The number of applications for competitive grant programs to all funders will increase significantly.

You might already know that the Budget Control Act of 2011 created a Joint Commission of Congress that is charged with identifying budgetary savings of at least $1.2 trillion over the next 10 years. If a joint committee bill is not enacted by Jan. 15, 2013, an automatic spending reduction process will go in to place. Sequestration, or the cancellation of budgetary resources, will take effect on Jan. 2, 2013. Based on what I have read, I believe sequestration will have a dramatic impact on the grants field.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) already has stated that it expects fewer medical research grants, with approximately 700 fewer grant opportunities to be available in 2013. The National Science Foundation has stated up to 1,500 grant opportunities could be cut as a result of sequestration.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan presented testimony to the Senate Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education Appropriations Committee in July. He stated that sequestration would reduce spending on federal education programs by 7.8 percent. He said the following programs would be at risk:

• Title I funding would be cut by $1.1 billion.
• Special-education funding would be reduced by $900 million.
• The Impact Aid program would receive cuts that impact schools serving military families.

Charts from the National Education Association (www.pta.org/3E_Handout_4_-_NEA_Sequestration.pdf) have more extensive listings of the various grant programs that would be affected by sequestration in categories that include Elementary and Secondary Education, Special Education, and Career, Technical, and Adult Education. Some of the grant programs include 21^st Century Community Learning Centers, Mathematics and Science Partnerships, Education for Homeless Children and Youth, preschool grants (IDEA-B-611) and grants for infants and families (IDEA-C). Most, if not all, of the programs listed are discretionary grant programs, meaning that funds are awarded using a competitive process.

If funding is reduced in 2013 and beyond, it could mean that the number of grants awarded would stay the same and each award would be for a lesser amount of money, or the number of grants awarded would be smaller and the funding amounts would remain stable. Either way, school districts across the country are sure to feel the impact of these cuts. More than likely, according to the charts, many services for children will be cut back or even eliminated—which could lead to significant job losses for teachers and other school personnel.

If sequestration were to occur, it’s my belief that the number of applications for competitive grant programs to all funders will increase significantly as districts attempt to locate funding from other sources to make up for these losses. Districts that, until now, had not looked at private foundations as possible sources for grants will likely add these funders to their grant-seeking efforts. If you think the grants field is competitive now, expect it to get even more severe in the next few years if sequestration takes place.

In the meantime, I would suggest staying in touch with your members of Congress and your state department of education to monitor what is occurring regarding the BCA—and to lobby for a budget-cutting bill that avoids sequestration and also spares education from too many cuts. If sequestration does take effect and my predictions come true, get prepared to do more proposals and more intensive grant writing in the next few years.

Myth: Grant deadlines are negotiable. In plain and simple terms, no, they are not!

As I’ve talked with a variety of people recently who are looking for funding for their education projects, I’ve come to realize there are a few grant-seeking “myths” that need to be dispelled. Here are the most common ones that I have heard.

1. Grants are the answer to every financial crisis. I understand that many people are now looking at grants as a solution to their budget difficulties, such as losing staff, ending programs, and simply buying day-to-day items. However, it’s important to keep in mind that the majority of grants are intended to fund new projects, not supply new sources of dollars to cover existing expenses. There are a few funders who have made a decision within the last two years or so to change their focus and help organizations with their basic needs; however, for the most part, this is the exception rather than the rule. What’s more, receiving a grant award isn’t a quick process that occurs within a week or two. In the case of federal grants, six to nine months can pass before you receive notice of funding. Finally, grantors tend to fund grantees who have a strong record of being able to manage grants and who can show relative financial stability. Applicants who are facing a budgetary crisis are likely to find that grantors will see them as too risky an investment.
2. Grants are easy to get. In today’s world, the competition for grants has become even more severe. Why? Because a larger number of schools and other organizations are applying for grants than ever before. (For example, a recent new grant competition in the healthcare field received 10,000 letters of intent and more than 3,000 applications.) Although some proposals are poorly written and are not very competitive in the eyes of reviewers, many of the proposals are high-quality and worthy of consideration for funding.  I would never say that getting grants is “easy,” and I’ve been pursuing them for a long time! If you have a good relationship with a funder, combined with a positive track record of carrying out projects successfully, you might find continuation funding is easier to achieve.
3. Grant proposals take just a few hours to complete. Grant applications come in all shapes and sizes, ranging from online applications that contain three questions to 80-page proposal packages and everything in between. What I would say is that some applications do take a few hours to complete, while for other programs it might take weeks or months to put the entire proposal package together. It’s important to plan ahead and calculate how much time it will require to apply for a particular grant program, taking the following factors into consideration: How complex is the narrative? How much data do you need to support the need for the project? How many attachments are needed?
4. Grant deadlines are negotiable. In plain and simple terms, no, they are not! If you cannot meet a funder’s deadline, your recourse is to wait until the next deadline. Contacting a funder to explain why you cannot meet the deadline is fruitless. Stop and think about it in these terms: If everyone asked for a deadline extension and it was granted, there would be no need for any funder to have set deadlines. Funders could simply state in their guidelines that potential applicants should contact them to negotiate a deadline that would be most convenient to the applicant. Yes, there are some funders who have “rolling deadlines,” meaning you can submit an application at any time—but if you see published deadlines for submission, take them seriously.
5. There is a grant to fund everything. This one is somewhat related to myth No. 1. Although there are a plethora of grant programs and grantors, there really are not potential funders for every project—and the related expenses that accompany it. Remember, if you need equipment, nine times out of 10 it must be related to the successful execution of some type of project, rather than simply a “wish list” of what you want to buy.

