling anything.

So, act now to take advantage of these two great opportunities before they slip away forever.

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

Two Great Opportunities for Grant Writing Resources Are Slipping Away

Two big opportunities are coming to an end in the next few days, so I thought I’d send out an announcement so you can take advantage of them before it’s too late.

First, the opportunity to become a member at GrantGoddess.com for the early-bird membership rate of $9.99 per month (or $99.99 per year) ends on Monday.  Beginning June 1st, the membership price will go up to $19.99 per month (or $199.99 per year).  It’s a bargain at the regular rate, but why miss this great chance to lock in the reduced pri9ce forever?

Members get unlimited access to articles, webinars, videos, and other resources on grant writing, grant seeking, program evaluation, and non-profit development. This summer, we’ll be offering our first, full-blown online grant writing course, and members will get the first chance at registration and a dramatically decreased registration fee.  Go to the member information page to get more information and to sign up before June 1st.

As if that’s not enough, if you become a member between today and 11:59 p.m. on May 31st, I’ll also give you a FREE copy of my book, 101 Tips for Aspiring Grant Writers!  If you live within the United States, I’ll pay for shipping, too!

And here’s another opportunity — If you go to our Grant Goddess Facebook page and click on the “Like” button at the top of the page by midnight tonight (5/28), you’ll have a chance to win of TEN free books I’ll be giving away! Tomorrow morning, I’ll be randomly selecting 10 friends/fans from that page and contacting them to send them a free 101 Tips for Aspiring Grant Writers book!  If they live in the U.S., shipping will be free, too.

Our Grant Goddess Facebook page focuses on electronic and multimedia resources for grant writing.  We post grant tips, sources, inspiration, and other interesting tidbits. It’s 100% free and it’s focused on providing information, not selling anything.

So, act now to take advantage of these two great opportunities before they slip away forever.

So THIS is Going Paperless? Really?

I just had a giggle-fit reading the small print in a federal grant Request for Proposals (RFP) when I got to the part about the Paperwork Reduction Act and the government’s estimate of how many hours it should take to complete this grant application.  Clearly, whoever wrote this little ditty of a paragraph that has been pasted into thousands of federal RFPs over the years has never written a federal grant.

This one says that it should only take 40 hours to put this application together. I spend more than 40 hours just chasing down the information and doing the research I need to do to start writing.  I wonder if the developers of the recent Investing in Innovation (i3) grants considered the hours it would take to thoroughly read through the over 450 pages of RFP, FAQs and other guidance in their time estimate. I wonder how many trees gave their lives for that innovative program?

Then I look around my office at the piles of paper, and as I wonder how a person could actually figure out how many trees died in this “paper saving endeavor,” I think “Paperwork Reduction Act?”  Seriously?

Don’t get me wrong.  I’m all for preserving the environment and conserving paper, but I really think we use more paper since the world has started going paperless.

Think about it.  The information age and the ease of sending information over the internet means that more and more resources are available.  And even though most of those come in electronic form, what do most of us do with all of the PDFs?  Print them.

Why? So we can take them with us to read later.

Isn’t that what all these mobile devices (iPhone, Netbook, Laptop, iPad, Kindle) are for? Yes, but the screen is too small or it’s too hard to browse through the document electronically, or looking at a screen all day and all night hurts my eyes…or…or….or….

Sure, we get fewer bank statements in the mail, but I actually get more junk mail.  In fact, I get five times as more junk mail because now I get more paper junk mail that comes in the mail as well as all the email spam. The email spam isn’t paper, but it’s just as annoying.

There are more paper inserts in newspapers, too, even though fewer people are subscribing to them.  Maybe local advertisers can afford more inserts since overall circulation is down.

I am amused when I read that the inserts are made out of recycled paper because I know I’m just going to put them directly into the recycle bin without looking through them so they can get recycled and an advertiser can make more inserts that I won’t read, and so on, and so on, and so on..  It seems to me that we could save a bunch of effort by just not printing them at all.  Why don’t we make those advertisements paperless?

If the government is really so concerned about going paperless, why won’t the IRS do it?  The IRS is actually generating more paperwork than before, and everything I get from the IRS comes with pages of useless gobbledygook.  We are supposed to file electronically so they have less paper to deal with, but why won’t they return the favor?

At this moment, I really want to go back to the pre-paperless era.  I would have less paperwork to deal with than I do now.

———————————–

There are only 7 more days to get your GrantGoddess.com membership at the discounted, early-bird rate!  Check out the membership benefits and join before the rate goes up.
 Visit http://grantgoddess.com/members.html

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

So THIS is Going Paperless? Really?

