Gauging the Success of a Proposal Writer

If you’re seeking a proposal writer for your organization, assessing their success is mission critical. Rising stars of the grant world can become falling stars with one bad grant season. But how do you gauge success of a proposal writer? Many of us measure our success by the percentage of grants we are successful in securing for clients. We also keep track of the total dollars we’ve helped clients secure over time. Some proposal writers shy away from these kinds of measurements because they may have a low percentage of success just starting out or perhaps they haven’t been writing long enough or for large enough grants to have amassed an impressive bottom line for clients yet.

 

In the present economy, the only way not to have your batting average drop as a proposal writer is not to write any grants. It’s a tough environment right now and with money so tight a lot more agencies are submitting applications than ever before. The percentage of proposals funded is bound to drop. But the percentage of grants funded does tell me two things which are not equally valuable measures of success. First, and more important, the percentage of successful applications tells me how well a proposal writer writes grants. The second thing it tells me is how carefully they select what they will write and whether they are willing to take risks for clients. What an overall percentage does not tell me is whether a grant writer has experience and/or success in writing for a particular grant maker or program. This is important to know because there are some grant programs which I am batting 1000 (100% success, yeah baby!) and there are others which I’ve written to once which were not successful (0% success, whoa Nellie!). A proposal writer who has an overall success percentage that’s low (say below 50%), or who won’t tell you what it is, should be able to give you other proof that they are successful.

 

Another way a proposal writer demonstrates success is in the amount of funding they have secured for their clients. A new grant writer will have trouble showing a lot of money secured because they’re new. But a proposal writer who has survived say ten years in the business should have a sizeable portfolio of clients and grants secured. You do want to know what's in the portfolio because if they have secured 50 million dollars that could be all from one grant! Their percentage could be around 5% if that 50 million dollar grant was one of twenty they’ve written and nineteen of the twenty were declined! You may still want them to write for you if it’s to the same program they were successful in, but you may not! Remember too that the portfolio of clients is a proprietary matter and a proposal writer does not have to share that information with you, and they may have clients who prefer not to have their business relationship used for promotional purposes.

 

In the end, you want to hire a successful proposal writer who is a good fit for your organization and who can demonstrate their proficiency through a history of success. Measuring success can be a little tricky but if you remember these three questions, you’ll probably make a good decision.

1. Do they have a recent history of success?
2. Do they have evidence?
3. Do they have successful experience with the source you want to apply to? Or at least in the topic area of the grant?

A proposal writer who tells you they don’t keep score is failing to do that for a reason! I’d be asking them why before I hired them! Grants are submitted into competition so there are winners and losers. The only way to make a living as a proposal writer, or as an agency that depends on grants, is to be on the winning side most of the time.

 

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)

Fear Freezes Everything, Even Grant Writing

Adults in normal situations are not supposed to be afraid. We are the ones who are supposed to get out of a warm, safe bed and check out those bumps in the night. We’re the ones who are supposed to go into the basement to change the light bulb. We’re the ones who are supposed to accept a new challenge. We’re the ones who are supposed to have learned over a lifetime that there are few things in the world that merit being paralyzed by fear. But sometimes organizations are run by fearful people.

Grant writing is about accessing opportunity. But opportunity and the money that comes with it have a price. It means that A) someone has to step up and take on more responsibility, and B) that something new is going to happen. These two things are scary and keep a lot of organizations from pursuing grant funding. It has always been a morbid fascination of mine to watch an organization operate in fear because it’s so obvious from the outside and so paralyzing from the inside.

I worked recently with an organization that is struggling financially. That fact alone tells me that they should be “all over” grants. They should be like rabid vampire bats seeking the lifeblood of any agency willing to give them some dough. But they aren’t, and when presented with a relatively large opportunity to apply for a grant, they initially agreed and the grant was written, but then they decided not to submit the application. This happened because the leadership was fearful about the amount of work involved and the fact that something new was going to happen. These are the only explanations because the grant fit perfectly within their educational mission statement and would have uniquely added a fresh vitality to their services, broadened their public appeal, and drawn in important partnerships.

They are also frozen by fears about finance when paradoxically applying for the grant could have provided a level of relief. The organization is living off its endowment and the endowment is shrinking faster and faster as their services remain unchanged. You see, there’s no reason for people to visit more than once, and the grant could have provided a new reason for people to visit again. It’s a place frozen in time by the fear of the leadership and I’m afraid that soon enough they will have to close the doors because they will have passed by opportunity after opportunity that could have helped them turn it around.

Just as a small child will freeze in fear beneath his blankets calling for a parent to look under the bed for a monster, this agency feared the work, the change, the fiscal unknown. They even feared it enough not to ask questions but to dismiss the opportunity out of hand. It is unreasonable, but fear is unreasonable about 99% of the time. Still, unreasonable fear is still real fear. Bowing to fear is understandable for small child who has not lived long enough to know better, but it is unjustifiable for an adult who should be able to over-ride their fears with information, reason, logic, and a bigger picture in mind.

The immediate issue in this agency is not the fact that their endowment today is less than it was yesterday. Their problem is that they have no plan to stop the bleeding, which in their short-sightedness would require that they do something new to bring people in to spend money. They do not make a connection between what they are doing with their services and the fact that so few people are taking advantage of their services. Lacking that nexus they could not see why this grant opportunity was important to pursue with all vigor, and I was unsuccessful in convincing them.

I find that people running agencies who are too focused on the day-to-day issues are often reluctant to go after grant funding because their issue-myopia prevents them from seeing the big picture. These people are too busy running around putting out fires to ever stop and plan a way out that requires the “monthly” or “annual” calendar view in Outlook rather than the daily view. Grants are scary monsters to them because all they see is that “today I am busy”, “today I am overwhelmed” and if you throw in the work of this grant, my life will be impossible. I’ve written and managed many grants for programs in the past and these grants have always supported, extended, and enriched what I was already doing. Yes, there’s a bit more paperwork involved and you actually have to demonstrate the effectiveness of what you’re doing but that’s part of the territory of doing things better.