Send at least one person who is responsible for developing the grant-funded project.

When I started writing education grants nearly 20 years ago, many funders would hold Request for Proposals (RFP) workshops. During these workshops, they would review the RFP for a grant program and answer questions from potential applicants. (I remember a few workshops where program officers read the RFP word-for-word. As you can imagine, these were pretty hard to sit through.)

For federal grants, these workshops usually were held in three or four locations in the United States; one on the East Coast, one on the West Coast, one in the Midwest, and maybe one in the South. Rarely were questions taken from the audience during these workshops; in many cases, questions had to be submitted in advance. So, if you thought of a question while you were there—or an answer to a submitted question sparked another question in your mind—too bad!

Today, it is more common for funders to hold Technical Assistance calls that include PowerPoint presentations and chat boxes that allow attendees to type in their questions during the call. And, even better, many of these sessions are archived for a specific amount of time (usually right up until the proposal deadline) so you can listen to them several times to hear comments and answers to questions. Some funders turn the questions and answers into FAQ pages that are then posted to a website.

Although the method of providing information to potential applicants has changed dramatically, the benefits of attending such training sessions remain unchanged. Here are five potential benefits you can get from these sessions.

1. Sometimes funders will offer additional comments or insight as they review the RFP document or grant guidance. For example, they might provide examples of potential partnerships or even sample project ideas that fit into the parameters of what the program will fund.
2. Some potential applicants will identify their organization when they pose a question, or you might meet other applicants during the workshop. This enables you to get a sense of who the other applicants could be and the kinds of organizations that are interested in applying for the grant. As a side benefit, you might be able to identify a possible collaborative partner for your project, especially if someone discusses a project that is similar to the one you plan to implement with grant funds.
3. Funders might mention other sources of funding for the types of projects they are looking to fund. Or, they might mention an upcoming grant opportunity that you should be looking for.
4. Funders sometimes use these calls or workshops to correct mistakes or even change information contained in the RFP or grant guidance. When this happens, the RFP often is not rereleased, and so this might be the only way a potential applicant would know of the corrections or changes.
5. Participating can be a great way to find out if you have a situation that requires further discussion with a program officer after the call or workshop is over. I have heard potential applicants being instructed to contact the program staff to discuss their project in more detail. If this happens to you, be sure to take advantage of the opportunity!

It can be helpful for more than one person from your organization to participate in a Technical Assistance call or RFP workshop. I would suggest that you send at least one person who is responsible for developing the grant-funded project, in addition to the person who will write the proposal. I’ve found that discussing the information presented in the session with someone else gives me a better understanding of what the presenter meant—or helps clarify something I did not quite grasp.

When I review a proposal and I can see that the applicant has done a literature review of studies, says Ward.

I recently received an eMail message from an individual who attended a workshop I led on grant writing in February. During my workshops, I often encourage attendees to serve as reviewers if they plan to write grants on a regular basis. This person eMailed me to say that she had been accepted to be a reviewer for her local United Way and that she was excited at the prospect.

Over the years, I have been fortunate to serve as a reviewer for several grant competitions at the local, state, and federal level. Each time I complete my assignment as a reviewer, I find that I have learned more information that makes me a better grant writer. Here are just a few of the things I’ve learned from serving as a reviewer:

(1) Reviewing grants helps you express projects in more clear, concise language.

When the funding decisions rest on your own shoulders, it provides a completely different perspective than the one you have when you’re trying to prepare a document that will convince others you are worthy of funding! During the review process, each proposal is reviewed on its own merits. However, there is no denying that a proposal that makes sense, and is easy to follow and understand, is more likely to score higher than one that is convoluted, riddled with spelling and grammatical errors, and is difficult to understand.

