A Grant Writer's Post Christmas Euphoria

I had the most wonderful Christmas in years. My folks came down from Oregon and were so content to hang out and go to my local haunts for a couple of days. My son was with us for much of the time. We ate too much, and drank a little but just enough. We watched “The Grinch” (cartoon version of course) and “Scrooge” with Alastair Sim for my Mom, and a bunch of WWII historical documentaries that involved airplanes for my stepfather. I dodged watching a single episode of "House" or even one minute of Fox News (basic cable is a wonderful thing).

I tried out two new recipes on my guests and both turned out to be big hits. Chili ala Mark and Brian was tremendous and while I altered it a little bit, I mostly held true to the recipe and it was awesome chili. I also made potato pancakes for Christmas morning ala Good Housekeeping and these too turned out better than I could have hoped for when one considers my limited kitchen and culinary aptitude.

We compromised on our annual argument about opening gifts on Christmas Eve by allowing my son and stepfather to each open one gift while my mother and I held steadfast in the face of this flagrant challenge to tradition and we opted to open all of ours on Christmas morning.

Our family gathering held at my cousin’s place on Christmas day was equally wonderful with a huge ham dinner and a Rick’s Dessert Diner cake provided by my Mom to top it all off. We stood under the house eaves in the rain and smoked some cigars (recreational stupidity, not a habit), we drank some nice wine, and we played some Nintendo video Frisbee golf (badly) and enjoyed the company. We all decided not to exchange gifts and simply enjoy each others’ company.

I’d say that by comparison, this was one of the nicest Christmases I’ve had in my lifetime; I’d rank it in the top five. I still have to say that the best one ever was when I got my first bike at about age 7. It was a big red Sears cruiser with a headlight built into the frame. My red-headed girlfriend Rhonda would ride on the back until she caught her foot in the rear spokes putting an end to our on-bike romancing.

This morning I am back in the office working on various grant-related projects. It’s good to be here in the afterglow of such a wonderful time with family. I hope everyone had an equally terrific Christmas!

14 Tips to Stay Off the Naughty List

It might be a little late to think about this if you’ve already made it onto Santa’s Naughty List. If you’re in that unfortunate situation this year, you’ll need to pay attention to these tips for the coming grant year so you avoid another lump of coal next December 25.

In order to make Santa’s Nice List as a grant writer, here are some things to do in your grant work:

1. Always tell the truth in your narrative.

2. Always follow the RFP outline carefully.

3. Always proof and edit until your narrative is perfecto.

4. Always follow the formatting requirements.

5. Always charge an ethical fee.

6. Always complete all of your contract obligations.

7. Always help other grant writers out.

8. Always make your deadlines.

9. Always remember to thank your clients and keep them informed about new opportunities.

10. Always use the services of a good editor.

11. Always deliver an electronic copy of the narrative to your client.

12. Always keep careful grant submission evidence.

13. Always keep your electronic files organized.

14. Always leave milk and cookies for Santa.

Santa is probably putting the finishing touches on his Naughty List for this year so I’m not sure if you have time to make up for any lapses, but it’s never too late to get started! Giving your clients everything they deserve will definitely put you high on Santa’s Nice List. I hope Santa brings you exactly what you want for Christmas.

Grant Writing Training at Taco Bell?

Nobody takes their broken car to a used car salesman for repair. People don’t take their watch to Taco Bell for a new battery. We all look for people who have expertise, credentials, and a successful background to prove they can do the job. A spokes model may make a compelling pitch, but it is unlikely they've ever written a grant.
Our company, Creative Resources and Research, offers grant writing courses. We provide these courses in a seminar format on site and we develop curriculum, videos, and materials for a series of online courses.

We use our rich experience in grant writing to develop materials and training scripts; our training is not creative writing. If you purchase grant writing training from Creative Resources and Research, you can be assured that you are getting top quality information created by successful, practicing grant writers.

We have decades of combined experience as full time grant writing professionals. We also held jobs that required grant writing for many years before entering the field full time. We know grant writing backwards and forwards because we’ve written hundreds of successful proposals. Nearly all of the grants we’ve written have been for annual amounts of $100k or more, and some were for totals in the millions of dollars. We have secured nearly 160 million in grants for our clients since 2000.

We’ve written grants for local and state governments and even for the government of Puerto Rico. We’ve scored grants for State and Federal government agencies. We’ve written grants for non-profits and for-profits. We’ve written business plans in Southern California and business proposals in South Africa. We’ve written marketing copy, web copy, and we can even run the copy machine. We’ve done every part of the grant process many times over.

Our experience in grant writing is built on long hours of hard work and diligence. It is built on excellent mentoring. It is built on a network of professionals who give us feedback and share with us about the field. We are still learning, but we are accomplished grant writers. We are not pretenders. We are not beginners.

We respectfully suggest that buying grant writing training from a spokes model makes as much sense as having your watch repaired by Taco Bell. If you want to learn how to write excellent grant proposals, you’ll choose to learn grant writing from experts. At Creative Resources and Research we are grant writers first, teachers second, and spokes models last (or not at all depending on who you talk to).

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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