Cuts to Federal discretionary spending are coming, whether at the larger percentages proposed by congressional Republicans, more modest levels offered by the Obama administration or more likely somewhere in between. An opinion piece in today’s New York Times highlights this new reality: “The Easy Cuts Are Behind Us” by Jacob Lew, director of the White [...]
Entries Tagged as 'Advice'
Heavens to to Murgatroyd: Grant Competition Is About to Heat Up for Community Services Block Grant Grant (CSBG) and Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) Recipients
February 6th, 2011 · 4 Comments
Tags: Advice · Government · Grants
The Art of the Grant Proposal Abstract is Like the Art of the Newspaper Story Lead
January 30th, 2011 · 1 Comment
Proposal abstracts are funny beasts: they’re supposed to summarize an entire proposal, presumably before the reader reads the proposal, and they’re often written before the writer writes the proposal. Good abstracts raise the question of whether one really needs to read the rest of the document. While RFPs sometimes provide specific abstract content—in which case [...]
Sign Me Up for Wraparound Supportive Services, But First Tell Me What Those Are
January 2nd, 2011 · 1 Comment
Most social and human services get delivered in one of two ways: on a drop-in basis or a case-managed basis. The latter is often characterized as “wraparound supportive services,” and is the subject of this post. If you’ve ever been to a Boys and Girls Club or YMCA, you’ve received services on a “drop-in” basis, [...]
Tags: Advice · Grants · How-to · Nonprofits
One, Two, Three* Easy Steps to Start-Up a Nonprofit Upstart
December 5th, 2010 · No Comments
My recent post, “Grant Writing from Recession to Recession: This is a Great Time to Start a New Nonprofit,” featured a phone call I received from a “Mrs. Smith” who inquired about using our services to fund her new nonprofit. A few days ago, we received this comment from another real world Mrs. Smith, in [...]
Tags: Advice · Grants · How-to · Nonprofits
Politics and Proposals Don’t Mix: Your Politics (or Your Organization’s) Shouldn’t Matter in Grant Writing, and Neither Should Elections
November 7th, 2010 · No Comments
Ed Nelson asks, “Do conservative non-profits get grants or are federal grants such an anathema to them, [and] they choose not to apply?” I want to answer, but the question itself feels wrong because politics shouldn’t be an issue in human service delivery. Politics and political views matter in Congress, which decides what kinds of [...]
Tags: Advice · Government · Grants · Nonprofits · Questions
Searching for Talent Search: Where Oh Where Has the Talent Search RFP Gone And Why is It A Secret?
November 1st, 2010 · 2 Comments
UPDATE: Talent Search has finally appeared, and the RFP vindicates much of what Isaac wrote below. Having been in business for over 17 years, Seliger + Associates has lots of spies. Well, not spies exactly, but clients, former and current, program officers and assorted grant cognoscenti who send us interesting nuggets. Recently, one made it [...]
Tags: Advice · Blogging · Government · Grants · Questions · RFPs
Yet Another Note on Grant Writing Training, Seminars, and Workshops
October 23rd, 2010 · 2 Comments
Most of the people who send us angry e-mails regarding our posts on the uselessness of grant writing credentials, workshops, and the like do so because they teach those workshops and are unhappy when prospective students send links to our work. We got another such e-mail recently, which starts with a rhetorical question we’ve answered [...]
Tags: Advice
How to Write About Grant Writing and How to Learn About Grant Writing Via Blogging
October 10th, 2010 · 2 Comments
In “Twentysomething: Making time for a blog and a full-time job,” Ryan Healy says that one should create deadlines, skip days when necessary, and remember why one blogs. It’s good advice, and we try to follow it. Grant Writing Confidential has one big advantage over similar blogs: we’re extremely specific about programs, RFPs, problems, and [...]
Why Academics Don’t Always Make Good Social and Human Services Grant Writers
September 26th, 2010 · 2 Comments
People with advanced degrees and university professors are (presumably) good at lots of things, like publishing the original research they’re trained to produce, but they aren’t always good grant writers—especially for the kinds of social and human service proposals that Seliger + Associates often writes. I think there are lots of reasons for this: Academics [...]
Tags: Advice · Government · Grants · How-to
Is it Collaboration or Competition that HRSA Wants in the Service Area Competition (SAC) and New Access Points (NAP) FOAs?
September 6th, 2010 · 1 Comment
HRSA just issued a Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA, which is HRSA-speak for RFP) for the Service Area Competition (SAC). SAC FOAs are issued each year for different cities and rural areas in which HRSA has existing section 330 grantees, including Community Health Centers (CHCs), Migrant Health Center (MHCs), Health Care for the Homeless (HCHs), and [...]