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Find out which foundations have given grants in your
region similar to your planned
proposal! Talk to those who got funded and ask for advice and
ideally copies of their
successful grants.
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Read the current guidelines for those foundations
on what they will fund and when
the grants are due. If a foundation says they won’t fund
equipment, don’t ask
them for equipment (unless it’s a necessary component of the part
of the grant they
said they’d fund!) For example: A programmatic grant could ask for
$50,000 in support
equipment, but would not be considered if they called themselves a
technology project.
Semantics do matter a great deal!
If they say they’ll fund up to $15,000, don’t ask them for
$50,000.
Foundations often shift their focus, and timing can be very
important. Watch for
timing-sensitive opportunities. Do your homework! Grant reviewers
appreciate those who
paid attention to their RFP’s (Requests for Proposals.) Too few
do!
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Collect sample successful grants to use as boilerplate
models. Many foundations will
send you, on request, proposals from past funded projects, or at
least will give you the
addresses of past grant recipients, so you can ask them directly
for copies of successful
proposals. The more good proposals you read, the more you’ll
understand how clear
writing and following guidelines leads to funding.
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Use the same terms in your proposal that the
foundation used to describe what they
want to fund. Buzz phrases push important buttons. If they tell
you what to tell them:
listen, and be convincing as to how your project dovetails with
their posted guidelines.
If an RFP says they don’t fund technology grants, don’t use the
word technology.
Find other words to express your project, ideally taken directly
from the RFP guidelines.
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Get to know individuals who have worked with the
foundations to which you’re
applying. Talk to foundation personnel as much as is politely
possible. Typically,
little suggestions, and hints, you’ll pick up, even from a phone
conversation, will
make major differences in the final form and focus of your
proposal. The more personal
contacts you make, the better for you. Foundations appreciate
those who take the time to
gather all the facts, and they might even recognize your name when
your proposal comes up
for review. Pay careful attention on what to emphasize and what to
tone down.
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Less is More! Reviewing stacks of proposals is a
difficult job. Grant reviewers
quickly learn to scan text, particularly proposal abstracts, in an
attempt to get a quick
overview of exactly what you expect to do, with whom, when, how,
and toward what
measurable outcome. If you are short and to the point, and you’ve
answered the key
questions, your grant will be viewed as comprehensible and
fundable. If you bog down the
reviewer with too much ambling detail they’ll have a hard time
understanding your
proposal and it is likely to end up in the "NO" pile. Good
proposals are easy to
understand.
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A catchy name, like "Reach for the Sky" which is
also descriptive of the
project, can make a big difference. First impressions and a
memorable theme and name are
important! Remember they will want to promote your project proudly
as one of their great
projects.
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Good writing should be easy to read, understand, and
should present your ideas in an
exciting, yet specific manner. The abstract of your proposal is
the single most important paragraph
of your proposal. You should know exactly what you’re planning to
do with their
money, and express it in elegant simplicity. If the grant reviewer
has a good idea of the
direction of your proposal from reading the abstract, it creates
an important first
impression that you do indeed know what you want accomplish, with
whom, at what cost, and
specifically how.
In reading an exciting, well-written proposal, one idea follows
naturally to the next. One
disjointed or boring sentence can kill the mounting enthusiasm of a
tired grant reader.
Maintain a tempo of easy to understand sentences that build on one
another in a crescendo
fashion.
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Show in your proposal that you’re aware of who has
done similar projects, and
that you’ve partnered with appropriate entities to assure your
project will have
enough support to make it through to completion. Big Sky
Telegraph, BST, (my former
10-year project) has helped many people get grants because it was
widely known we’d
been around long enough that most funders assume we won’t
disappear overnight.
Affiliating with BST gave the impression that the grantees will
have technical
telecommunications support to assure their grant’s success.
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Sustainability is a big issue. Too many grant
projects disappear after the funding
is gone. How can you assure ongoing benefits once the funding runs
out is one of the
biggest questions in the
mind of the grant reviewer.
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Measurable outcomes. Once the grant is over, exactly what
was produced, how will
it be disseminated and exactly how many people will have
benefited? How do you intend to
measure tangible outcomes to prove the projected benefit actually
occurred?
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In the passion of writing a grant it is easy to get too
ambitious. A major red
flag for grant reviewers is the indication you’ve planned to
accomplish more than
your budget makes realistically attainable. It is better to limit
your proposal to less,
more assuredly attainable goals, than to promise more than you can
deliver. Most projects
find they badly underestimated funding for staff and particularly
technology support. Be
realistic and conservative.
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Tie yourself to a major regional, or national, issue
and position your proposal as a
model to be replicated once you’ve proved your idea works. Make it
clear you’re
not just benefiting ten people in Two-Dot, Montana, but that
you’re solving a problem
shared by all rural schools and are creating a replicable national
model. A specific
strategy for broadly sharing your solution should be specifically
part of your proposal
plan.
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Choose your partners wisely. The more partners you
have to deal with, the harder it
is to keep everyone happy, particularly where control of large
sums of money is the issue.
If you plan to be working with your grant partners for years,
you’d better be sure
you know who you can trust and work with. Many projects end up
with internal in-fighting
that takes the fun out of getting funded. Money changes
friendships. Tread cautiously.
Consider whom you may have to work with if you get funded and
whether you should include
them for a share of the funding to avoid future resistance to your
project. Grant
reviewers look closely to see who is flying solo, and who works
well with the other girls
and boys. The better partners you have, the safer their money is
when invested in your
project.
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Even if your first grant-writing effort doesn’t
get funded, the planning
and writing process still allows you to resubmit your idea
elsewhere. Often project
partners get so committed to a good idea, even if funding isn’t
won, that the means
for moving forward on a project can still be a possibility.
Boilerplate paragraphs from
old grants are typically recycled. Seasoned grantwriters are
skilled recyclers, reusing
paragraphs from successful grants.
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Make it fun! If you get funded, you’d better enjoy
working hard to make your
dream happen. Be careful what you ask for, because you just might
get it! Once a grant
ends, what will you have built for the future? Will you be right
back where you started
having to write another grant? Plan accordingly.
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Many web sites exist to support grant-writers, even
specifically educational
technology grant-writers. Knowing this, find them and use them!
Search the Web for
"educational technology grants" and/or "grant-writing." Below are a
sampling of the best grant-writing and funding sources web sites.
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Evaluations are the means by which you prove your success
at the end of the grant
period and are often the key to winning your next grant. Be
tangible and realistic in what
you set out to achieve, and in how you’ll know whether you’ve
achieved it after
the money is spent.
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While it is considered to be inappropriate to submit the
same grant to multiple funders at
the same time, one option is to change the grant slightly so
multiple funded grants would
actually dovetail together instead of creating duplication.
