Grants Are Like Sausage

Non-profit consultant and expert grant writer, Derek Link, must be hungry.  Last week, he shared with you how Grants Are Like Donuts. This week, he writes that grants are like sausage. Enjoy his post about the importance of processing and editing your final grant proposal:

Like making laws, writing grants is sort of like making sausage, a messy process not too appetizing to watch. Processing a grant, like making sausage, involves lots of parts getting thrown together, with tons of information being ground up into a palatable chunk of copy.


Have you ever chomped down on a piece of cartilage in your sausage? Kind of slows you down doesn’t it? But when sausage is properly ground, you probably don’t ever come across anything too chewy! Reading a badly written grant is kind of like that piece of cartilage that you have to stop and chew on a while.

Here’s a piece of copy from an actual grant that, in my opinion, represents chewy cartilage. This kind of chewy writing makes your brain do a lot of unnecessary and unpalatable mental chewing.

“LEP students at J. Doe elementary school have a high level of psychomotor and spatial/mechanical skills that will be utilized through computer assisted instruction to enhance language learning activities. In selecting LEP students for participation, attention was paid to the Special Education criteria required by the State Education Agency. Special Education students are diagnosed using appropriate instruments and will be served accordingly.”

I have to guess at what they were trying to say, but it sure was chewy! This grant should have been processed more, and by that I mean edited, reviewed, commentary invited, revisions made, and re-edited – then edited once more. Chewy grants don’t score well and don’t get funded. So be sure to process-process-process!

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Related posts from the archives:

Trust the Grant Writing Process

How Can the Grant You Just Finished Help Make You  a Better Writer?

Good Grant Writers Are Like Wedding Planners

Surviving the Big Deadline

Today is a grant deadline for us. As we were rushing around to get the proposal finalized so we can deliver it this afternoon, it occurred to me that we use some very definite strategies for dealing with "the last day," better known as "the deadline."

Here are my tips:

First, take one thing at a time. During the rest of the grant development and writing process, multi-tasking is OK, even essential. However, when you are coming down to the final stages (final proofreading, assembly, etc.), you really need to take one step at a time. Completely focus on the task at hand and don't stop until that task is completed. For example, if you are proofreading forms, do not give anything else your attention until the forms are complete. If you are double-checking the order of documents in the proposal against the RFP checklist, give that task your undivided attention. Jumping from task to task at this stage is the best way to make a critical error.

Second, don't panic. If you stick with one task at a time, it's easy to avoid panic, but panic sets in when a) you try to do too many things at once, and b) you get too close to the final deadline. That brings me to my next tip. . .

Know when to stop. Here's the deal - you can revise that document over, and over, and over again - forever. The nature of the writing craft includes the fact that it can always be improved. But you really need to know when to call it quits.

Remember that the deadline will come...and go. It helps me to deal with deadline stress to remember that tomorrow this deadline will be a thing of the past, no matter how many more changes I make. There will be an end to the stress.

Finally, remember that the goal is to get the proposal submitted on time. Keep your eye on the clock. You can have the world's best proposal that you have revised twenty times, but if you miss the deadline, it just won't matter.

You can get through this. I promise.

New "Tips from The Grant Goddess" Video Podcast Episode

I just added two new video podcast episodes:


Don't Try to Say Too Much

and

Proofread, Proofread.....Then Proofread Some More


There are several ways you can access the podcasts. One way (and probably the easiest way) is to go to my helloWorld site. When you get there, click on the i-pod icon on the left side of the page. Then you'll see a list of all the video podcast episodes.

Success is in the Details

Tomorrow is a big grant deadline for us. This competition requires an online submittal through http://www.grants.gov/, so we're trying to get one of these grants finished and uploaded tonight so we won't have too much to do tomorrow.

Whenever I am at this stage in the grant writing process (final proofreading, editing, assembly, etc.) I am amazed at how important the details are. Not only are the details in the narrative extremely important (making sure all the numbers are correct, matching the project activities to the budget, etc.), but it's also important to watch for details involved in assembling the appendices and following the assembly checklist.

The problem is that when you get to this final stage in the grant preparation process, you think you are finished, but the reality is that you are far from finished. This is when the greatest mistakes are made because you have let down your guard and you think the hard work is done. It is at this stage that I force myself to act against my instincts. I want to rush through and slap it together now, but I force myself to slow down - take it step by step - focus on one small task at a time. I check my documents thoroughly. I check them again. I ask someone else to check them. And then just when I am ready to submit the proposal, I stop and check them again.

Obsessive? Maybe. Successful? Absolutely!