All too often good organizations write bad grants. Here are 10 common mistakes and how to avoid them.
Not laying the grant announcement into a format that allows the grant writer to keep track of all of the pieces of the application. Always always always grid the grant announcement.
Not writing to get the maximum number of points on the evaluation criteria for each section of the grant. Isolate each criterion for each section of the grant and develop it to the fullest. Step by step, point-by-point, you build until you are confident you have responded to everything to get the maximum number of points. All grants are awarded based on a point system. The prize goes to those who get the highest number of points. ALWAYS WRITE FOR THE POINTS.
Citing outdated literature and old data in the grant application. Rule Number 1: Keep a file of the latest literature published by respected experts, and a file of the most recent published best practices disseminated by government agencies and reputable research organizations. Citing outdated literature and using old data counts against you always.
Developing a grant application in isolation without getting feedback. A big no-no. Always always always let others read the application so that you can get their feedback. If they don't understand it, then the person that scores your application won't understand it either. Make sure the application is an easy read.
Not supporting the proposed project with data on current services and clients. Always always always maintain a current data library that can easily be retrieved for use in grant applications.
Not getting the services of a skilled evaluator to determine if the proposed project can be evaluated properly.
Not getting a skilled evaluator to write the evaluation section for all grants that require evaluation. A big no-no.
Waiting until the last minute to get critical documents signed. Always get as many as possible of the certifications and other required forms signed ahead of time. Never wait until the last minute. People do take unscheduled vacations and they do get sick.
Developing a budget that does not complement the proposed project. The proposed project and its services/activities/daily operations needs/and staffing requirements must always drive the budget. Isolate the proposed project. Lay it out on paper and identify the costs associated with each element.
Waiting until the final hour to xerox the application. Rule number 1: Anything that can go wrong will always go wrong. Complete all xeroxing a day before you mail. And if this is not possible, always have another xerox on standby that you can get to in a hurry. Murphy's Law can appear on the scene at any time.
As a rule of thumb, always, always, always, write your grant with the reviewer in mind. Never assume anything. Furthermore, keep the application as easy to understand as possible. A team of individuals generally reviews government and foundation grants.
Staff at the JDW Network has served on the city, state, and federal grant review teams. It is important to remember that the average reviewer is a skilled professional who has volunteered time to serve on a review team. They usually are senior executives from agencies and have a host of professional and family responsibilities. All reviewers juggle their workloads and schedules to read applications and score them. Keep the following tidbits in mind about reviewers as you prepare your application.
The application must be an easy read. The average review team is reviewing at least 35-40 grant applications over one week. The average reviewer is usually responsible for seven applications. If your application requires a significant amount of effort because it is complex, poorly written, or not well organized, you have frustrated the reviewer and given them an excuse to take away points.
Reviewing applications involves following a format. Usually, a reviewer will read the application twice. The first time a reviewer reads, they are reading to get a concrete understanding of the proposed services, program, and strategies. The second time a reviewer reads, they are reading to respond to questions from a review format and justify the points that they are awarding on an application. Make the information as easy to get to as possible. Use subtitles that follow the format of the grant announcement. Highlight the information that responds to the specific review criteria of the grant announcement. Never force a reviewer to spend time looking for answers. It works against you.
More Tips (might be duplicated)
The following tips are provided from someone who has reviewed and scored over 150 grant applications (federal and state) and who was helped to secure over $75,000,000 in competitive grant funding.
(Tip 1) In demonstrating the need for what you are proposing in your application, it is critical to provide a clear and concrete description of what currently exists and how many clients are currently being served. Always, always, always, provide the reviewer with an easy to visualize description of the existing programs, services, and if applicable, service delivery system. Always present a clear picture of the current capacity of the system and how it does not meet the needs of your targeted population and thus your proposal is requesting funds to meet the unmet need.
(Tip 2) Need is related only to the targeted population's need for services. This need must be well documented. Use reputable data sources such as government plans, waiting list data, new stories, articles, census data, and support letters to document the need for what you are proposing.
(Tip 3) Always, always, always use current literature from reputable periodicals, magazines, newsletters, and books to support your grant application. Also, use program data from your existing program to support your design. Never talk from your personal experience, beliefs, and opinions. This grant is not about you. It's about the grantor feeling confident in the investment that is being made in your program. Citing old and outdated literature is a pet peeve with many reviewers and you will lose points for this.
(Tip 4) The educational and professional credentials of the staff in key positions are reviewed carefully. Don't just stick a bunch of resumes in the grant at the last minute. Take time to make sure the resumes are current, and if the grant allows you to do biographical sketches, then do biographical sketches. The sketches can be presented in a standardized format, highlighting experience relevant to the grant, as well as key professional accomplishments.
