3 Tips for Shrinking Expectations Canyon

Expectations Canyon is that place between a grant writer's expectations for how a project should progress and a client's idea of how a project should progress. Sometimes is as big as the Grand Canyon and other times it's as small as the little holding pond across town from my house, but it's always there. The smaller that gap is, the easier the project will go.

Organizations that hire a grant writer usually have the mistaken belief that they have hired someone to do it all so they don't have to do any more work, which is not the case at all. Grant writers often hold the mistaken belief that every client will assume responsibility for the project and stay involved, providing all the information and support necessary. Can you see the canyon now?

Here are some tips for minimizing the gap:

 Make sure that all roles and responsibilities are in writing.  Don't assume that just because you talked about something that anyone will remember it, especially if it gives them a task.

 Include a timeline in your responsibilities document.  Some tasks can't be completed until other have been completed first. You'll save a lot of time if these are identified right away.

Communicate often.  Even if everything is going well, make sure you touch base frequently to review exactly where you both are on the responsibility list.

If you follow these simple tips, Expectations Canyon will shrink to a manageable size and you'll be walking together toward success.

Losing My Wallet

I like to think I am a pretty organized person. I like knowing where to find things. I tend to put my keys and wallet in the same place each evening on the coffee table, and on the same place on my desk at the office every morning.

I find it is less stressful to know that I won’t have to search for them when I need them again. To my mind the less I have to think about things I can control, the more space in my head I’ll have for things I can’t control. I try to avoid creating problems, life gives  me enough problems  to solve.

Grant writers have to be organized because we deal with so much real and virtual paper. The stacks of documents, publications, emails, text messages, tweets, excel spreadsheets, graphics, and pictures can be overwhelming. They pile up so darned fast that important documents can get lost, overlooked, or mulch in an electronic compost pile if you aren’t careful.

I like to think of myself as an organized person but I still lose things and waste time looking for them. I don’t always follow a logical system for labeling and storing electronic files. Oh, I usually have a reason for where I put them, it’s just that I can’t always remember my reasoning 45 minutes after I have concluded my deliberations.

It doesn’t help that there are so many bloody disk drives on my computer, and CD disks, and flash drives, and external hard drives, and multiple computers! It's like having six coffee tables where I could put my keys and they were all identical; I would probably forget which coffee table I put my things on and have to scour each one before I left for work. That’s how it gets with :c and, :e and, :f and, :I drives; they all have storage and they all have folders and I forget where things are placed. That’s where I can get things horribly lost.

My systems for staying organized are imperfect and sometimes they get crisscrossed in my brain – especially when there’s a deadline.  Suddenly I’ll find that I am flinging my wallet onto the dresser in the bedroom or on the counter in the kitchen instead of the coffee table next to my Newsweek magazine that I won’t have time to read because I’ll spend fifteen minutes hunting for my wallet and cursing the ne’er-do-well who snuck in during the night to rob me.

Other Posts You May Enjoy:

Stay within the Lines but Think outside the Box

Bless His Cotton Socks

Graphic Credit - Chelsea Koetsveld

The Grant Goddess' Favorite Posts

I always get reflective as we approach the end the calendar year. As part of that, I spent a little time looking back at some of the older posts on The Grant Goddess Speaks... and I found some pretty great tips and posts in the archives.  Some of them are so good that they deserve another shot at the light of day. So I decided to pull some out for your enjoyment.

Some of these are on the list because they have great advice.  Others are here because they are cute and funny. Regardless of why they made this list, they are among my favorites (in no particular order). Consider this list a special gift!

Enjoy!

If They Made a Movie About Grant Writing Consultants. . . 

Are You the Bear or the Salmon?

14 Tips to Stay Off The Naughty List

Disadvantaged by Expectations

The 12 Days of Christmas for Grant Writers 

Deadlines Are Like Burritos

The Detail Dilemma of Grant Writing

Grant Writer or Grant Valet?

Writing is My Fascination

Excellent writing fascinates me because it is so powerful. I believe that writers are born. But even born writers must be trained. I was a writer from a young age. I made comic books for my brother, and I told him stories at night about my stuffed animals to make him laugh.

My training has mostly been outside the classroom. I was educated in California where grammar wasn’t taught. It was considered an unnecessary encumbrance to the creative process. I drive my editors insane.

“Prose is architecture, not interior decoration.” Ernest Hemingway

I write a lot. I write almost all the time. I write on the bus. I write at the coffee shop. I write at home. I write for a living.

