Grant Writing Confidential

Faithful readers will remember “Why Winning an Olympic Gold Medal is Not Like Getting a Carol M. White Physical Education Program (PEP) Grant,” in which I opined that in getting grants, the race does not always belong to the swift. It seems I scooped the New York Times. In today’s edition, Stephanie Strom tells the [...]

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In “So, How Much Grant Money Should I Ask For?“, we discussed a sometimes delicate issue for nonprofits: picking a grant request amount. Our standard answer: ask for the maximum because zeroes are cheap. Funders will sometimes cut down your budget but almost never increase it.
Some obnoxious programs, however, won’t tell you how much you [...]

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In “Why Winning an Olympic Gold Medal is Not Like Getting a Carol M. White Physical Education Program (PEP) Grant,” Isaac wrote: “Many grant applicants are under the delusion from years of watching the Olympics and similar sports competitions that, if their application receives the highest review score, the grant will automatically be awarded.”
One of [...]

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The Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) just issued a Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA, which is HRSA-speak for RFP) for the New Access Points (NAP) program. There is $250,000,000 available and 350 grants up to $650/000/year for five years! The deadline is November 17. This the first NAP FOA in over three years, and the [...]

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The August 3, 2010 Wall Street Journal highlights a push by Bill Gates and Warren Buffet to squeeze billions out of their billionaire pals in “U.S. Super Rich to Share Wealth.” Shelly Banjo and Robert A. Guth say that “Billionaire Oracle Corp. founder Larry Ellison will join film director George Lucas and 38 other mega-wealthy [...]

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We’ve uncovered a “secret” YouthBuild RFP. Well, it is not exactly secret, but not exactly well publicized either. The FY ‘10 Department of Labor Appropriates Bill gave YouthBuild USA, a national nonprofit, a $10,000,000 non-competitive grant. It helps to have pals in Congress. The Department of Labor press release sounds as if YouthBuild USA will [...]

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Chances are good that you, as an applicant, have really wonderful intentions in whatever you’re doing—just like everyone else. You want to help kids succeed, make the world a better place, save the endangered sparrow dragonfly,* impart job training skills, build cool stuff, etc. You know this is a excellent use of time and money. [...]

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A .0001 second difference can separate an Olympic Gold Medalist from a Silver Medalist for swimming, and a five minute difference may separate her and the hapless competitor from Lower Slabovia. The fastest swimmers win medals and the slowest swimmers get new Speedos. Think of the intrepid ski jumper, Eddie the Eagle, in the 1984 [...]

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* Dean Dad on Partnerships from the perspective of a community college administrator:
You don’t really appreciate how difficult collaboration is until you contrast it to running your own stuff. Every collaboration needs a “go-to person” at each site, sometimes grant-funded, sometimes not. Every collaboration has its own calendar, which is usually an amalgam of the [...]

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Type “NIH Grant Writers” into Google and look at what you find: pages and pages of “how-to” sheets with no actual grant writers to be found.
That’s not surprising: trying to become a specialist NIH grant writing consultant would be really, really hard because the niche is sufficiently small that one couldn’t easily build a business [...]

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