The breathless SAMHSA RFP, “Targeted Capacity Expansion Program for Substance Abuse Treatment and HIV/AIDS Services (Short Title: TCE/HIV)” (.pdf link to the RFP) has already been mentioned and also features one of my favorite proposal verbal quirks: the automatic success assumption. The last bullet in Section C (page 26) says:
Demonstrate success in referring, and retaining [...]
Entries Tagged as 'Stories'
Deconstructing the Question: How to Parse a Confused RFP
June 8th, 2008 · No Comments
Tags: Advice · Grants · Stories
Blue Highways: Reflections of a Grant Writer Retracing His Steps 35 Years Later
June 1st, 2008 · No Comments
One of my favorite books is William Least Heat-Moon’s Blue Highways, an ode to the spiritual healing powers of exploring America and one’s self by driving the roads literally less traveled. From my first road trip at age 16 with my buddy Tom in his ‘53 Chevy from Minneapolis north towards the Iron Range, I’ve [...]
Tags: Advice · Grants · Stories
Further Information Regarding the Department of Redundancy Department
May 15th, 2008 · 2 Comments
Last week I discussed repetitive RFP questions and where they spring from, and this week, in honor of the RFPs themselves, I’ll go over the issue from the angle of SAMHSA’s “Targeted Capacity Expansion Program for Substance Abuse Treatment and HIV/AIDS Services (Short Title: TCE/HIV)” RFP (warning: .pdf link). It’s a model of modern inanity [...]
Tags: Advice · Grants · Stories
RFP Lunacy and Answering Repetitive or Impossible Questions
May 7th, 2008 · 1 Comment
I’ve talked before about RFP absurdity, and now I’ll talk about lunacy: the HRSA “Service Expansion in Mental Health/Substance Services, Oral Health and Comprehensive Pharmacy Services” program (see the RFP in a Word file here) asks in Section 2.6, “Applicant describes how oral health services will be provided for special populations, such as MSFWs, homeless [...]
Tags: Advice · Clients · Grants · Stories
Stuck on Stupid: Hiring Lobbyists to Chase Earmarks
April 19th, 2008 · 1 Comment
A faithful Grant Writing Confidential reader and fellow grant writer, Katherine, sent an email wanting my take on a public agency hiring a lobbying firm to seek federal earmarks. For those not familiar with the term, it means getting a member of Congress to slip a favored local project into a bill, bypassing normal reviews [...]
Tags: Advice · Clients · Grants · Questions · Stories
FEMA Tardiness, Grants.gov, and Dealing with Recalcitrant Bureaucrats
April 10th, 2008 · No Comments
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)—the same guys who brought us the stellar job after Hurricane Katrina—issued the Assistance to Firefighters Grants program on what Grants.gov says is March 26, 2008. But the deadline was April 04, 2008, which is absurdly short by any standards, let alone those of a federal agency. I sent an [...]
Tags: Advice · Grants · Stories
Rock Chalk, Jayhawk, KU! — Lessons from Basketball for Grant Writers
April 8th, 2008 · 2 Comments
My daughter will graduate from the William Allen White School of Journalism & Mass Communications at the University of Kansas in May. Although I’m not much of a sports fan, over the past four years, I’ve learned to love Jayhawks basketball and was delighted to see the Jayhwawks come back from a double digit deficit [...]
Tags: Advice · Grants · Stories
Finding and Using Phantom Data
April 2nd, 2008 · 2 Comments
RFP needs assessments will sometimes request data that aren’t readily available or just don’t exist. The question then becomes for you, the grant writer, what to do when caught between an RFP’s instructions and the reality of phantom data. When you can’t find it,
The Service Expansion in Mental Health/Substance Services, Oral Health and Comprehensive Pharmacy [...]
Tags: Advice · Clients · Grants · Stories
Another Example of the Wonderful Past
February 12th, 2008 · No Comments
Last night I was reading Madame Bovary and found another example of the cultural phenomenon I described in The Wonderful Past, which is the tendency to compare the present to superior days: “[Canivet] belonged to that great surgical school created Bichat – that generation, now vanished, of philosopher-practitioners, who cherished their art with fanatical love [...]
The Wonderful Past
February 10th, 2008 · No Comments
In Umberto Eco’s fabulous The Name of the Rose, Adso of Melk says, “In the past men were handsome and great (now they are children and dwarfs), but this is merely one of the many facts that demonstrate the disaster of an aging world. The young no longer want to study anything, learning is in [...]