When I am not writing, I am usually reading. I read on a Kindle, a smart phone, and an HP Netbook. I also have shelves of books I haven’t time to read yet. But the collection grows because I can’t help collecting interesting titles.

“Read everything--trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You'll absorb it. Then write. If it is good, you'll find out.” William Faulkner

The written word is no less magic for me within a grant proposal than it is within a fictional book about goblins and faeries. Description and beautiful arrangement of words, phrases, and sentences stands out when you read it no matter what it’s about. There is a flow to excellent writing that is simply wonderful. Achieving that flow is mastery. Every once in a while I’ll write something that comes close to achieving the flow. But it’s hard work and I don’t do achieve that level as often as I aspire to do.

“Quantity produces quality. If you only write a few things, you're doomed.” Ray Bradbury

Writing a fine narrative is hard work that requires hours of revising, polishing, and editing. There’s no way around the work, there are no shortcuts.

“God sells us all things at the price of the labor.” Leonardo da Vinci 

Related Posts:

The Accidental Grant Writer

Grant Writing Training at Taco Bell?

Bless His Cotton Socks

Ten Tips for Grant Writing Success

Learning about grant writing in one blog post is a little like learning about an iceberg from seeing what's above the water line. This article just shows you part of what’s above the surface, the rest is deeper and there's a whole lot more to it. I encourage you to search our blog articles and look at our web site resources to learn more. I write whatever feels right at the moment, and this Friday afternoon, writing a simple post about ten tips feels perfect. Here goes:

1. Learn to write short, declarative sentences;
2. Correctly target your proposal to the right source;
3. Follow guidelines and restrictions scrupulously;
4. Create a writing outline;
5. Collaborate with your client on program design;
6. Write objectives that measurably impact the needs identified;
7.  Keep formatting simple and uncluttered;
8. Use the services of an editor;
9. Budget line items should never surprise the reader;
10. Check the proposal for completeness against a checklist.

Veronica put 101 tips into her book and some of these are probably repeats because they’re each so fundamental to grant development.

Success in grant writing does not happen by accident. Grants are successful because someone can write well, follow directions, and translate a lot of discussion and data into an actionable plan.

If you want to learn more about grant writing, polish and perfect your skills, we can help you do that with our online courses. We also give grant writing seminars on site for groups and we’d love to work with your agency when you need to train staff to write proposals.

Other articles you may enjoy:

14 Tips to Stay Off the Naughty List

Grant Writing - Five Last Minute Things to Check

Photo Credit - jacob gerritsen

The Golden Age of Grant Writing

I started writing grants back in the mid 90’s and it was a time I fondly think of as the “Golden Age” of grant writing. The government was using grants to experiment with new programs and do social and educational research. There was a lot of money out there. And there were a lot of clients.

A headline came to me via email this morning about proposed budget cuts to educational programs (STEM Ed. Among Cuts Sought in Draft House Budget Plan).  The article made me nostalgic for the Golden Age. I see bad news in that headline on several levels but on a business level, it's another cut to the business I love, grant writing.

During the Golden Age, money was flowing and the streets were paved with gold. I grabbed the proverbial brass ring and launched into a full time grant writing job at a private company leaving the cushy, secure and boring existence of public employment.

I was suddenly working 60 hours a day. I was crushed with work. I was drinking from a fire hose. This went on for about a decade. I had no trouble getting contracts. I never marketed my services beyond handing out a business card (which I often forgot to carry).

Today, I spend part of my time writing copy for marketing. I’m pretty sure I stink at it. Oh, I have good ideas (I think) and I make cool graphics (I think), but the truth is that I am not an advertising Madman. Nonetheless, marketing is now an ongoing conversation here in the office. But I would much rather write grants full time. I know there's supposed to be an ROI to Marketing, however, it never feels like it's worth it. What happened to the fire hose?

The Golden Age of grant writing ended for social and educational programs for several reasons:

• After two decades of research (80’s and 90’s), the government “owns” the answers to all the important questions, it now knows “what works”. Grants encouraging innovation are no longer necessary. The focus of grants now is to implement everything they “discovered” during the Golden Age. Applicants these days are expected to implement “research-based” programs and “proven models" regardless of the lack of wisdom in forcing square pegs into round holes;

• The economy collapsed. Money shrank back from “the street” on all levels. The faucets got turned off in the private sector, the nonprofit sector, and the government sector. Everyone suffered and is still, grants are no different. The Golden Age ended in 2008;

• The market became flooded with “grant writers”. When I started, it was hard to find a grant writer so there was a gap in the market. I filled it. Today there’s a grant writer under every rock and some of them slithered in there and are none too ethical. You’ll read about these in the newspapers from time-to-time. It is also harder today to ferret out who is a good grant writer and who should be writing marketing copy. That’s because everyone’s success rate post-Golden Age has taken a hit. Fewer grants and more applicants means fewer applications are successful, it’s not calculus. Even a stellar writer can find his/her success rates falling. Success today is more dependent than ever before on having clients with the right need and the right demographic, geographic, and organizational profile.