(Tip 5) An organization's history of delivery of services to the targeted population(s) as well as documentation of that history must be presented. Use support letters, newspaper articles, and other documents to do this.
(Tip 6) Inexperienced grant writers submit existing job descriptions. This is a big mistake. Always modify your existing job descriptions to reflect the requirements of the grant announcement. Another mistake is to submit stained and faded job descriptions and other supporting documents that are barely readable. All documents in a grant application need to be easy to read, clear, and fresh. Never include stained and/or faded documents in a grant application. Not only do you lose points for this, but you also lose the respect of the reviewer for your application.
(Tip 7) Reviewers can smell a rat three thousand miles away. Items such as rent, renovation, information system development, and consultants always raise the ire of most reviewers. If you have these categories, make sure they are discussed in the narrative somewhere and make sure the cost is reasonable. Write as if the money is coming out of your bank account. If it is suspicious and unreasonable to you, I promise you that it will be suspicious and unreasonable to the grant reviewer!
(Tip 8) If you are submitting a major grant above $250,000, get a skilled evaluator to develop the evaluation component. This is where many grants lose points. Accountability is a real and major issue with governments and foundations. Select a skilled evaluator to be responsible for the evaluation section. Enter into a written memorandum of agreement whereby the evaluator writes the evaluation section of the grant in exchange for administering the evaluation component if the grant is funded. EVALUATION IS IMPORTANT AND CRUCIAL. Therefore, because of the value of evaluation, a respectable fee and/or rate must be negotiated with the evaluator and included in the budget. Also, it is wise for you to always have access to an evaluator. I encourage all agencies to have an evaluator on standby and if possible on retainer. Grants-Tech USA has highly skilled and competent evaluators on standby for major grants.
(Tip 9) You must demonstrate that you have a clear and concrete understanding of the target population(s) that you are proposing to serve.
(Tip 10) In your program design, there are two rules of thumb.
Rule 1: Describe in clear and concrete language what you plan to do and how you plan to do it.
Rule 2: Describe it in a way that the reader(s) can easily visualize it. Show us what the steps are from point of enrollment into your services to point of discharge or completion.
For example, Client Betty is assessed at point A. The following is determined at Point A. From Point A, Client Betty goes to Point, B, C, and D to receive specific services (name the services). After completion of those services and after meeting certain criteria, Client Betty is evaluated for discharge. If Client Betty is determined to be eligible for discharge, then she is discharged and begins to receive follow-up services for a designated time.
Make sure your program design is easy to understand, can be visualized, is evaluatable, is supported by published best practices and the literature, and is described from enrollment to discharge or completion. Bottom line.
(Tip 11) Always address sustainability. What happens after the grant funds are expended? If you don't know, then the safest answer is to state that an advisory group is being established that will contain stakeholders that can through their affiliations assist in the acquisition of continuation funding to make sure the program continues after the funding is over. This advisory group will consist of local government officials, etc….
(Tip 12) Always spell out very simply what the grant will enable you to do. Use language like…through this grant we will be able to do the following (name them). Give it to the reviewer straight so that they don't have to exert any effort to determine what you plan to do.
Quickest Ways to Finding and Winning Grants from Individuals, Foundations, and Corporate Giving Programs
Tip 1. Search for grants that want to fund the types of programs and services that your organization offers.
Tip 2. Call your local libraries to see which one has the most recent copy of The Foundation Directory or The National Directory of Corporate Giving Programs published by The Foundation Center. Both of these directories provide extensive information on foundations and corporate giving programs in every State. Also, they provide extensive information on the foundation and corporate giving programs of most of the major corporations. Both of these directories are updated and published each year by the Foundation Center.
The National Guide to Funding in Aging.
This guide is the only funding tool to cover the many public and private sources of funding support and technical assistance for programs for the aging.
National Guide to Funding in Arts and Culture.
This directory covers more than 4,000 grantmakers with an interest in funding art colonies, dance companies, museums, theaters, and countless other types of arts and culture projects and institutions.
National Guide to Funding For Children, Youth, and Families.
This directory provides information on some 3,400 foundations and corporate giving programs that award grants each year to organizations committed to causes involving children, youth, and families.
National Guide to Funding for Community Development.
This directory provides information on over 3,000 foundations and corporate giving programs. The grantmakers covered in this publication have supported community improvement projects; economic development; business promotion; community funds; community service clubs; housing development; construction; rehabilitation; low-cost temporary housing and homeless shelters; employment and vocational training and more.
National Guide to Funding for the Economically Disadvantaged.
