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.

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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.

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!

Grant Writing Rejection

Grant writing rejection can be hard to take. Nonprofit consultant and grant writing expert, Derek Link, provides some tips on what you should do if your grant is rejected.

One reason that grant writers can fail is by taking on too many low percentage grants that are unlikely to be funded. Selecting grants to write is a delicate thing because as a grant writer you get so many requests from unqualified applicants.


It would be easy to take on lots of contracts from clients you know don’t have a prayer of getting funded, but then your reputation is nothing but a house of cards. Unless you want to move from state to state on an annual basis where nobody knows how unsuccessful you were the year prior, success is important!

Your reputation as a grant writer relies primarily on one thing - getting grants funded. Be prepared for rejection from time to time, because not every grant can be funded; not even the best written ones. Grant rejection is hard to take when you’ve written what you believe to be a good narrative. Getting rejected means doing some damage control with the client as well as preparing for resubmission when the opportunity arises.
Here are some ideas about what to do when your grant is rejected:

1. Always ask for the readers' comments. Funding agencies don’t always have the staff to provide these so often your request will be denied. If you do get them, study them carefully and try not to focus on the things that the readers obviously missed. I’ve heard grant writers get all wound up about some reader missing something that cost them points. OK, it happens and it stinks, but move on to why did they miss it? Was it in the wrong section? Maybe it needed to be repeated, bolded, underlined. On the rewrite, make sure that point is easier to find and repeated so even the slowest reader can find it.
2. If you find that the readers really missed the mark on your proposal, then file a challenge and detail the reasons you think that the readers got it wrong. There has to be a truly egregious error for a negative funding decision to be reversed. Remember, they’ve probably already sent out the notices to all the people who were successful so it’s unlikely they are going to eat crow and reorganize the whole field to fund your proposal. But it can happen, so sometimes it’s worth a challenge. If it's a federal grant, your appeal needs to demonstrate that a standard other than the approved scoring criteria was applied.  That is nearly impossible to demonstrate.
3. If you can’t get readers’ comments then it’s a good idea to request copies of some of the winning proposals so you can compare them to what you submitted. Write down the reasons you think that the proposal was rejected and keep it on file for the following submission. It’s better to do it right after you learn why you weren’t funded.
4. If you planned with a collaborative that meets regularly, discuss the rejected proposal with them to talk about why it wasn’t funded and whether the group is capable and willing to make changes in the proposal design so it is more likely to be funded the next time around.

It’s a terrible experience to have to give a client disappointing news about a grant being rejected. Your clients put a lot of faith in your writing abilities and failure hurts your reputation as a “grant magician.” A failed grant in the early stages of a client relationship can ruin your relationship with them. Be wise about which grants you write and try to steer clear of lower percentage competitions with a client until you’ve had some success and demonstrated your competence. Once your relationship has been established, and your abilities are enshrined in the annals of their annual report, then you can survive a few rejections here and there.

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