I am still young (ish) and hoping to be around for the next Golden Age. It’s coming because the people are not too certain that the government really has the answers. That realization, I hope, encourages a new round of research to spur innovation and new ideas. Even if the “old” ideas worked back in the 80’s and 90’s, conditions continue to change, demographics shift, knowledge evolves, proclivities of the younger generation are not what they were in the 80’s. Learning styles, resources, technology and social needs evolve over time.

I hope that the melt-down of “No Child Left Behind” and the ever-diversifying demographics of the country are evidence that the next generation of researchers, teachers, social workers, and the like need grant funding to seek new answers. Bring on that next Golden Age, I need some relief from marketing.

Other posts you may enjoy:

What is a Grant Writer?

A Review of "Do the Work" by Steven Pressfield

Photo Credit - Macin Smolinski

How Does a Grant Writer Build Client Trust?

I’ve worked as a consultant for many years now and one thing I know is that establishing trust with clients is important. I’ve watched many consultants over the years fail to build trust with their clients and the result has always been that they fail. Critical ways for a grant writer to lose trust with a client are low approval rates and lack of confidentiality.

The problem with grant writing business failure, beyond the obvious trouble for the consultant, is that the client suffers because they’ve worked to get approval for a consulting agreement. The client has demonstrated their trust in an individual who let them down; it damages the client’s reputation within their organization.

Hiring a grant writer is a big decision because it costs money. While a good grant writer can earn an organization large awards, if the consultant is average or poor, their grants will be funded at a low percentage and contracting with them will cost the organization a lot of money with little or no return on investment.

A poor approval rate erodes trust quickly and another key way to lose the trust of a client is to be less than strictly confidential. I’ve witnessed many consultants lose trust with clients because they are unprofessional and share information they shouldn’t. It may be information about themselves, their co-workers, competitors, or their other clients. A grant writer who is inclined toward gossip will never make a good consultant; these people are a liability to an organization, not a benefit. There is no positive return on investment for gossip.

An easy way to identify a consultant that will not be trustworthy is that they share derogatory information about their competitors to make themselves look good. If a grant writer is willing to gossip about competitors, the client has evidence to question the consultant’s confidentiality with regard to their own organization. It is certain the client’s personal and organizational faults and foibles will be gossiped to anyone who gives an ear. As the old saying goes, where there’s smoke, there’s fire.

A grant writer must have a history of writing successful proposals and be capable of maintaining professional confidentiality in order to achieve a successful career. Organizations are wise to hire consultants cautiously and pay attention to the level of professionalism they display.

Whoever gossips to you will gossip about you.  ~Spanish Proverb~

Other posts you may enjoy:

Be a Professional

Is Grant Writing Success Really Just About Luck?

Photo Credits: Israel Papillon & Julia Freeman-Woolpert

Grant Writer Taking a Break

Refreshing your brain is important for anyone who, a) has one, b) must use it to make a living.

Keep close to Nature's heart... and break clear away, once in awhile, and climb a mountain or spend a week in the woods. Wash your spirit clean.  John Muir

So once a year I go to the mountains to camp and to wash my spirit clean. California’s mountains are beautiful in summer and there are yet places to go where few people do, even though these are becoming harder to find.

Writing is always a part of these trips, but not grant writing of course. I take a Moleskine®  with me and make a point of writing each morning while greeting the sun. I sit high on a boulder where I can hear the Marsh Hawk screech and the peeping ground squirrels and where I can watch the coyotes trot home to their burrows after a night of hunting.

I look forward to these times in the mountains from the moment I leave there each year until the moment that I step back into that glorious valley. 

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!

Other Posts You May Enjoy:

The Ten Best Things About Being a Grant Writer

Top Ten Fiscal Considerations for Grant Writing Consultants

Photo Credit - Henry S.

Even a Grant Writer Needs a Break!

I am enjoying my coffee and my Al Stewart station on Pandora, it’s a nice little interlude in the day. This blog is about the importance of taking breaks since that’s what is on my mind at the moment.