I just had a giggle-fit reading the small print in a federal grant Request for Proposals (RFP) when I got to the part about the Paperwork Reduction Act and the government’s estimate of how many hours it should take to complete this grant application.  Clearly, whoever wrote this little ditty of a paragraph that has been pasted into thousands of federal RFPs over the years has never written a federal grant.

This one says that it should only take 40 hours to put this application together. I spend more than 40 hours just chasing down the information and doing the research I need to do to start writing.  I wonder if the developers of the recent Investing in Innovation (i3) grants considered the hours it would take to thoroughly read through the over 450 pages of RFP, FAQs and other guidance in their time estimate. I wonder how many trees gave their lives for that innovative program?

Then I look around my office at the piles of paper, and as I wonder how a person could actually figure out how many trees died in this “paper saving endeavor,” I think “Paperwork Reduction Act?”  Seriously?

Don’t get me wrong.  I’m all for preserving the environment and conserving paper, but I really think we use more paper since the world has started going paperless.

Think about it.  The information age and the ease of sending information over the internet means that more and more resources are available.  And even though most of those come in electronic form, what do most of us do with all of the PDFs?  Print them.

Why? So we can take them with us to read later.

Isn’t that what all these mobile devices (iPhone, Netbook, Laptop, iPad, Kindle) are for? Yes, but the screen is too small or it’s too hard to browse through the document electronically, or looking at a screen all day and all night hurts my eyes…or…or….or….

Sure, we get fewer bank statements in the mail, but I actually get more junk mail.  In fact, I get five times as more junk mail because now I get more paper junk mail that comes in the mail as well as all the email spam. The email spam isn’t paper, but it’s just as annoying.

There are more paper inserts in newspapers, too, even though fewer people are subscribing to them.  Maybe local advertisers can afford more inserts since overall circulation is down.

I am amused when I read that the inserts are made out of recycled paper because I know I’m just going to put them directly into the recycle bin without looking through them so they can get recycled and an advertiser can make more inserts that I won’t read, and so on, and so on, and so on..  It seems to me that we could save a bunch of effort by just not printing them at all.  Why don’t we make those advertisements paperless?

If the government is really so concerned about going paperless, why won’t the IRS do it?  The IRS is actually generating more paperwork than before, and everything I get from the IRS comes with pages of useless gobbledygook.  We are supposed to file electronically so they have less paper to deal with, but why won’t they return the favor?

At this moment, I really want to go back to the pre-paperless era.  I would have less paperwork to deal with than I do now.

———————————–

There are only 7 more days to get your GrantGoddess.com membership at the discounted, early-bird rate!  Check out the membership benefits and join before the rate goes up.
 Visit http://grantgoddess.com/members.html

Like a Penny Looking for Change….

The first instructor in my Masters program was a hysterically curmudgeonly character. In our first class, he described his many years of dealing with troublesome people. He detailed how these “people” caused for him a string of ailments from spastic colon to heart attack. He had developed a wonderful vernacular for leadership that could have filled a third or fourth volume of “The Portable Curmudgeon.”

My grouchy professor shared these gems with us:

  1. “Get your loving at home” – He wasn’t talking about “wide stances” in airport stalls or flying off to South America to some concubine. HEAVENS NO! (although it would certainly apply) He was referring to the fact that we had to be OK with people not appreciating us when we took a stand, when we said “no,” and when we said “yes.”
  2. “Like a penny looking for change” – Which simply referred to someone who was clueless about where they were, what they wanted, or how to go about getting it.
  3. “People you supervise are going to take out unresolved issues with their fathers (or mothers for women) on you” – So whenever I got a particularly undeserved and nasty response from someone to a decision, an evaluation, or anything else I did, it helped me to think about it that way, “What did your parents do to you?”
  4. “When you’re getting run out of town, get out front and present you’re leading a parade.” – Now this he admitted was Abraham Lincoln’s statement but he put it to good use and reminded us that as leaders we could run afoul of the politics of the situation and to be aware of our surroundings.
  5. “Don’t pick a fight with people who buy ink by the barrel.” – Another great quote borrowed from someone else. In other words, make friends of the media. Today it should be something like, “Don’t pick a fight with someone who buys bandwidth by the terabyte.”

I wish I had video tapes of our classes, or at the very least my notes from the class so I didn’t lose any of his sayings. Unfortunately, these 20-plus years later, I don’t even remember his name; but, his amazing crusty personality stuck with me, as did many of his quips and barbs. His cranky sayings spring to mind at times when I run into people with an unresolved daddy complex, or are an aimless and wandering penny.

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You might also enjoy Bless His Cotton Socks, another post by Derek.

