Grant Writing Confidential

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Entries Tagged as 'How-to'

Social Innovation Fund Not Terribly Innovative, But Confirms That Getting Grants Is Not Like Winning an Olympic Gold Medal

August 22nd, 2010 · 1 Comment

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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Tags: Advice · Government · Grants · How-to · Media

Meaning Well is Not Enough: The Role of Research in Grant Writing and Proposals

August 1st, 2010 · 1 Comment

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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Tags: Advice · Government · Grants · How-to · Research · SAMHSA

The Ups and Downs of Using a Fiscal Agent to Apply for Grants

July 5th, 2010 · 2 Comments

We sometimes write proposals, usually for foundation grants, when the applicant is not tax exempt under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code (IRC). Most government grant programs and almost all foundations require that the applicant be a public benefit, tax exempt organization, but one can also use a fiscal agent/fiscal sponsor. A fiscal agent [...]

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Tags: Advice · Budgets · Grants · How-to · Technical

Supplementing Versus Supplanting Grant Funds: Examples from the Rural Housing and Economic Development Program and the Capital Fund Recovery Competition Grants

June 27th, 2010 · 1 Comment

In “Brush the Dirt Off Your Shoulders: What to Do While Waiting for the Stimulus Bill to Pass,” Isaac included a footnote that says “This is a big grant no-no called ’supplantation.’ In a future post I will explain how you can explain away supplantation in your grant writing anyway.”
This is that post, except I’m [...]

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Tags: Advice · Budgets · Clients · Government · Grants · How-to · Technical

Deadlines are Everything, and How To Be Amazing

June 6th, 2010 · No Comments

I was reading Jessica Livingston’s Founders at Work: Stories of Startups’ Early Days when I came across an interview with Philip Greenspun in which he describes part of what made ArsDigita so successful:
The third element is just meeting the deadlines. If we’d said we were going to do something by a certain date, we did [...]

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Tags: Advice · Grants · How-to · Stories

The Census During Hard Times: A Gift That Keeps On Giving

May 9th, 2010 · No Comments

One of the best things that can happen to a grant writer is to have the Census roll around during a time of economic crisis, because decennial Census data hangs around for about ten years. It takes the Census Bureau around two years or so to publish the latest data, which then gets used until [...]

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Tags: Advice · Government · Grants · How-to · Research

How Not to Get a Grant

March 7th, 2010 · 2 Comments

Usually I write posts about how to get grants. Today I thought I would give some surefire ways to not get a grant . . .

Call/email/meet with a field deputy in the office of your senator, congressperson, governor, mayor, or city councilperson. Regardless of the project idea, the field deputy will be polite, encouraging, tell [...]

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Tags: Advice · Grants · How-to

Take Time to Develop a Proposal Timeline

February 21st, 2010 · No Comments

Many RFPs require that you include a timeline that will describe when your project will actually unfold—remember that the “when” section is part of the 5Ws and H. Even if the RFP writers forget to require a timeline, you should include one anyway, either under the “Project Description” or “Evaluation” sections because the timeline will [...]

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Tags: Advice · Grants · How-to

How to Write About Something You Know Nothing About: It’s Easy, Just Imagine a Can Opener

February 14th, 2010 · 5 Comments

One of the many interesting aspects of running a general-purpose grant writing firm is that we are often called upon to write complex proposals covering subjects about which we know little or nothing, as I discussed in No Experience, No Problem: Why Writing a Department of Energy (DOE) Proposal Is Not Hard For A Good [...]

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Tags: Advice · Clients · Government · Grants · How-to · Research

Tools, Grant Writing, and Small Businesses: How to Buy a Phone System

February 8th, 2010 · 3 Comments

When Seliger + Associates moved its intergalactic headquarters to Tucson, we also decided to buy a new phone system under the assumption that prices were relatively low and hiring someone to set up our old system again would prove sufficiently difficult and expensive to justify buying a new one.
Doing so is harder than it looks—just [...]

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Tags: Advice · How-to · Technical · Tools