If I were diagnosed as a type, I’d be in the “Type A” category. Taking a break is a hard thing to do sometimes as the clutter of the unfinished work and looming deadlines up in my mind.  For me, paying too much attention to those piles can become stifling, even paralyzing.

The piles and the pending can become tyrannical haunts that invade my time away from work when I should be relaxing. They can fly darkly through my dreams and interrupt my activities.

A freelance grant writer lives with uncertainty.  There is uncertainty about where the next
client is, whether a grant will be funded, when a client will send that overdue
check I desperately need to deposit.

In good times, it’s easier for me to take a break because I’m not so worried about business.  In these troubled economic times, my breaks are less carefree. I remind myself that much of what happens in business is beyond my control. I am responsible to do what is sensible, professional, and reasonable.

These days I take shorter breaks like sipping my coffee, or trekking out on my daily walk.  Each day as I walk, I remind myself to look upward at the sky, to breathe deeply of the fresh air, and to appreciate my ability and opportunity to walk about freely.

Relaxing on a break requires me to clear away the clutter of the job (and sometimes the news). Perhaps it is surprising that the sidewalk outside my office is not strewn each afternoon with discarded papers, bills, and phone messages.

Other posts you may enjoy:
Is Grant Writing Keeping You Up at Night?
Writers Must Know Their Limits

Is Grant Writing Keeping You Up at Night?

The deadline is coming, it’s less than 36 hours away. Your narrative is coming along, but you aren’t confident about it yet. You haven’t received all of the signature pages and letters of support from the client and grant partners. Forget about the budget narrative, you haven't even  gone there yet.  You’re worried and tired so your anxiety level is peaking.

Veteran grant writers know these feelings well. There are times when a grant comes together so smoothly it feels effortless. Then, there are the grants that feel as though they will never come together. Tough grants cause high anxiety that grows over the period of development as the pieces of the proposal seem to defy gravity or force of will.

A veteran grant writer has fewer of these experiences than a novice. Through experience we learn to sidestep some potential problems. But much of what goes into a grant proposal such as signature pages, letters of commitment, MOU’s, budget figures come from people and/or organizations outside of the grant writer’s control. Depending on others can be problematic for lots of reasons: People are busy; People are flawed; People forget things; People lose things; People do not always read emails from others who ask them to do things.

When the anxiety of an approaching deadline strikes, it’s wise to take some concrete steps to place the responsibility where it belongs and refocus on what you can directly impact.

1. Carry out a campaign of direct, polite, yet redundant, communication to unresponsive people using a variety of media (phone calls, emails, text messages, Skype phone calls, etc) and personal visits if needed.

2. Stick to your checklist and complete all the items you have control over.

3. Document your efforts to collect missing information.

4. Keep a folder of all emails related to the project, a folder of all memos, and a folder of all documents developed.

A grant writer is a ring master as well as the main performer in the proposal development circus. Striking a good balance between the two roles is important if you’re going to get any sleep.

Related Posts:
Time Management Tips for Grant Writers
Good Grant Writers are like Wedding Planners
Stress Relief through Laughter
 
Photo Credit - Nara Vieira da Silva Osga

Avoid Grant Application Mistakes using Replacement Piles

Working alone on grants created anxiety that I would leave something out when assembling a complex grant application. Nobody was there to double check my work so I needed a way to minimize the possibility that I’d forget a required piece of a grant.  Relying on memory or luck to get everything put together was not an option, I needed a system.

Experienced grant writers know that deadline day can be a bit frenetic, especially if you’re writing multiple proposals. The blizzard of paper and the press of time can cause high anxiety and the possibility to overlook some crucial detail is always lurking in the back of your mind. Many things can go wrong that you can’t avoid but assembling a complete application does not have to be one of them.

To solve my problem and reduce last minute anxiety, I created s simple system I’ve called a replacement pile. The replacement pile is a just a stack of scratch paper on which I’ve written in bold, colored marker - in capital letters spanning the blank side of each page - the titles of every piece of what will be a completed grant application. A separate page is used for each section, form, etc.; hence, there will be one for the abstract, one for the table of contents, one for the narrative, and so on.

After I’ve created the replacement pile I place a copy of the Request for Proposals (RFP) checklist on top of it which I will use as my fail-safe double-check-off process to ensure that the replacement pile, once fully replaced, contains everything that the grant maker is requiring in the application. I also put a copy of the transmittal instructions on top of the pile so on the last day I am not paging through the RFP to find them, as Forest Gump so famously said, “One less thang.”