Don’t forget to check out GrantGoddess.com for grant writing tips and grant sources.

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

Like a Penny Looking for Change….

The first instructor in my Masters program was a hysterically curmudgeonly character. In our first class, he described his many years of dealing with troublesome people. He detailed how these “people” caused for him a string of ailments from spastic colon to heart attack. He had developed a wonderful vernacular for leadership that could have filled a third or fourth volume of “The Portable Curmudgeon.”

My grouchy professor shared these gems with us:

  1. “Get your loving at home” – He wasn’t talking about “wide stances” in airport stalls or flying off to South America to some concubine. HEAVENS NO! (although it would certainly apply) He was referring to the fact that we had to be OK with people not appreciating us when we took a stand, when we said “no,” and when we said “yes.”
  2. “Like a penny looking for change” – Which simply referred to someone who was clueless about where they were, what they wanted, or how to go about getting it.
  3. “People you supervise are going to take out unresolved issues with their fathers (or mothers for women) on you” – So whenever I got a particularly undeserved and nasty response from someone to a decision, an evaluation, or anything else I did, it helped me to think about it that way, “What did your parents do to you?”
  4. “When you’re getting run out of town, get out front and present you’re leading a parade.” – Now this he admitted was Abraham Lincoln’s statement but he put it to good use and reminded us that as leaders we could run afoul of the politics of the situation and to be aware of our surroundings.
  5. “Don’t pick a fight with people who buy ink by the barrel.” – Another great quote borrowed from someone else. In other words, make friends of the media. Today it should be something like, “Don’t pick a fight with someone who buys bandwidth by the terabyte.”

I wish I had video tapes of our classes, or at the very least my notes from the class so I didn’t lose any of his sayings. Unfortunately, these 20-plus years later, I don’t even remember his name; but, his amazing crusty personality stuck with me, as did many of his quips and barbs. His cranky sayings spring to mind at times when I run into people with an unresolved daddy complex, or are an aimless and wandering penny.

————————————–

You might also enjoy Bless His Cotton Socks, another post by Derek.

Don’t forget to check out GrantGoddess.com for grant writing tips and grant sources.

Distinguish Implementation Objectives from Outcome Objectives

Writing good objectives for your grant can be a challenge.   This post is about distinguishing between implementation objectives and outcome objectives. You can also check out Five Tips for Writing Good Grant Objectives.

Implementation objectives define your targets for implementing the program (e.g., Fifty program participants will be enrolled by June 30, 2010, as measured by intake records) and outcome objectives define your ultimate achievement targets (e.g., Forty students will complete the program each year, as measured by achievement of a passing score on the XYZ exam).

Think of it this way: the achievement of an implementation objective proves that you are implementing the program. The achievement of an outcome objective proves that the program works. While implementation objectives are good, outcome objectives guide the true measures of your effectiveness. Generally speaking, funding sources are most interested in your outcome objectives, and when an RFA refers to “Goals and Objectives,” it is referring to goals and outcome objectives.
Implementation objectives can also be used, but only when you clearly distinguish them from outcome objectives. Occasionally, a funding source will specifically ask you to list your implementation objectives. In that case, of course, you should follow the directions and provide the requested information, but typically implementation information is provided in the design section of the proposal.

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This is Tip 35 from 101 Tips for Aspiring Grant Writers.  Check out the book to see all 101 Tips!

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

Distinguish Implementation Objectives from Outcome Objectives

Writing good objectives for your grant can be a challenge.   This post is about distinguishing between implementation objectives and outcome objectives. You can also check out Five Tips for Writing Good Grant Objectives.

Implementation objectives define your targets for implementing the program (e.g., Fifty program participants will be enrolled by June 30, 2010, as measured by intake records) and outcome objectives define your ultimate achievement targets (e.g., Forty students will complete the program each year, as measured by achievement of a passing score on the XYZ exam).

Think of it this way: the achievement of an implementation objective proves that you are implementing the program. The achievement of an outcome objective proves that the program works. While implementation objectives are good, outcome objectives guide the true measures of your effectiveness. Generally speaking, funding sources are most interested in your outcome objectives, and when an RFA refers to “Goals and Objectives,” it is referring to goals and outcome objectives.
Implementation objectives can also be used, but only when you clearly distinguish them from outcome objectives. Occasionally, a funding source will specifically ask you to list your implementation objectives. In that case, of course, you should follow the directions and provide the requested information, but typically implementation information is provided in the design section of the proposal.

———————————–
 
This is Tip 35 from 101 Tips for Aspiring Grant Writers.  Check out the book to see all 101 Tips!