Grant Writing Confidential

The Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) Administration for Children and Families (ACF) Family and Youth Services Bureau (FYSB) just issued the Street Outreach Program (SOP) FY ’13 Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA),* which offers an opportunity for us to describe a common funder program paradigm: outreach. Last week, faithful readers will recall that we [...]

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Despite sequestration and budget worries, the Feds are churning out a new grant program every month or so; today, let’s consider this tasty if poorly named treat from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Service: “PPHF – 2013 – Cooperative Agreement to Support Navigators in Federally-facilitated and State Partnership Exchanges.” The trade name for this [...]

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I got my first federal RFP amended last week. It’s a bit like being blooded when you’re in the Mafia: the tenth time is just standard procedure, but the first time is special.* Isaac, for instance, has gotten numerous RFPs amended, which is always fun because our clients are amazed by our wizardly abilities. The [...]

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Despite all the teeth gnashing and flailing of arms over the recent sequestration non-calamity, the Department of Labor has found $26,000,000 to issue an SGA (DOL-speak for “RFP”) announicng an entirely new program: Face Forward-Serving Juvenile Offenders, with grants up to a million dollars. In the face of all this squawking, honking and flapping of [...]

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Many RFPs ask for data that simply doesn’t exist—presumably because the people writing the RFPs don’t realize how hard it is to find phantom data. But other RFP writers realize that data can be hard to find and thus offer a way out through a magic word: “estimate.” If you see the word “estimate” in [...]

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If you read legal thrillers, you know that clients chronically give incomplete information to their attorneys—which, in legal thrillers, inevitably makes the attorney look stupid in the eyes of people she respects (like, say, judges). Keeping secrets from attorneys also seldom works in the client’s favor: it’s almost always better for the client and the [...]

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We always tell our clients the same thing: the real deadline for any Federal proposal is 48 hours before the stated deadline. The is true for online and hard copy submissions. Most federal proposals these days are submitted through what has become our old friend, Grants.gov. Grants.gov takes 48 hours to spit out confirmation e-mails [...]

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Last Monday, the executive director of a Community Health Center (CHC) in a western city called me for a HRSA New Access Points (NAP) proposal fee quote—a fairly routine call. I gave him the quote, told him how we do what we do oh-so-well, and he agreed to hire us. As my kids liked to [...]

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The Department of Labor just issued the FY ’13 YouthBuild SGA (“Solicitation for Grant Applications,” which is DOL-speak for RFP), and $75,000,000 is available with 75 grants! We’ve written at least 20 funded YouthBuild proposals over the years, including two in the last funding round, so we’re more than a little familiar with this program, [...]

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In his recent post on potential grant funds embedded in President Obama’s just announced gun violence prevention policy statement, Jake noted that grant writing language is a good topic for a post of its own. He’s right. Like all forms of the written word, grant writing has its own language conventions and wisdom. Faithful readers [...]

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