The way I use the replacement pile is simple. As a piece of the grant is completed, or as forms signed by the client are received, I pull the paper with the title of that component out of the pile and insert the finished piece of the grant. When all the scrap papers are replaced the pile the grant is ready to duplicate. Before going to the copier, I page through this original grant application using the RFP check list as a final review to ensure it is complete.

After photocopying the grant, I look through each duplicate copy to make sure that the demon copy machine didn’t suck two pages through as one and secretly sabotage my duplicate copies (copy machines can be cold and stealthy saboteurs). Since I almost always add consecutive numbering to each page in my grants (unless forbidden in the RFP) I just have to page through the completed copies to ensure there are no numbers missing.

My deceptively simple replacement piles force me to follow a process that has helped me avoid ever having a grant rejected for lack of required components.  Maybe the system will work for you too!

Related Posts:
 
5 Mistakes that can Cost Lose Millions of Dollars in Grant Applications
 
Tips for Preparing Grants with Short Deadlines
 
Success is in the Details
 
 

Ten Quick and Easy Ways to Make Any Grant Application Better

A professional grant writer pays attention to detail. Grant scorers can testify that there is a big difference between a professional’s grant application and one that is thrown together by an amateur or a committee. My experience reading grants confirms that a professional's grant is a whole lot easier to score.  I appreciate that about professional grant writers when I am scoring grants.

Your already know that your job as a professional grant writer is to get your client funded. Accomplishing this goal requires that your grant makes the job of person scoring it easier. You can help ease the scoring of your grant by paying attention to details.

Here are a few suggestions that will improve your grant applications. Some of these suggestions are easier than others but all of them are easier than making a call to your client to tell them a grant was rejected.

1. Create a logic model for the grant program before starting to write the narrative. Include as an attachment if allowable.
2. Create a table of contents that follows the key narrative headings, required forms, and all other mandatory components described in the RFP. Do this even if it is not required.
3. Add consecutive pagination throughout unless the Request for Proposals (RFP) includes directions about pagination.
4. Ask someone to review your narrative who is not involved in the writing.
5. Use the scoring rubric included in the RFP to grade your narrative.
6. List objective numbers in a column beside each item in your budget.
7. Add explanatory text for each graphic, chart, and table.
8. Add an introductory paragraph that “sets the table” for the reader before jumping into the RFP outlined narrative.
9. Add a detailed management plan for both the grant and a separate one for the evaluation. If there’s no room for these in the body of the narrative, add them as attachments if allowable.
10. Use proper formatting for all citations.

Your grant applications will be more competitive if you do these ten things. It may not seem easy to add steps to the grant development process, but my goal in writing this is to make it easier for you to get funded. Good luck with your proposal!

Related Posts:

Top Five Mistakes of Novice Grant Writers

How Can You be a Better Grant Writer? Part I

How Can You be a Better Grant Writer Part II

Writing is Regal

“Content is King” may be an over-used term among techies but maybe you’ve never heard it. It refers to the fact that content – written and more recently video – is the primary driver of online traffic. This fact makes having quality content important. It’s more important than design, keywords, or graphics; all of that stuff ranks lower on the list.

Content being King gives me hope that while many parts of the Internet are increasingly automated by clever programming, there is still a place for me. I can write, and so long as content is on the throne, I have access.

Some days it is difficult to write anything at all. On those days I feel dried out on my topic of grant writing. That’s when I write about related topics like writing for the Internet or how to find a good chair for grant writing or about how darned sexy I feel (that’s right grant writers can be sexy too).

Scott Stratten, author of “Un-marketing” said in his keynote at the Blog World Expo Conference in Las Vegas last year that blog content has to be GREAT and if you aren’t writing GREAT content to just stop or slow down and write less. Scott asserted that nobody has ever read a really bad blog post and said, “That was terrible, but it was keyword rich.” Scott’s a funny guy, he’s Canadian and they’re a funny bunch (I know this from family experience).

When I run into a dry spell, I’ll sit down and just start writing. I know it sounds odd, a Canadian sort of thing like cheese whiz on toast or caribou coats, but it works for me. These narratives usually start out with something like, “I don’t know what to write today so I went for a walk…then I met a homeless guy who asked me for money and I told him I didn’t have any but he said, ‘That’s OK brother’, gave me a fist bump, and smiled before he walked away.”

I can get a lot of narrative out of that single interaction if I think about it just a little bit. I could write about thankfulness, homelessness, gratitude, acceptance, human interaction, living without technology, the economy, health, safety on the streets. That single interaction could be turned into any number of short blog posts reflecting on this man, his circumstances and my interaction with him. All of a sudden my blockage is gone and I am writing merrily away wishing I had more time to cover all the possible topics.

