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Entries Tagged as 'Nonprofits'

Teaching the Teacher: What I Learned From Technical Writing

October 23rd, 2011 · 2 Comments

We’re skeptics on the subject of grant writing training as such, but this summer I taught a “Technical Writing” course for juniors and seniors at the University of Arizona. The original course design wasn’t very challenging, so I decided to make it more nutritious by building a unit around grant writing; in a fit of [...]

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Tags: Advice · Education · Grants · How-to · Nonprofits

HUD Issues the FY ’12 Indian Community Development Block Grant (ICDBG) NOFA Not Long After the FY ’11 NOFA

October 11th, 2011 · 1 Comment

HUD just issued the FY ’12 Indian Community Development Block Grant (ICDBG) NOFA (Notice of Funding Availability, which is HUD-speak for RFP). There’s about $61 million available for federally recognized Tribes, Alaskan Native Villages and selected Native American organizations. This is a great opportunity for eligible Native American applicants to fund housing, economic development and [...]

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Tags: Advice · Budgets · Government · Grants · Nonprofits · Programs

The Difference Between Being “Involved” in Grants and Being a Grant Writer

September 25th, 2011 · 6 Comments

Most people who claim to be grant writers or “involved” in grants don’t actually write proposals. They’re more often engaged in things like grant management, the distribution of grant funds, or development (fund raising), which are important but very different things than grant writing. Grant writing means you sit down and write a proposal. Grant [...]

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Tags: Government · Grants · Nonprofits · RFPs · Stories

Repurpose: The Word of the Decade and a Word for Nonprofits to Live By

September 10th, 2011 · 2 Comments

During this seemingly endless period of economic stagnation, “repurpose” has emerged as the word of the decade. Repurpose is omnipresent. My wife recently “repurposed” a duvet that our dog had chewed by patching the hole and stuffing it into a new cover she made from some leftover fabric from a long-forgotten sewing project. Angus Loten’s [...]

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Tags: Advice · Nonprofits

Nonprofits Should Make Better Use of Social Media, and Here’s a Free Project Concept Illustrating How

August 14th, 2011 · 7 Comments

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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Tags: Advice · Clients · Media · Nonprofits · Programs

A Lesson in Passthrough Funds and Capacity Building: ACF’s Non-Profit Capacity Building Program NOFA

July 21st, 2011 · 3 Comments

If you read this week’s grant newsletter, you probably saw the NOFA for the Administration for Children and Families’s “Non-Profit Capacity Building Program,” which I first thought meant “pass-through funds,” since the purpose is “to increase the capacity of a small number of intermediary grantees to provide specific assistance to improve the sustainability of and [...]

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Tags: Advice · Government · Nonprofits · RFPs · Technical

Unicorn Spotted in the LA Times: A Large Nonprofit Gives Back Huge Federal Grants

June 26th, 2011 · 1 Comment

In the 280 or so years I’ve spent grant writing (grant writing years should be considered as dog years because of endless deadlines and dumb RFPs), I don’t believe I’ve ever come across a nonprofit that voluntarily gave back significant federal grants. Faithful readers will know that I use the term “unicorn” for anything I [...]

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Tags: Advice · Grants · Media · Nonprofits · Stories

One Person, One Task: Who’s in Charge of Your Proposal?

May 16th, 2011 · 1 Comment

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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Tags: Advice · Clients · Deadlines · Nonprofits

Think Systems When You Write You Prepare Your Proposal, and a Tale From the Medical Trenches

April 11th, 2011 · 1 Comment

A friend of mine just applied to medical residencies, and in the process he worked himself into a lather over what specialty he wanted to choose and how he should order his preferred programs. He made a nearly fatal mistake of the kind many grant applicants do: he waited until the last minute to make [...]

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Tags: Clients · Government · Grants · Nonprofits

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, [...]

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Tags: Advice · Grants · How-to · Nonprofits