Ten Summer Grant Writing Chores

Here are just ten of the scores of things you might want to use your summer months to accomplish.  Since summer tends to be a bit of a lull in the grant writing year, here are a few things I try to accomplish to make the best possible use of the time:
  1. Now is the time to clean off that desk – Yes, get the shredder and the recycle bin and plow through those stacks of grant narrative revisions you don’t need, those research documents you need to file away for next year, and those bazillion dog-eared post its stuck to everything.
  2. Clean out your email In-Box – You may be pushing the memory limits on your mail provider anyway and let’s face it, you only need so many forwarded emails in there with PowerPoint presentations of waterfalls, kittens, and guys falling off stuff.
  3. Clean out your e-files like your documents file which I can imagine has tons (digital tons) of loose documents that you made up in a hurry and then didn’t have time to file away in their proper location, or maybe there wasn’t even a file folder created!
  4. Send out thank you/wish you a great summer cards and/or email to all your clients, previous clients, and anyone who might be a future client. Give them a heads up of any upcoming grant opportunities you’re aware of.
  5. Write some blog posts and queue them up to post automatically for the rest of the summer, one less thing to think about for the summer months if you take a little time to do it.
  6. Review your client list and note their priorities for the coming year then use the list to match their needs to potential grant opportunities. There may be some prep that can be done with them or you may be able to lock in a contract for writing in advance.
  7. Visit local agencies and organizations you don’t have relationships to meet people face to face. Just call and if you can get an appointment, you’re in.  Do a little research on them and bring them a few examples of grants they might be interested in. Bring your marketing material and don’t forget your business card and your smile!
  8. Participate in training opportunities and networking events to expand your network.
  9. Fine tune your online presence. Are you using social media to your advantage?  Are you positioned as an expert in grant writing online? It might be time to freshen up your web site.
  10. Review the results of the past year. Review readers’ comments and if you don’t have copies, contact your clients to see if they have them and just forgot to send them along. If you had some unsuccessful proposals, see if the grants that were funded have been posted by the funding agency and read them.

Now’s the time to refresh, reorganize, recharge, and renew, there’s a long winter of grant writing ahead of us all so a smart grant writer will use the slower summer months wisely!
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Photo Credit – Henry S.
Published by Creative Resources & Research http://grantgoddess.com

The Importance of Being Earnest

Public people take public falls for being dishonest.  Congressman Weiner’s fall from grace this week is the latest in a long string of prominent people who’ve been caught acting in a destructive way that has damaged their reputations, careers, and families.
Grant Writers may not be public people per say, but often a grant writer is contracted by a public (government) or a public benefit agency (non-profit). A grant writer charged with writing a narrative is usually given facts and figures to write the narrative by the client. Sometimes those facts won’t present the organization in the best light to the funder. Even so, it is vital to the writer’s reputation to write honestly, even if the grant narrative suffers from the truth. There’s nothing wrong with “planting the flowers on the client’s side of the street” but a professional grant writer always does so in a way that keeps their integrity intact.
Here’s the plain truth. Telling lies in a narrative will be exposed. There are times when the client does not read the narrative carefully before the grant is submitted. But, the client and usually one or more of the client’s board members and stakeholders read the grant carefully as notice of funding is received. 
It does not matter that a grant is funded or not, the client and constituency will want to know how to begin implementing, or why it wasn’t funded.  If the writer wrote a narrative that is inaccurate, exaggerated, or fraudulent, the grant writer might as well have Tweeted pictures of himself or herself in their skivvies; the lies are about to be discovered and everyone is going to be upset.
Honesty is the best policy in grant writing as in everything else. A grant writer who writes dishonestly will ruin their reputation. Their fall from grace may not be quite as public as Congressman Weiner’s humiliation this week, but their career will be equally damaged.
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By Xochitl Peña of Mydesert.com
Photo Credit – Lorenzo González
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Should You Write Grants in Exchange for Evaluations?

