Five Ways to Get Your Proposal Rejected

Let's admit, we all make mistakes from time to time. But when it comes to writing grant proposals, even little errors can end up being very costly. Here are some small mistakes that can push your proposal into the trash can:

Guest Post: Creating a Grants Management System that Works

The Boy Scouts’ motto, “Be prepared,” is valuable advice for grant writers. Timely submission of multiple proposals requires organization and advance planning. Having a reliable grants management system in place will save time, enable fund-seekers to compile all the funder’s required documents much more easily, and reap lucrative rewards. While each grants management system should be tailored to an organization’s and grant writer’s specific needs, there are several basic components of the system that apply to almost everyone:

The Complicated World of Corporate Grants

A colleague asked me today to expand on that often elusive world of corporate grant making. I wrote her a long email full of research and resources, then thought what a great post that would make for this blog. So why re-invent the wheel? Here is the information repeated for every one's benefit:

Traits of Successful Grant Consultants

There’s a saying in the nonprofit sector: if you’re in this, it’s not to become rich. To prove this saying wrong, many grant writers decide to freelance... perhaps because they think it will allow them the freedom to earn more money than working as an employee at a nonprofit organization. Yet years later they are no better than when they started, searching for high-paying clients, struggling with freaky organizational dynamics of staff and volunteers, and hoping for a vacation. What is it, then, that separates the average grant writing consultant from those few who earn exorbitant amounts of money and recognition in their field? Oh yes, we all know who I am referring to!

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?

Websites You May Want to Check Out

I thought that today being the unofficial start of the weekend, I would give my readers a list of valuable websites and/or blogs to check out in their spare time. Over the years I have found all of these very valuable to my grant seeking, and I hope that they increase others' skills and knowledge as well. I encourage you to send me more links so that I can update this post in the coming months:

The Needs Statement - Friend or Foe?

Until a few years ago, I used to hate writing statements of need for grant proposals. Even though I knew what the problem was, I could never really explain it well on paper... after all, if high school drop outs are on the rise, need I really sit down and explain why that could be dangerous for not only the students concerned but the entire nation. Everyone gets it, right?

Wrong! Let's explore the many assumptions in this argument...

We Recommend: Purdue Proposal Enhancement Tools

Grant writers often find themselves struggling to define key sections of their grant proposals... who and where is our target audience, what impact do we expect our program or project to achieve, how will we evaluate success? Really, this is the meat of the proposal, yet many don't have enough information to adequately describe it. Program officers don't seem to have time to sit and explain it all to us, and evaluation methodologies are too often outside our area of expertise. If only there were some handy dandy tools to assist us in understanding what information we need, where to find it, and how to craft it into a powerful proposal.

Well, good news, there are just such tools! The Purdue Proposal Enhancement Tools, to be exact.

PND Reviews my Book

So we all know how important a good book review is, right? As a buyer - and borrower - of countless books over the years, I always rely on reviews by my peers and those I look up to in order to make my decisions. I never realized until now how equally important the review process is to authors (in case you're wondering, really really important!).

Evaluate Your Grants Office

Nonprofits love to evaluate: we evaluate programs, we assess how grant funds were used, we review staff performance, we even try to gauge volunteer and client progress. But how many times do grant professionals weigh the grants effort itself... how are we doing as a grants office, what results are we achieving, and what can we do better?