I try to remember another thing that Scott Stratten said – and perhaps it isn’t original, but I heard him say it first so it will be fixed in my mind as his from now on - “If you are your own authentic self, you have no competition.” Nice, I can live with that. Writing from my inner self is freeing in a way that helps me break out of the doldrums whenever I find myself there.

I like the idea of my content as King of the Internet, even if it’s read by a few, not millions.


Completely unrelated blog posts:

Bless His Cotton Socks

Ten Things Baseball Can Teach You About Grant Writing

Federal Grant Resources at Grant Goddess.com

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Photo Credit - Zsolt Zatrok Dr.

Does Your Grant Writer Cost Too Much?

The cost of a grant writer seems to be one of the biggest issues involved in the decision to hire a professional grant writer. Many people look at the amount of the check they write to the grant writer and assume that is all they need to consider. But it's more complex than that.

A $2,000 grant writer costs you way too much if you don't get the grant, and a $10,000 grant writer is well worth the expense if she brings you $1,000,000 or more.

In short, if you don't factor in success rate, you're just guessing.

I have heard people say that they were going to go with a much less experienced grant writer on a large federal project because that person was less expensive than the much more experienced writer. Whenever I hear that, I just want to shake my head. You need to think of the fees you pay to a grant writer as an investment.  It's about the return you get on that investment. Period.  I don't care how nice he is or how much you enjoy playing golf with him.  If he can't show you the money, he's a bad investment.

Also, if you work with someone on multiple projects, you should compare the total fees you paid to the total amount she helped you acquire. That will help you determine the true cost and benefit of the grant writer.

Try not to look at the less significant intermediary issues, and keep your eye on your bottom line.

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Related post:

How Much Is Writing Your Own Grants Costing You?

How Much Is Writing Your Own Grants Costing You?

Some costs are easy to calculate.  You look at the price tag on something, and it's pretty clear. However, most people calculate cost only in terms of the cost of having something, rather than the cost of not having it.  For example, depending on the time of year, you may think that the cost of fresh fruit is pretty high, and that might lead to choose not to buy it. Sometimes, though, you'll think about the cost to your health of not having that fruit. When you weigh that cost against the dollar cost you have a more accurate picture of the real costs and you can make a more informed decision.

The same thing is true in the world of grant writing. People see the costs associated with hiring a professional grant writer and some decide it's definitely a worthwhile expense (the smart ones) while others decide that it's just too much and they'd rather do it themselves.

So, can you afford to hire a grant writer?  Before you answer that question, you need to ask yourself another very important question:  How much will writing your grant yourself really cost you?

First, consider the value of your time. Your time is definitely worth something.  If you'll be writing the grant proposal during your work hours, you can apply your hourly or daily rate.  If you'll be working on it beyond work  hours during your personal time, you'll need to assign a value to that time also.  What is an hour of time with your children worth to you? We're talking about opportunity cost here. If you're working on the grant, you're giving up time that could have been spent on something else. Everything is a trade off.

Next, you'll need to calculate the value of the time of anyone who will be assisting you - administrative assistants, accounting clerks, collaborative partners, etc. Their time counts, too

Then, figure out how many hours the project will take you to complete. This is not easy task.  I can tell you for certain that it will take you more time than you expect.  So, once you have calculated the number of hours you expect to spend, add 30%.

When you multiple the number of hours by the hourly rate, you'll have an estimate of the cost, in dollars, of writing your own grant.  At this point, most people realize that hiring a professional grant writer is definitely worth it, but we haven't even come to the most expensive part of the equation.

If you are successful with your grant application, the expense will seem worth it, right?  But if you are not successful, your decision to do it yourself will have cost you not only the time involved in preparing the proposal, but the amount of the grant award itself.

The truth is that professional grant writers who write grants for a living (as opposed to those who do it as a side job or as a hobby) have a much higher success rate than the average, so your chances of actually getting the grant are higher when you use a real professional than if you do it yourself.  That risk vs. success factor should also be calculated into your decision.

The next time you think that hiring a professional grant writer is too expensive, ask yourself how much doing it yourself will really cost you.

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Related Posts:

Grant Writing Training at Taco Bell?

Gauging the Success of a Proposal Writer

Grant Writing is a Team Sport

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Let's be Honest - You're a Lousy Writer

Ouch.  Was that really necessary?

Well, if you ever want to become a good writer, then yes, it was necessary.