I get asked on a regular basis by potential grant writing clients, “Will you write the grant for the evaluation?”
“No,” is the answer I give.
I have a good reason for saying no and not negotiating the point.  In the Middle Eastern bazaar that is grant consulting negotiations, a grant writer must be clear on what they’re selling.
I write about this today because I’ve spent the last two days slaving over a hot copy machine scanning thousands upon thousands of surveys. Stacks of surveys that are crumpled, mis-marked, unmarked, sticky; surveys printed on multicolored paper that threw the scanner into photo-static conniptions, surveys that are un-scannable because some staffer decided a significant portion didn’t need to be completed by respondents because there was a sticker affixed with the same information – a sticker that can’t be read by the scanning software (genius) so that data for a thousand surveys now must be hand-entered.
And don’t get me started on the scanning software which can’t always read a clearly marked dot due to some mystery of arcane software programming.
It’s all well and good if one is paid to do this evaluation work, which we are; it is entirely another thing to do this work in exchange for writing the original grant application – which we are not.
“What does any of this scanning work or the analysis and interpretation of this data, have to do with grant writing?”
“Nothing.”
That’s right.
“Nothing.”
That’s why I always say no.

A grant writer who takes a grant in compensation for the evaluation is doing two jobs for the price of one. That grant writer may also be guilty of one or all of these things:
  •          Being a foolish business person;
  •          Undervaluing their services;
  •          Being complicit in breaking some laws depending on the funding source;
  •          Undermining the general value of grant writers in the marketplace.
As the Grant Goddess would tell you, “Grant writing and program evaluation are different disciplines.”  A client who asks a grant writer to write for free in exchange for the evaluation contract is comparable to a homeowner telling a landscape architect that she should design and install the landscaping free of charge in exchange for a contract to maintain it. That’s the kind of suggestion that could merit a leaf blower up the nose.
Published by Creative Resources & Research http://grantgoddess.com

Good Grant Writing Blurs the Lines between Fact and Fiction

On Sunday I attended an elegant house-warming and BBQ in the wine country with a friend. During the party, I had an interesting conversation with a patent attorney. 
We started our conversation with the customary pleasantries and the standard introductory question between guys, “So what do you do?” Rightly or wrongly, it’s how guys break the ice until we retire when we ask things like, “What’s your handicap? Or who did your hip replacement?” But I digress.
We – the lawyer and I – talked about styles of writing in both of our professions. I drew from our discussion that writing a patent application is not unlike applying for a grant. This man’s assessment of grant writing is that the two kinds of writing are quite similar.
I explained that grant writing is a mixture of writing about factual information and fictional writing (kind of Orwell-style futuristic fiction).  Grant writing describes a future state to be created with grant funds.
He explained to me that this is similar to what he must produce when writing a patent application.  In addition to the technical aspects of the patent, he must describe the future benefits and functions of this yet-to-be produced widget, a future state based on the present facts.
Grant writers must be skillful in describing the future state. My advice to aspiring grant writers about how to achieve this unique style of writing, which would, perhaps, similarly edify aspiring patent attorneys, is this;
1)      Spend time with your client to adequately understand the future state desired,
Your imagination may produce sparkling fictional narrative, but if your client seeks a rocket to Mars and you write a grant sending him to Venus, you’ll have written an unachievable or undesired program.

2)      Write about this future state in a positive, can-do manner, with sufficient detail to make it a believable narrative,
Good fiction delivers the reader into a created world where they willingly suspend disbelief and buy in to the feasibility of the program design. Your grant narrative must deliver the program design in a way that the reader never stops nodding in agreement.

3)      Ground your optimistic description of the future state on the facts at hand.
The best fiction is grounded in facts that blur the lines between what’s real and what’s possible. The moment you force your reader to stop and ask themselves whether you’re proposing something plausible, you’re sunk.

My conversation with the attorney made me curious about how similar the writing styles actually are, or whether he was being over-generous in his assessment. I’ll conduct a search with Google this week to see if I can find a patent application to read. I suspect that if the style and level of difficulty are similar that, based the extravagance of his new vacation home, the main difference is to be found in our invoice for services.
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Photo Credit: Rosa Ballada
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What Do You Do?