This directory provides information on more than 1,400 foundations and corporate giving programs, each with a history of awarding grant dollars to programs for the economically disadvantaged, employment programs, homeless shelters, hunger relief, welfare initiatives, etc.
National Guide to Funding for Elementary and Secondary Education.
This publication provides information on more than 2,000 foundations and corporate giving programs that support nursery schools, bilingual education initiatives, remedial reading/math programs, drop-out prevention services, educational testing programs, and many other nonprofit organizations and initiatives.
National Guide to Funding for the Environment and Animal Welfare.
This guide covers over 1.300 foundations and corporate giving programs that fund nonprofits involved in international conservation, ecological research, waste reduction, animal welfare, and much more.
National Guide to Funding in Health.
This directory contains essential facts on more than 3,400 foundations and corporate giving programs interested in funding hospitals, universities, research institutes, community-based agencies, national health associations, and a broad range of other health-related programs and services.
National Guide to Funding Higher Education.
This directory contains information on some 3,600 grantmakers with an interest in funding colleges, universities, graduate programs, and research institutes.
National Guide to Funding for Libraries and Information Services.
Fundraisers for libraries and information services will benefit from this directory, which provides essential information on 600 foundations, and corporate giving programs that support a wide range of organizations and initiatives, from the smallest public libraries to major research institutions, academic/research libraries, art, law, and medical libraries, and other specialized information centers.
National Guide to Funding in Religion.
A directory with over 4,200 foundations and corporate giving programs that have demonstrated or stated an interest in funding churches, missionary societies, religious welfare and education programs, and many other types of projects and institutions.
National Guide to Funding in Substance Abuse.
A directory with over 600 foundation and corporate giving programs interested in funding counseling services, preventive education, treatment, medical research, residential care, and halfway houses, and projects addressing alcohol and drug abuse, smoking addiction, and drunk driving.
National Guide to Funding for Women and Girls.
A directory with over 1,000 foundation and corporate giving programs with an interest in funding such projects as education scholarships, shelters for abused women, girls’ clubs, health clinics, employment centers, and other diverse programs.
Tip 4. Always examine your organization’s mission statement to determine the types of grants to pursue. Many organizations are eligible for funding in several areas because they provide different types of services. For help with this, simply e-mail us your mission statement. One of the Grants-Tech specialists will respond with a listing of the types of grants that your organization should be seeking.
Tip 5. Focus your grant search efforts on funding entities in and nearest your community, town, city, and state. Funding entities are real people like you and me. People tend to fund what they know about, what they read about, what they see in the newspapers, and programs that they hear good stuff about from their friends, peers, ministers, family, co-workers, neighbors, and associates. A real key to winning grants is making sure that the people that fund programs respect the community in which it operates and your program.
Tip 6. Exposure, exposure, exposure. Get in the local newspapers as much as possible. Collect as many newspaper stories as possible that tell your agency’s story and/or the need for the type of services you do or propose to administer. Publicize at least two or three success stories per year. These stories are valuable and should always be included, when possible, with proposals and grant applications. E-mail us your questions about how to create more exposure for your organization.
Tip 7. Once you decide how much grant funding you want to pursue, develop a hit-list to target foundations, and corporate giving programs that are interested in funding the types of services, programs, and projects that your agency provides. The hit list prevents you from wasting time by eliminating the shot-in-the-dark approach and replacing it with a well-defined strategic plan to acquire a specific amount of grant funding. E-mail us for assistance in developing your hit list or call 773-955-4330.
Tip 8. The list should contain a minimum of 25 potential hits. Prioritize hits. Funding sources that are in and/or near your community have a higher priority since your chances of getting funding from them are higher.
Tip 9. Give special treatment to each foundation, corporate giving program, and government agency. Write and request their most recent annual report. Study it. Get a good understanding of the types of programs they fund and the size of their grants. Adhere to their submission requirements.
Tip 10. Make your effort count. Submit a complete response to all information requested by the funder. Even more importantly, provide the information in the format requested. E-mail us for assistance with this.
Tip 11. Always get a second and third person to review your grant application or proposal. If it doesn’t make sense to them, then it won’t make sense to the funder. One of the most important tips to winning grants is keeping it simple. Your application must always be easy to read and easy to understand. Keep rewriting until the application or proposal is crystal clear and easy to understand by anyone that reads it.
Tip 12. Your budget must be reasonable. Leverage as much as possible so that the funding source clearly understands your contribution to the project.
Writing Winning Grants
A step-by-step guide that holds your hand from beginning to end. Written for the inexperienced as well as the experienced grant writer. Helps not-for-profits, schools, churches, and social service agencies identify and win grants.
Successful Grants Management Helps you successfully manage your grants to avoid problems that most grants encounter.