Alright, I would never say it quite that way, but I have reviewed many grants and other writing samples, and it's the hardest thing to have to tell someone. If the basic writing is solid, it's easy to talk about structure, objectives, graphics, voice, flow, and responses to the scoring criteria. Having a discussion about poor basic writing skills, though, is very difficult.

I think it's hard for several reasons.  First, people take their writing very personally. Criticism about someone's writing feels a lot like criticism of them personally, even when it is not. Second, basic writing skills are the hardest to develop if a person doesn't already have them. It takes time, focus, effort, and patience. Someone who is a lousy writer can't just become a good writer overnight. Sure, it's possible to become a good writer, but not in a week or through a single revision cycle. Finally, anyone who comes to me with a writing sample usually assumes and thinks he is a good writer.  There's an identity and self-esteem issue in the mix. Getting through that without destroying the relationship and dashing a person's writing hopes and dreams is like navigating through a mine field in the middle of a dark night, while blindfolded, during a rainstorm.  Your chances of success are.....limited (See?  I'm not a complete pessimist.).

Still, knowing about any shortcomings in your basic writing skills is critical information if you're going to get any better. Writing is a craft that requires constant improvement. Everyone makes mistakes when they write. That's why we learn to proofread our own work and sometimes employ outside proofreaders, but that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about writing that is grammatically incorrect more than 20% of the time or that is riddled with punctuation errors. That kind of writing will not improve without a focused effort to learn what's wrong and to fix it.

Then, you have to practice writing.  Work through critiques and revisions, and practice some more.

At the same time, you need to read a lot so you can see examples of excellent writing of all kinds and allow the millions of structural variations to become part of your own language repertoire.

My suggestion is to find a friend or mentor who is already a good writer, and who will tell you the truth.  This is no small task (for the reasons I cited above), but it's essential if you want to become a good writer.

Anything worth doing requires effort.  Writing is no different. Get an honest assessment of your skill, and then don't pout.  Get busy making your writing better.

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The Accidental Grant Writer

I wasn't going to be a grant writer.  No, I was going to be an attorney.  That was definitely my plan as I was growing up.  It was still my plan in college.  That's what I thought the smart girls were supposed to do.

Then the twists and turns of life led me to the classroom at the age of 22 and I became a teacher.  I loved it.  It wasn't necessarily the kids I loved (but yes, I do love children), but it was that moment of epiphany when a child finally learned something new. I loved learning so much that it shouldn't have surprised me that I would enjoy helping others learn, too.

It was as a teacher that I wrote my first grant proposal. It was a $5,000 grant for some technology equipment.  Specifically, I wanted a videodisc player (remember those?) and a large screen TV (back before they were in anyone's home) to help my ELD students have more multimedia experiences (there were no computers in classrooms in those days - only small labs with Apple IIe machines) so they could understand the curriculum better. It required a 5-page narrative and it was very challenging for me, but I did it, and I was successful. The grant was awarded to my classroom!

Still, even though I had written a successful grant, I didn't think of myself as a grant writer.

After years as a teacher, I became a school administrator.  That's what I thought the smart girls were supposed to do. As a school administrator, I was responsible for overseeing several grants. It was interesting.  I enjoyed starting new programs from scratch, and it was in that capacity that a met a grant writer and program evaluator who became my mentor (Read about the Top 10 Lessons I Learned from my Grant Writing Mentor).

After several years, he asked me to do some grant writing for him on the side.  I discovered that I was pretty good at it, but I was still an educator who also did grant writing.  I still didn't think of myself as a grant writer.

A few years later, he asked me to leave public education and to come work for him as a full time grant writer and program evaluator. It was a big step for me, but he told me that's what the smart girls were supposed to do, so I did it.

A few years after that, I left his firm and started my own. By then, there was no question in my mind that I was a grant writer; however, there was no point in my life in which I said to myself, "I want to learn how to be a grant writer."  It just happened.  I stepped from opportunity to opportunity and learned what I could as I went along. There were no classes on grant writing offered in graduate school at that time. No one had even even mentioned it to me as a potential career path.

It was almost as if it happened by accident.  I was the accidental grant writer.

(Of course, I know there are really no accidents, but that's the subject of an entirely different post.)

Things are different today for folks who have some writing talent who want to make a difference in their corner of the world.  There are online courses in grant writing to teach you how to become an excellent grant writer, and there are even courses in how to become a freelance grant writer so you can learn the business side of the business. There are courses in colleges and universities, and even certification programs (although a certificate does not guarantee any success; the most successful grant writers I have ever known hold no special certificate). There are blogs, like this one, and websites to read to learn about the industry.