“I’m a grant writer,” a statement I’ve become hesitant to make because I tend to get one of three reactions.
Reaction 1 is a glazed over look from people who tried to write a grant once (usually a five page mini grant that was not funded) and hated every sentence of the experience. I imagine these people see me through mutant lenses as if I, and my large egg-shaped head, recently stumbled out of a broken silver spaceship in the New Mexico desert.
Many grant writers may have stumbled out of a space ship but like Roswell, the evidence is probably secreted away in an Area 51 vault.
Reaction 2 is a look of superiority from people who’ve written one more grants and have been successfully funded (almost always five page mini grants). It resembles the knowing-simpatico look that a firefighter gets from the guy who put out a grease fire on his neighbor’s stove, it is the “I can do that” sort of look.
You are not a grant writer or a firefighter unless you make a living at it.
Reaction 3 is a look that is at once rosy charm and mystical attraction. People who never tried to write a grant may give me this look.  These are well-intentioned, but uninformed, people who loved English courses and who once received an A+ on a paper about their kitten “Boots” (that A+ given by a cat loving English professor who was later committed for living with 123 feral cats and a mummified Pekinese named Boots). I imagine these folks see grant writers a technical writing Ernest Hemingway living an exotic lifestyle. They can imagine themselves drinking red wine in Pamplona until dawn.
Grant writing is sitting in an office for 14 days in a row writing a 40 page narrative for a client whose main idea for the program design is not to make anyone do anything new. That is not romantic; although, it could impel you to buy several bottles of wine and search out Jake and Brett.
Grant writing is real writing, mind you, though a bit stilted and constrained in style and form.  But there are no kitten stories to be written. Most grants are written about programs, the minutia of which is adequate substitution for cerebral Novocain. I read once that some people having brain surgery did not need general anesthetic; I surmised they were forced to read poorly written grant narratives before being wheeled to the operating room thereby dulling their senses to a dramatic extent.
I do what most writers do, I wrestle with my narratives until a deadline forces me to give them up. I get stuck and am too close to the narrative to make sense of it.  I curse at my edited copy, and, I drink to my editor’s continued good health. The narrative always pins me because it is never quite finished.
There is a 4th reaction, that of utter disinterest, like the young woman years ago at a club who when told what I do turned up her nose and asked me what kind of car I drove. The next time I am asked what I do, I shall make something up that squelches conversation, like life insurance salesman or telephone solicitor.
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Photo Credit – Brian Lary
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Grant Research is a Steep Climb

Looking for foundation grant funding is laborious even if you know what you’re doing. There’s a lot of ground to cover if you’re going to find a match for your program or organization. It’s tough work and it takes a lot of time.


Did you know that there were 1,617,301 tax-exempt organizations registered in the United States in 2011, including:

    • 1,046,719 public charities;

    • 115,915 private foundations;

    • and, 454,667 other types of nonprofit organizations, including chambers of commerce, fraternal organizations and civic leagues?

(Source: http://nccs.urban.org/)

That means you’re going to sift through a lot of foundation records to find a few that are a good match for your purpose. Even when you find one that funds your field of interest, there’s no assurance that the foundation will review your application.


You need to find those foundations that: A) accept unsolicited applications (or you need to attend the right cocktail parties/golf tournaments where you might gain an invitation to apply); B) have money to give this year; C) offers a funding cycle that gives you an opportunity to apply.



Did you know that Foundations gave $42.9 billion in 2009? According to The Foundation Center, this represents a decrease of 8.4% from 2008.


You need to know who’s giving the money so you can budget your research time wisely.  The Foundation Center goes on to report that the total foundation giving in 2008 was distributed as follows:

    • 72% came from independent foundations;

    • 10% came from community foundations;

    • 10% came from corporate foundations;

    • and, 8% came from operating foundations.
According to the National Center for Charitable Statistics, the number of 501(c)(3) organizations in the United States grew from 631,902 in 1999, to 1,006,670 in 2009.  That’s more than a 59% increase in the number of non-profit organizations. Those organizations gave 42.9 billion dollars in 2009 alone.  This figure should encourage you to keep researching to find the right match for your organization.

