Grant Writing Confidential

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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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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Teams don’t write proposals. If you hear about a team that is writing a proposal, that translates roughly to “lots meetings are being held, but no one is actually working on the proposal.” We sometimes hear people at nonprofit and public agencies talk about how they’ve assembled a “team” to write a proposal. For some [...]

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As a companion piece to Jake’s post on YouthBuild and Isaac’s on formatting, I want to explain the science of proposal production. 1. It starts, like all aspects of grant writing and preparation, with a thorough reading of the RFP. Failing to read the RFP is the equivalent of failing to check your boat for [...]

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Susan wants to know: I am being told that I must become a “grant writer” for my law enforcement agency within a month or so. There is not enough time to apprentice so they want me to learn everything I need to know in a 2 day workshop!!! Any suggestions? Suggestions! I’m filled with ‘em. [...]

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A recent email from a prospective client got me to thinking about the best time to prospect and apply for grants. Our would-be client presented the idea of hiring us to his board. One board member pointed out that the organization lacked a current strategic plan, the last one having expired at the end of [...]

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We try hard to keep our proposals fresh by making our project concepts reflect what is going on in communities today—not what the world was like when we entered the business in 1993. For example, several years ago we began including references to emerging social media (e.g., Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc.) in many proposals, mostly [...]

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A continuing avalanche of bad economic news confirms the upheaval in the nonprofit world that I’ve been blogging about for the last few months. To paraphrase David Bowie in “Changes:” Ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes (Turn and face the strain) Ch-ch-Changes Don’t want to be a richer [organization] Ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes (Turn and face the strain) Ch-ch-Changes Just gonna have to [...]

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Who is in charge of completing and submitting your proposal? You should immediately be able to say, “Jane Doe. Or “John Doe.” Whoever. Can you instantly think of that person’s name—the person who gets the praise if the proposal is submitted on time and technically correct or the blame if it isn’t? If you can’t, [...]

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As any consultant knows, some clients will hate you and some will love you. That’s certainly true of us, but the funny thing is that clients love and hate us for exactly the same reason. It sounds counterintuitive, so let me explain using a recent “we love you!” e-mail from a client as an example: [...]

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