Grant Writing For Dummies. Beverly A. Browning

Project names should be memorable, but stay away from long ones. Here’s a great example for a project name: Project R².A.I.S.E. What does it stand for? Researching Realistic Academic Indicators for Student Evaluations. And that’s just one possibility. Whatever you do, use your imagination and don’t use a name that translates into an offensive abbreviation or acronym.

      Organization’s mission

      When funders ask for the grant applicant organization’s mission statement, they want to see the vision-driving string of words that communicates to the world your organization’s purpose. Be sure to limit your mission statement to a single sentence.

      Purpose of the request

      Compose a short, one-sentence statement about why you’re approaching this particular funding source. Does its mission align with your organization’s? Has it funded your organization previously? For example, “The purpose of this request is to seek your initial and ongoing funding to conduct research on emerging student evaluation indicators other than standardized testing and letter grades.”

      Give dates for the project

      Provide the proposed starting and ending dates of the project. You don’t have to figure exact days; just express the project dates according to month and year. Don’t forget to give the project a start date that’s at least six months into the future; funders need time to review and make decisions about who receives grant awards. Many funders specify when (month/year) they anticipate announcing awards. If a timeframe is specified in the application materials, target your start date to correspond with it.

      Amount requested

      Enter the amount you’re requesting from the funder (round off to the nearest dollar).

Do your homework by reading the funder’s instructions — they usually contain a funding range minimum and maximum along with the grant award amount number. For example, “In order to contract with K-12 educators (from the K-12 Educations for Academic Scoring Change Association) and research other ways to evaluate the academic success of K-12 students, the Georgetown Education Association is seeking $200,000 for a 24-month educational policy-changing program.”

      Total project cost

      Include the total cost of the proposed project. Double- and triple-check to make sure the number you enter here matches the total cost of the project listed in the budget narrative and on the budget forms. (For more about budgets, check out Chapter 18.) For example, “The total project cost is $200,000.”

      Geographic area served

      Describe the location of your project in this order: city, county, state. You can even narrow your target-population area down to census tract numbers, specific names of neighborhoods, or congressional districts. (Some funding is designated for specific geographic regions within a state.) For example, “The geographic area is the District of Columbia. The 179 census tracts impacted are listed in Attachment 1.”

      Signatures

      Most federal government applications are submitted online through one of the feds’ e-grant portals, Grants.gov, so you type the requested contact information for the authorized contact person for your organization into a signature field box instead of submitting an original signature. Even foundations and corporations are using typed names for e-grant signature boxes.

      

If you end up submitting a paper/hard copy of your grant application (which will likely only happen with small foundations that have not embraced e-grant technology), all signatures should be in blue ink. Using this color makes differentiating the original document from the copied documents easy for the funder.

      Storytelling with facts

      Over the years, the field of grant writing has shifted from technical “just the facts and nothing more” writing to a kinder, friendlier way of cozying up to the grantmaker’s decision-making staff. Now, if you want to secure a grant, you must put life, personality, and compassion into your request. This type of writing approach is referred to as storytelling.

Here, I give you some great tips on the type of information to include in each section of your funding request and how to turn the ordinary into the extraordinary in each narrative section you’re likely to see in any funder’s grant application format (I provide more in-depth advice and examples for these narrative sections in Part 4):

       Background/history of the grant applicant organization: Write with passion about your organization: its founding date, its purpose, its mission, and its location. Include quaint, not-so-common information about the founder and their reason for creating a nonprofit organization.If you’re writing about a unit of municipal government (city, town, township, village, hamlet, or county subdivision of government), include trivia on how the community was named, started, incorporated, and so forth. Also, include information on any major grant-topic-related accomplishments the grant applicant organization has achieved.

       Current programs and activities: Write with excitement about the current initiatives the grant applicant organization is involved in. List in chronological order all the organization’s programs and activities.Include specific program names, dates started, and outcomes-to-date, such as the number of participants who have received services and the benefits they gained because of their involvement in the program.

       Description/demographics of your constituency: Write with accuracy about the population the grant applicant organization provides services to. Include age range, gender, ethnicity, economic status, educational level, and other characteristic descriptors. The funder needs to know whom you serve and what’s special about your target population.Include a case scenario, a story about how a participant has encountered multiple life barriers and is now on a waiting list to be served by the grant applicant organization.

       Description of community: Write with innate knowledge about your community’s makeup where the grant applicant organization is located or where its services will be provided. Describe the community by providing a combination of city and county information. This section is about the virtual picture of your community — facts and statistics — not trivia, which belongs in the background section.Use compelling words and colorful (but true!) descriptions; funders don’t want to read a book report about your town. Don’t just copy and paste census information from the Internet. Where you do use statistics, incorporate them into tables, graphics, and figures.Cite your sources, and don’t use statistics that are more than five years old. Copying and pasting information you find on the Internet is okay as long as you include a reference citation (footnote by copying the website address where you found the information). Just make sure your online sources are reliable. Never cite anything you find on Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_is_not_a_reliable_source#:~:text=Wikipedia%20is%20not%20a%20reliable%20source%20for%20citations%20elsewhere%20on,progress%2C%20or%20just%20plain%20wrong.&text=Wikipedia%20generally%20uses%20reliable%20secondary,vet%20data%20from%20primary%20source).

       Description of work with partnership agencies: Write about the grant applicant organization’s demonstrated partnership experiences with community, regional, state, and national partners. Create a table with header rows for partners and their roles with the grant applicant organization. You can even add a third column to the table for years of affiliation. You can’t copy and paste tables or other graphics into online e-grant