(2) Reviewing grants gives you an opportunity to learn how the budget form relates to both program and budget narratives.

Reviewers really do scrutinize budgets and carefully match line items in the budget with what is outlined in the activities or methodology section. I have sat on review panels where questions have been raised about the number of staff that are included in the project (especially when it looks like there are too many staff listed—or conversely, not enough staff—for the work that is projected to be done), as well as the percentage of effort that is listed for everyone, the amount of equipment that is going to be purchased, and the amount of travel that is included.

(3) Seeing hard copies of proposals drives home the recommendation that I often see in federal RFPs: “Be sure to make a hard copy of your proposal before you submit it electronically.”

This not only allows you to see just exactly how many pages you will have (thus meeting the page limitation requirements), but also what those pages look like. I have seen my fair share of maps in proposals that are totally unreadable, probably because they were developed in color, but as a reviewer, I am provided with a black-and-white copy. If you have important information described on a map but not included in the narrative, it can be lost in the copying process. The same goes for tables and charts. Make sure that what you have created is clearly readable when it’s copied. My recommendation would be to always use black and white! And remember, the copies for reviewers might be made on a machine that isn’t new, so the copies aren’t crisp and clean.

(4) Reviewing grants has given me a lot of information about evaluation tools, as well as ideas for data collection and analysis that I can incorporate into future projects of my own.

Remember, this is not a solicitation letter.

If you are a seasoned grant writer or have spent numerous hours researching foundations, you might be as frustrated as I was when I would find a “perfect match” foundation, only to see the dreaded words: “Gives to preselected organizations/no proposals accepted.”

In the past, I would have moved on, thinking there was no reason to spend any more time on this foundation. However, a recent article in the Philanthropy News Digest—“What to do when foundations have walled themselves off from your organization,” by Tony Poderis—has given me new hope and new ideas for what to do when I come across foundations like this.

Poderis states that “we need to honor the wishes of these ‘walled-off’ foundations” but adds that grant writers should try to find ways for their organization to become one of those preselected few. He offers the following suggestions to make meaningful contact with these funders without violating their rules.

First, he suggests that we use “direct leverage,” or personal association, to connect with these funders. In other words, use your board members or connections to see if they have any association with the “walled-off” foundation.

Poderis recommends that you create a list of these foundations and include as much information as you can about their board members, staff, and committee members. Present this information to your own staff, board, and committee members to see if they personally know any of the people at the foundation. If they do know someone, ask them to make an informal contact or inquiry to the foundation. This might open the door to creating a relationship without making the funder feel like you have violated its rules.

If it’s not possible to make a personal connection, Poderis recommends that you send a letter to the foundation. However, he makes clear that this should not be a “we know you only give to preselected organizations, but…” letter. Instead, he suggests that you respectfully ask the funder one or more of the following questions:

• What would it take to enable our organization to be considered on your list of preselected charities?
• How often do you add new preselected charities?
• With our pledge that we will not ask you for money, would you be interested in learning more about us via written material? Or, perhaps you might be interested in visiting us to see our organization in operation? And, we would welcome any advice you can provide us about grant-making organizations that are suitably aligned with our mission.

Remember, this is not a solicitation letter, Poderis cautions. And, if you follow up with a telephone call (which he does), do not fall into the trap of turning the call into a solicitation. More than likely, you will anger the funder and will not be placed on its coveted list of preselected organizations.

Why does Poderis feel it’s important not to just walk away from this type of funder? The answer is simple—and it was a “why didn’t I think of that?” moment for me. He says there is always a chance that a preselected organization might change its services or programs that the grant maker favors. Or, a preselected grantee might fall out of favor with the funder for a variety of reasons. If either of these happen, and you are there at the right time, Poderis suggests you might be able to fill the vacancy on the list of preselected organizations and receive funding.

(Tony Poderis is a fundraising consultant who served as the director of development for the Cleveland Orchestra for 20 years. This article was posted on Feb. 16, 2012. It can be found at http://foundationcenter.org/pnd/tsn.)

Round off your numbers instead of using dollars and cents.

If you are creating your very first budget for a grant proposal, where should you start? Here are eight suggestions that might make the process a little less daunting.