There is so much more support available now than when I started. Tapping into this support, well, that's just what the smart girls (and boys!) do.

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Related Posts:

Grant Writing: A Romantic Misconception

Think Positively and Make It Happen

So You Want to Become a Freelance Grant Writer: Are you Barking Mad?


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Grant Proposal Writers must be Lifelong Learners

Trite phrases that roll off the tongues of keynote speakers leave a bad taste in my mouth. “Lifelong Learner” is one of those and I’ll apologize for using it in case it causes a gag reflex for you as it does for me. It’s one of those terms I consider as insightful and descriptive of the human condition as terms like “Lifelong Breather” or “Lifelong Eater.” The only people who aren’t learning left us.

Each time the government changes leadership, priorities change and usually there are some new grant programs created. These new programs often represent funding opportunities for the biggest institutional campaign donors of the ruling elite. (Wow, did I really say that? Yes, I did.) Doubters may need to check out who got awarded the latest round of grant proposals by the Federal Government and compare it to the largest institutional donors in the last campaign. You’ll find a discernible lean toward making grants to large institutional campaign donors. But that’s for another post and is an entirely irrelevant bird walk from lifelong learning, unless you learned something in which case it fits in a tangential way.

Grant writers need to learn constantly because grant programs and priorities are established whenever there is a change in leadership and philosophy - like the time that GW Bush came in and wiped out all of the bilingual education programs, and most other grant programs, from the US Department of Education, which thrived under Bill Clinton. President Bush opted for doling out pennies per child across the nation rather than grants, which one can argue the pros-and cons of; but that again is not the topic of this post, but which may yet represent some level of new information, hence lifelong learning for some of you breathers.

Learning a new grant program involves some identifiable steps, 1) reading the authorizing statute, 2) plugging the title of the new program into your Google Alerts to gather news about it, 3) calling a program officer with questions you may have, and 4) reading the Federal Register and the RFP carefully, and 5) attending all bidder’s conferences, webinars, and teleconferences throughout the pre-application period.

Grant proposal writers must also learn another lesson - their livelihood can ebb and flow with the public political whims come election-time, so my advice is not to finance a mortgage based on expertise in a particular grant program or you could end up in foreclosure when it’s de-funded.
So be a lifelong learner. Impact the world by creating win-win scenarios in the hot-button issues of your day. Get up-to-speed. Bite the bullet. Be proactive, because, the ball’s in your court and your clients are counting on you to be on the cutting edge. That’s why they passed you the baton!
(Offers for keynote contracts may be mailed for consideration to veronica@grantgoddess.com ;)

The public is a ferocious beast - one must either chain it up or flee from it. Voltaire (1694 – 1778)

An Expensive Day as a Freelance Grant Writer

Non-profit consultant and expert grant writer, Derek Link, shares some thoughts about his expensive day this week:

Some days just cost more than other days. I can go for a week without spending much money except on gasoline and food. But then there are days like today when the universe just seems to have its hand in my pocket and it’s cleaning out my wallet with a vengeance.


I suppose that one of the best things about being a freelance writer is the fact that if your car breaks down, you can go to work in the coffee shop. Well, rather, you have the freedom to link to the Internet and work remotely and you don’t actually have to check with anyone about it.

But if you are an employee, you need to notify your boss or supervisor that your car broke down and that you’re stuck working remotely. You may need to take time off to get the car fixed which has an impact on your income whether you lose vacation time or personal leave, it’s all the same thing -  money out of pocket.

A freelance writer can pretty much work wherever their computer is and can link to clients and needed online resources wherever they have an Internet connection. That’s a pretty nice thing about freelancing.

One issue about working remotely is that it gets expensive quickly. For instance, this morning, I dropped off the car at the mechanic. I then had to take the light rail to a meeting which cost money, and the light rail back which cost money, and then used Internet at a coffee shop which cost money, and bought coffee at another coffee shop which I learned did not have Internet so that was a wasted cup of coffee.

So in addition to paying $150 to the mechanic, and buying light rail tickets, and buying cups of coffee to use Internet services, it is turning out to be a fairly expensive Wednesday. I don’t like spending money, so an expensive Wednesday is not what I was planning on when I went to bed last night.

But that’s the free-wheeling life of a freelance grant writer, you never know where you’ll be working tomorrow and the expenses are out of your own pocket, there’s no accounting department to submit receipts to for reimbursement, when the universe decides to clean out your account, it’s kind of like the IRS, there’s simply nothing that can be done to stop it.

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