Fear of accountability is another interesting fear factor, that’s whole different post. Fear freezes and things that are frozen don’t move too well. I did my best to thaw my client out; but like the fictional world of Narnia, until spring comes, I’m afraid there simply isn’t going to be anything growing there.

Stay within the Lines but Think outside the Box

I had mentor one time long ago when I was training to be an administrator. He had a way with with sayings and one of his favorites was, “Get your lovin' at home.” By this he meant that you should do your job without expectation that people are going to like you - or love you - for the decisions you make. He was big on telling the truth, being straightforward, playing by the rules, staying within the lines, and making sure that everybody else did the same.

The request for proposals that you will be working from on almost any grant you ever write is a set of rules, restrictions, guidelines, advice, and legal direction for making an application. Following this RFP document is critical to development of a successful grant application. But sometimes clients don't get it. They want to manipulate the grant to fit their fiscal needs and sometimes as a grant writer you need to help them see the bigger picture.

Case in point, I have worked with a nonprofit organization that has very narrow community support. They have strong community support within one demographic and they do not attempt to engage with groups beyond that narrow band. This has led to them into a fiscal crisis. So it became clear to some of the board members that they needed to do something new to bring in a broader audience. And so a grant proposal came along offering them the opportunity to do that. In a brave move, the board approved a contract to write the grant.

There was not unanimous support for this idea within the board because it is new and it is a different funding source, it is an effort to broaden the audience of the nonprofit beyond demographic band that they are accustomed to working with. There is also a deep level of mistrust of the funding source for the grant because it's the federal government. So as the grant proposal is being developed, it's making people nervous. Some board members are deeply concerned that they will lose control of the nonprofit by submitting this grant proposal. The reality of this fear isn't the point, the fear is real because there is fear, not because there's any substance to the fear.

So I am busy reminding myself this morning that I need to get my loving at home and that my bigger job in this grant development process is to help the client see that broadening their audience is mission critical if they are to keep the doors open. It is my job now to remind them gently that the Board needs to be open to engaging with the community at level beyond inviting them in and asking them for their money; that they need to be willing to listen; to implement new ways of doing things; that they need to be willing to make adjustments that are appealing to new audiences; and that they need to be willing to reinterpret what it means to be inclusive.

The issue I have in developing my current grant proposal is that I have to follow the RFP yet some of the guidelines are being challenged by a few vocal and increasingly nervous board members. It seems that these board members want to build in controls, restrictions, and barriers that may render the application unfundable within the guidelines of the RFP. My job this morning is to reinforce with their leadership what the grant requires and what the funding source expects. If this conversation does not sway them to creating an application that is fundable; I have a very difficult task of writing a narrative and submitting an application that may be dead on arrival.

Sometimes I need reminding that my role as a grant writer is advocating for the very project I'm hired to write, as silly as that may sound. Sometimes change just scares the hell out of people and they need to be comforted and have their hands held and their back patted along the way. Sometimes I am a grant counselor, sometimes I am a grant strategic planner, sometimes I am just a grant writer, but all of the time I need to keep the big picture in mind that I am writing for someone and must accommodate their wishes. Today I need to help my clients think outside the box while staying within the lines.

Wrestling with a Grant Narrative

In my younger days I was a wrestler and later a wrestling coach; I must confess that I was a lot better at the latter than the former.  These days I only wrestle with grant narratives but it’s almost as draining and there are actually a lot of similarities.

The Take Down – In wrestling you start on your feet in round one and you’re pretty fresh.  In grant writing you start on your feet too.  You’re optimistic and not winded yet, you start by testing your opponent, in this case the RFP.  You grapple a little, do some hand fighting, figure out some angles of attack and see if you can take your opponent down.

The Ride – Let’s say you are unfortunate and your opponent takes you down to the mat. Their job is to keep you there and not allow you to escape.  The RFP can make you feel that way sometimes because a lot of times it sounds like you’re being asked to repeat the same information over and over again.  Well this isn’t really true, it is usually a matter of being asked to give bits of details in a sequential manner.  But when the RFP has got you down, it is sometimes hard to figure out how to get away from it.

The Escape or Reversal – If you keep studying your opponent and keep on moving from the bottom, you can often find a way to escape or to reverse him.  Just like an RFP has the secrets to winning the grant if you keep studying it, you’ll find ways to escape the confusion and reverse your fortunes if you keep moving through the RFP.  You can use what you learn about your opponent to write a narrative that brings you victory, but if you stop moving, you'll probably get pinned.

The Tilt – Once you’ve escaped the confusion or reversed your position and now are master of the RFP, you can begin to finish it off.  You’ve now got control of the details, you understand all the angles, you know what you have to do to win.  You can now grind that RFP down and write a winning grant so get ready for the pin.  Now is the time to start tipping your opponent over and finish it off.

The Pin – The ultimate victory in wrestling is to turn your opponent over and pin their shoulders to the mat against their will.  This is the coup-de-gras in wrestling.  You want to excerpt that level of mastery over the RFP, pin it to the mat and don’t let it up.  The match is over when the referee slaps the mat and hollers “PIN!", then you get up in victory to get your arm raised and shake the hand of your opponent.

Writing a good narrative requires wrestling with the RFP, wrestling with the narrative, and ultimately outlasting your opponents just like a wrestling match.  You have to use skill, intelligence, technique, and it takes a lot of endurance.  You better be in shape and you better know your stuff or you’re bound to end up on your back.

Photo Credit - http://www.flickr.com/photos/bethcanphoto/