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The Angel of the Odd and My Grant

Each time I write a grant, I learn something new. The grant I just submitted was written over a two week period and it included a 40 page narrative and all the ancillary pieces, it was not a small project.
I sit this afternoon before my computer pondering what to blog. It occurs to me that perhaps there’s a connection with a short story I read last night, Edgar Allen Poe’s “Angel of the Odd.” I suspect that this very Angel showed up and made my life difficult over the past two weeks. In the story, Poe, in reading numerous accounts of odd tragedies befalling people, decided that these stories were simply fictions created to sell papers.  In so thinking, Poe offended the “Angel of the Odd” who paid him a visit to set him straight and who designed for some odd circumstances to befall Poe who came to believe in the end that Odd things did happen and that the stories were real.
My Odd circumstances started on a Monday morning, the first of what was to be 14 days of grant writing.  I was primed, rested, ready to start writing.  My plan was to put my head down and make a dent in the narrative that morning.  I sat in my old Honda Civic waiting for the green light when suddenly I was rudely rammed into the intersection from behind amidst a thundering crash.
This odd situation got even stranger when I looked into the rear-view mirror to see the villain, who had attempted to park in my trunk at high speed, back up from under my car and pull around me to make a right turn, drive up the street, and then disappear in a crossing alleyway.
I was outraged at the scoundrel leaving me behind and not caring a whit whether I was breathing or passing on to my final reward; so I tried to follow him.  But my car would not roll as the tires rubbed loudly under the frame: my little car was fatally injured.
The chain of events that followed the commission of the crime kept me from writing a word until nearly noon time.  Even as I finally sat down to write, my head spun with the odd reality of my new situation.  I was 25 miles from home without a vehicle, I needed to ride the bus home, I needed to do battle with insurance companies, I faced the likelihood this man had no car insurance; these and a thousand other thoughts kept me from concentrating on my narrative until the next morning.
Writing a grant is mentally exhausting enough.  The hit and run driver totaled my car and imposed a whole set of odd circumstances upon me.  These included the additional 3 hours a day to my commute, the physical pain of the crash, the mental uproar of being in an accident and all the details attached to that (police, insurance, doctors, concerned friends and family) None of these things changed the fact that I had a grant to write.
As Poe learned, Odd things happen in an instant. But in spite of unwelcome visits by the Angel of the Odd, a grant writer can’t allow life to intervene.  It’s not a job that allows one to take sick leave while the work sits in an “In Box.” Grant deadlines do not wait.
What did I learn from this grant? I learned when a grant deadline is imminent; I simply need to suck it up and get the work done.
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Photo Credit – Simona Dumitru
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Grant Writer in a Hammock

Monday morning, great weekend, gaining my bearings here, 3rd cup o’ Joe, and my other eye is starting to open at last. Dreary and rainy outside, feels like Seattle this morning, but this is the perfect weather for grant writing actually. It is hard to concentrate inside when it’s a gorgeous spring day outside.
This quote by Thomas Edison perfectly describes my transient ability to write well, “There is no expedient to which a man will not go to avoid the labor of thinking.”
The labor of thinking is what makes it a challenge to be a freelance grant writer.  Grant writing requires intensive thinking for extended periods of time. It requires fastidious attention to a thousand details. It requires the mental flexibility of a Chinese acrobat in editing and revising. It requires holding the whole in your mind while crafting the specifics.
Grant writing  makes my brain sweat.
I treat the hard work of thinking like exercise sometimes; I defer the pain and sweat. I find distractions that are as Edison would call them, “expedient.” A trash can that needs emptying – not customarily high on my list of priorities – can suddenly bolt to the forefront of my mind as a convenient escape from a stubborn program design.
Every freelance grant writer needs an inner drill sergeant.  I need that intimidator inside barking at me to push harder, not to give up, to exceed my perceived limitations. Ignore the trash can! Ignore the breezy weather and sunny garden outside!  My job is to grind out the narrative and slow up only to wipe the sweat off my cerebrum from time to time.
So today I endeavor to engage fully in the labor of thinking and avoid the delicious appeal of the day and thrust aside the mindless diversion of menial chores that would satiate my brain’s desire to swing in a hammock.

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Photo Credit – 

craig toron

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Grant Writing Contracts

Every grant writer needs to have a contract format.  Most of us are not lawyers so here are some basics parts needed in a legally enforceable contract.