1. Check the RFP (Request for Proposals) or grant guidelines for any budget information. Some funders will provide you with a budget form that must be submitted with your proposal. Others might not provide a form but will describe what they expect to see in your budget. If a budget form is not provided, search the internet for samples and use one that meets your needs—as well as the funder’s requirements.
2. Familiarize yourself with the allowable and non-allowable budget items. Again, this information should be included in the RFP or grant guidelines, and it tells you the kinds of items you can request grant funds to support. Some line items that funders typically will allow include salaries, supplies, travel, consultant fees, and equipment (although some funders place a cap on the amount of equipment that can be purchased, so beware). Non-allowable budget items are those that the funder will not pay for; however, this doesn’t mean your project will not include these types of expenses. You’ll need to look for other sources of funding to support these, such as your general operating budget.
3. Before you start to work on your grant budget, make a pledge to use only real numbers. If you don’t know how much something (or someone) costs, look it up online, check with vendors, verify with consultants, and so on. Often, other applicants will include identical or similar items in their budgets. When reviewers see wide disparities in costs for identical or similar items (or for items they are familiar with themselves), “red flags” go up—and they question the validity of the rest of the budget numbers, too.
4. As you’re working on your activities section of the proposal, keep a running list of every cost that is associated with each activity, such as salaries, equipment, supplies, or consultant fees. Then, you can add up these items to get an idea of how much funding you are going to need to implement your project. I have seen some budgets that use this kind of list to connect activities and costs to each objective the applicant has listed in the proposal.
5. Keep track of the calculations that you use to come up with specific dollar amounts for line items. This will make writing your budget narrative very easy.
6. Check with your school district’s business office or human resources department if you are going to include salaries and/or benefits for current employees—or if you plan to hire new employees for the project. I’ve found that many people think they know their salary and benefits, but they’re often wrong. If you’re going to use a percentage of an individual’s time in your grant budget, just request the annual salary and make the calculation. However, if the individual is going to spend a specific number of hours on the project, it’s easier to request his or her hourly wage. If you plan to hire a new employee, you’ll want to make sure that you use a salary and benefits figure that is realistic for the position—and one that your organization is willing to pay.
7. Round off your numbers instead of using dollars and cents, and remember the old adage to round up if it’s five or more. In my experience, I’ve found that most funders prefer to give award totals that do not include cents.
8. Ask someone who is good at math to review your budget before you submit it. It’s always a good idea, I think, to have at least one other person double-check your addition and multiplication and review what you’ve included in your budget.

While your entire proposal should send a strong, “unspoken” message that you are credible and reliable, here are some suggestions for what you can include in the Capacity section to reinforce this message.

“Grants & Funding” column, February 2012 edition of eSchool News—You might have noticed that some funders require you to address the “Capacity of Your Organization” to carry out the project you’re describing in your grant proposal. If you come across this requirement, how can you demonstrate the sustainability of your organization to potential funders? To put it another way, what types of information can you provide that will convince a funder that you’re a credible applicant who will not carry substantial risk if you are chosen for a grant award?

Keep in mind that your entire proposal should send a strong, “unspoken” message that you are credible and reliable. But here are some suggestions for what you can include in the Capacity section of your proposal to make this message even stronger:

1. Describe your experience receiving and managing other grants, especially noting those for significant amounts of money (say, more than $25,000) and those that were funded by a federal agency. (I suggest mentioning any federal grants because most funders will recognize that these tend to be larger, more complex grants that are extremely competitive and can be hard to receive.) Talk about the scope of the project(s) and the dollar amounts you received. When addressing grants management, you can discuss how your staff track their time on grant-funded projects and who has responsibility for making sure that programmatic and fiscal reports are submitted on a timely basis.

2. Describe your business office capabilities. Include information about the number of staff you have in your business office and how they carry out cost and budget controls. For example, you can discuss your internal invoicing system, noting the frequency of invoices and the review process for these. Who monitors the expenses related to grant-funded projects to make sure that only allowable ones are made?

For information about school technology grant opportunities, click here.

For more Grants & Funding columns from Deborah Ward, click here.

3. Describe your past audit experiences, if any, noting whether you have had audits that contained no findings. If there were any findings, you can discuss how you responded to them to rectify the situation. (If you decide to use this type of information, I would suggest consulting with your business office and auditor. You want to make sure that what you include does not make you sound as if audits are a serious problem for your organization!)

4. If your school, district, or university has received any exemplary awards, especially as related to the project outlined in your proposal, be sure to mention them and whom they came from. If you have been recognized for prior “best practices” or for using innovative approaches to solving problems, this also would be excellent information to include.

You might find that the more recognition a company receives, the more successful you’ll be in securing corporate ed-tech support.

Grants & Funding column, January 2012 edition of eSchool News—Is corporate philanthropy a part of your grant-seeking efforts? If not, here’s some basic information to get you started in examining this potential source of support for your school or district.

