Holistic Grant Seeking Is Nothing to be Feared

Many grant writers ask me, how can we create a culture of collaborative grant seeking? Why is the burden of writing and submitting proposals on the grants department? How can we work collaboratively with other departments instead of alone as a grant writer? Well, it may take a while to get to the point where things go smoothly, but holistic grant seeking is not that difficult to implement in little steps. Here are some suggestions:

Prioritizing Grant Projects

Once in a while every grant writer is faced with a unique situation: finding the perfect grant opportunity but not knowing exactly which project to apply for. True, there are always more needs than resources as far as grant funds are concerned, but not every project is fundable by the same grant opportunity. So when funds are available and more than one project or program fits the bill, how does one decide what project to apply for? Here's where prioritizing comes in.

Working with Other Departments to Enhance Grant Seeking

The concepts of teamwork and synergy have been around for decades, and used religiously by businesses as well as nonprofits to improve performance and efficiency. But for some reason, grantwriters often tend to neglect or ignore this essential determinant of organizational effectiveness. Be it due to a lack of cooperation between departments, or a tendency towards being an introvert, many grant writers work quietly behind their computers, plodding towards arbitrarily set goals of number of proposals submitted or grant reports submitted. There has to be a better way to work, don't you think?

Teamwork Really Works!

Grantwriters often tend to work in a vacuum, sometimes due to organizational dynamics and other times because they prefer to. How many times have we wished that our program people were more hands-on, more involved, more knowledgeable? How many times have we wished that we weren't doing everything from A to Z by ourselves? And how many times have we been glad that we didn't have to deal with the drama of the program department who do nothing but delay our proposal writing process? Sounds familiar?