Disclaimer – this was not written by a lawyer and is not intended as “legal advice.” Readers may use this information to develop a contract format but do so at their own risk. It’s wise to consult with an attorney when you develop a legal contract for your grant writing business.


All that being said; I developed my own contract and never consulted a lawyer until I needed to force a deadbeat former client to pay me for a grant I wrote for them (and which was fully funded too!).  My self-devised contract held enough validity to force the deadbeat to pay – of course I lost the portion of that fee the lawyer charged me but I was vindicated.


Freelance grant writers should use a contract that has the three enforceable components: (1) offer and acceptance; (2) legal intent; and, (3) consideration.  At the most basic level, a contract is  binds two or more parties in an agreement to perform acts specified within the language of the contract in exchange for something of value.


 Offer and Acceptance  (This is the heart of “The Deal”)

All contracts involve an offer by one party and an acceptance of the offer by the other party. The offer is detailed in the contract and the other party can sign the contract in acceptance of the terms or not.


A grant writer offers services in exchange for money and the client may choose to sign the contract or not.


 Intent of the Contract 

The grant writer and their client must enter into the agreement with the intent of binding themselves to the terms of the contract. Signing the contract is evidence of the intent so never even start to write a grant for anyone unless you have a signed contract.


 Contractual Consideration 

Contracts must include a consideration (a recompense or payment, as for work done; compensation – dictionary.com) of value in order to be legally binding. This means that both the grant writer and the client must receive something of value from binding themselves to the contract. Grant writers are only likely to enter a contract in which the consideration is money.  But the client enters into the contract for a different type of consideration, and that is the promise to perform grant writing work. A grant writer who enters into a contract and fails to complete and submit the grant is in danger of being sued for failure to perform.


 Parties to the Contract 

The grant writer and the client who is to sign the contract must be legally able to participate in the deal. This means that the signatory for the client agency must be legally authorized to enter into a contract for that agency.  In a school district, the people with authorization to bind the agency to a contract are only those who are authorized in an approved action of the Board of Directors. If the person who signs is not legally authorized to sign, then you probably have an unenforceable contract (ask an attorney).

 Before You Enter a Contract 
Sometimes a client has a standard contract format they prefer to use.  Read any contract carefully including the fine print.  If you are unable to understand all the language, consult with an attorney before you bind yourself to it.

If you want another opinion, ask another grant writer.


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Photo Credit – 

Henk L


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Signs of a Professional Grant Writer

I have high appreciation for professional people. Now before you think I am an elitist, white-collar snob, allow me to state that my use of the word professional is equally applied to anyone of any craft, trade, “profession”, or art. The label must be earned through demonstration of diligent effort and adherence to principles. The title Professional is not awarded on sheepskin or vellum and it is not donned via fancy suits and ties.
I consider a professional person to be someone who earns the title.  Professional people are not hard to identify because they stand out, there few of them.
A grant writer must act as a professional person or soon be out of work. Here are some areas in which a grant writer must earn their professional stature.
  •   Confidentiality – A grant writer sometimes privy to information that an agency shares with few employees.  This information often includes needs data and fiscal information required to write applications. A grant writer often gains “insider” information about an agency that should never be shared. To do so only feeds the ever hungry gossip grapevine.
  • Honesty – A grant writer must resist pressure to write inaccuracies or exaggerations about an agency to improve their appeal to the grant maker. 
  •  Integrity – A grant writer must be reliable because they often work alone. Grant writers must possess the inner drive to complete difficult revisions and editing out of a desire to do a professional job of writing. A grant writer must charge fees that represent fair market value for services rendered.
  • Expertise – A grant writer must complete highly technical narratives. A grant narrative requires excellent writing skills and technical ability to write with authority.

I was enrolled in a summer University course many years ago toward my Master’s degree.  The instructor’s husband was visiting the class one afternoon and we met by chance on a balcony at break.  We spoke of my future plans and he gave me words of encouragement. He urged me to set my mind on becoming a professional, “It doesn’t matter what you do, but be a Pro at it. If you do, you’ll be a huge success, because there are so few Pro’s out there.”
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Photo Credit – Ali Farid
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