According to the book Everybody’s Business: Managing Risks and Opportunities in Today’s Global Society, by David Grayson and Adrian Hodges, corporations provide support with a variety of words beginning with “p”—profits, people, product, power, purchasing, and promotion. Corporations have a variety of different models they use to provide this support.

A corporate foundation follows regulations that govern other private foundations. These foundations are separate from the parent company; however, their giving usually reflects the corporation’s values and interests.

A corporate giving program is not separate from the company and does not follow the regulations that exist for private foundations. Often, corporate giving programs are a source of funds for causes that would not meet a corporate foundation’s guidelines, such as giving funds for a golf tournament or a gala. Corporate giving programs allow a corporation to receive the direct benefits from this type of activity, such as tickets to the gala for their employees.

Corporations can offer either type of support or both. Grant seekers need to research what giving options a corporation has and ask for the right type of support from the right type of vehicle. Two examples of companies that have both corporate foundations and corporate giving programs are Wal-Mart and Home Depot.

For more grant-seeking advice from Deb Ward, see also:

Tips for effective grant evaluation

Six questions to ask before applying for a grant

Seven strategies for successful grants management

Ten grant-writing resolutions for the new year

Corporations offer grants to support projects (sometimes including capital, matching, and challenge grants), matching gifts that match the contributions their employees make to organizations, and service grants in which their employees volunteer their time. Corporations also can provide in-kind contributions to organizations, such as product or service donations or loaned equipment and facilities. And finally, corporate employees can donate their paid release time to organizations, and corporate employees can serve on boards providing technical assistance and/or expertise.

To begin researching the potential for corporate philanthropy to support your needs, I recommend that you contact your local Chamber of Commerce and request a list of the top 20, 50, or 100 employers in your community, depending on its size. It’s important to keep in mind that most corporations restrict their giving to the locations where they do business and/or where their employees live and work.

It is important to know what outcomes are intended so we can judge the value or effect of our actions.

In a recent article from the publication Giving Forum, titled “Effective Grant Evaluation: A Funder’s Tips,” author Sharon DeMark from the Minnesota Community Foundation and the Saint Paul Foundation provides some tips for grant applicants to consider when preparing the evaluation for their project. I often find that information provided by grant makers can be extremely helpful for grant seekers—and this article is no exception. It offers some insights into what motivates grant makers when they are requesting program evaluations.

I’m often asked if funders expect every project to be successful, and if they’ll ask for the grant funds to be returned if a project wasn’t a success. Ms. DeMark writes, “If you don’t reach your goals, what you have learned and how that will inform your work is just as important.” She goes on to state that wrestling with questions such as, “Do our goals need to be changed?” or “If not, does some other component such as project design or personnel need to be adjusted?” allows us to continuously improve grant projects and their impact over time.

Ms. DeMark encourages potential grantees to consider the “Big So What?” question when preparing evaluations of their projects. She says this question means: “Why is this program important?” and she advises potential grantees not to confuse outputs with outcomes.

Some funders require logic models to be used in the evaluation section of a proposal. Logic models are diagrams that illustrate how a project is intended to produce specific results. Often, logic models show the flow from inputs to activities to outputs to outcomes. Grant writers who are asked to provide a logic model need to know the distinction between the last two; a simple way to think about them is to keep in mind that outputs come before outcomes.

The summer months provide some time to organize this information, so you can save valuable time during the school year.

Summer is here, and for the most part this tends to be a quiet time in the grant-seeking world, as many government grantors are not holding competitions. As a result, this might be a good time to work on items that naturally fall by the wayside from September to May, when grant deadlines are occurring on a steady basis.

Although seasoned grant writers know that it’s unwise to copy and paste entire proposals, there is some “boilerplate” information that you can keep on file and use for many proposals that you submit to both public and private funders. The summer months provide some time to organize this information, so you can save valuable time during the school year—rather than spending hours looking for background information to support your need as a grant deadline looms.

Here are some suggested items that you can work on to prepare for upcoming submissions:

1. Update the demographics of your district, including student enrollment, attendance per grade level, number of teachers, and so on. If you do not have this information written in narrative form already, spend some time developing a short paragraph that contains this information. Use the most current numbers that you can access.

2. If you do not have a brief description of your community, develop a short paragraph or two that includes information about population, ethnicity, unemployment, number of employers, poverty levels, crime statistics, and drug abuse information. Depending on the geographic location of your district, you also might want to identify nearby landmarks, cities, etc., so that readers have a sense of “where you are” as they review your proposal.