Getting Ready to Write a Grant Proposal
ALTHOUGH GRANT SEEKING IS a process that is similar in many ways for nonprofit organizations, local government agencies, and individuals, as we worked on this lesson we came to realize that differences can mandate somewhat different kinds of preparation. For example, nonprofits are less likely than government agencies to have unionized employees (though some do). Civil service regulations involve procedural requirements for hiring or transferring staff, whereas nonprofits have greater flexibility. These differences are addressed by dividing this lesson into three sections, one for nonprofit organizations, one for local government agencies, and one for individual grant seekers. Keep in mind that this division is somewhat arbitrary. For example, the complaint about having no time to pull information together for a proposal is heard no less in government agencies than in nonprofits, no less in large organizations than in small ones, and certainly no less from busy individuals who may be faced with application packages several inches thick. Also keep in mind that many proposals from universities or hospitals for grants to conduct research may reflect overlapping requirements for foundation and government proposals, so if you are submitting such a proposal, you may want to read both sections.
IF YOU’RE A NOT-FOR-PROFIT ORGANIZATION . . .
OPENING REMARKS
As I did so often when I was a consultant for nonprofit organizations, I told the director of a teen pregnancy prevention program that it would cost her agency a lot less if her secretary pulled together all the documents I would need for the federal grant proposal that I was writing for the organization. But it turned out that the director didn’t have a secretary. As in so many nonprofits, it was a small office, and everyone working there did everything. Staff members were getting ready for a board meeting. Nobody had the time to pull together the materials I needed, so I had to charge them for the time I spent going through their files and setting up a separate folder with copies of these materials. They could have saved that money with a little prior planning.—ASF
LEADING QUESTION
There’s Always a Crisis to Deal with in This Place. Who Has Time to Put Together a Proposal?
The answer is that everyone has time to do what it takes to write a proposal, though you may not realize it. Every organization or program has its own rhythm. Every single one has times when staff feel they never get to go home; every single one has times when everyone can sit back and take a deep breath. Some organizations are busiest during the summer, when they run their day camps. Some are busiest in September, when school and after-school programs start. Some are busiest around the holidays, when staff organize special meals for homeless people or when clients are feeling especially lonely or depressed. But for other organizations, holidays can be slow times because clients, or their families, are away, or just too busy to come in.
DISCUSSION
It’s a good bet that any slow time your organization may have will not occur during the few weeks before the proposal is due. That’s why you feel as if you never have time to deal with a proposal, and that’s why we recommend so strongly that you begin now to prepare for that perfect funding opportunity that is bound to come along when you are busiest and most overwhelmed.
In Lesson 14 we talk about demonstrating your organization’s capability to handle a grant if you get one. Many of the same suggestions apply to preparing for a grant proposal—and preparation now will make it easier to demonstrate your capability then. Here’s how to start: On one of those slower days, when you’re not racing around putting out fires, assemble a folder of materials about your organization, its financial status, and its staff. For most of the items you probably will just need to rummage through your files and make a copy for this background folder. For others you may need to do a bit of writing.
We’re not saying you will need to use all of the documents described here for any particular proposal—almost certainly you won’t—but it will save you a lot of time if you have them available to draw from and submit as you need them. If you keep as much of this information as possible in your word-processing files, you can just copy or cut and paste when a proposal is due. For example, when you get a résumé by email and hire an applicant, just save the résumé to a folder in word processing. That way it can be updated quickly when you need to submit it. And keep every proposal, every letter, and every budget spreadsheet for possible use in the future.
Different grantmakers require different documentation. Some of the items we mention may have to be submitted with the application; some must be available by the time a grant is awarded; some may not be part of the application itself but will be important in preparing a narrative. Whether you are a not-for-profit, a government entity, or a local education agency, you should have the relevant and most up-to-date version of these documents on hand before a funding opportunity becomes available. For example, all incorporated not-for-profit organizations have a board of directors or board of trustees. If you haven’t updated the list of board members recently, do this during one of those quiet periods. All types of organizations will need updated job descriptions of key staff and the most current résumés. You also will need local, citywide, and school district demographics and other data that are as up-to-date as possible. We’ll talk about this in Lesson 7.
Among the documents that may be required or useful for an application are the following (if you need a definition, see the Glossary, Appendix 3):
• Agency mission statement. Some foundations will be puzzled if you don’t have one, and many application forms usually ask for it. If you don’t have one, get your board to start writing it. (You may need to draft a few versions for their review.)
• Certificate of incorporation as a not-for-profit organization. Almost every grantmaker requires that you submit this with an application or proposal.
• Most recent 501(c)(3) letter or other proof of tax-exempt status. This is another document that usually has to be submitted with a proposal.
• Employer identification number (EIN).
• DUNS number. Dun & Bradstreet assigns a number (a Data Universal Numbering System number) to every organization that applies for this identification number. This is required for all federal applications and increasingly requested by other government funders. You can apply online (http://fedgov.dnb.com/webform). You should allow plenty of time for the application (although they say it will take only one business day). If you have difficulties with the application, or are working against a deadline and need the number immediately, call 866-705-5711. You will be asked for several pieces of information, including the organization’s legal name, address, web address, name and title of the individual authorized to sign legal documents, purpose of the organization, and so on.
• List of board members, including name and home address, place of employment, and position. Many grantmakers ask for this basic board list. For some funding opportunities it is also necessary to indicate board members’ race/ethnicity and gender; for some you may need to show their other organizational affiliations.
• Annual record of board contributions; foundations expect to see that 100 percent of board members make a financial contribution. If your board includes individuals who were asked to participate because of special expertise, say a deep knowledge of best practices in youth services or home care, and are not expected to make financial contributions, you need to explain this to the funder. But also explain to these board members that even a small contribution from every member signals a commitment that grantmakers want to see.
• Organization chart, showing the overall organization structure, reporting arrangements, and so on. Larger organizations may need a chart for each major department.
• Job descriptions for all positions. When you plan a new program, create job descriptions, whether you plan to fill these positions with current staff or hire new people. Don’t forget to have up-to-date job descriptions for your executive director, directors of finance, human resources, and other administrative managers.
• Number of full-time and part-time staff members, and number of regular volunteers. Sometimes these numbers do not change much from year to year, but be sure there is someone in your organization who updates the information regularly.
• Current résumés of managers and key staff. “Key staff” means anyone who has responsibility for a program. For most funders this includes managers and supervisors, but occasionally includes all staff members involved with the program. You receive the résumés anyway when someone applies for a job; you may as well keep them on file. But be sure the résumés reflect experience at your organization as well as what they did before they came; ask all staff to submit new résumés each year or each time they are promoted or change positions.
• Brief “biographies” of key staff. In addition to résumés, it is worthwhile to have a document in your files that gives a one-paragraph summary of the background and experience of the executive director and heads of all departments. This is requested instead of résumés by some grantmakers, and should be updated regularly.
• Most recent (current and previous year) overall organization budget and individual program budgets. If you don’t develop budgets like this each year, you should.
• Auditor’s report for the most recent and previous fiscal years. Again, if you don’t have a yearly audit, you should. We know it costs money and time you don’t feel you have. And you may have received minor grants without going to this trouble. But if you want a funder to take your organization seriously, it’s absolutely critical.
• Annual report, if you publish one.
• List of all current funding sources, and potential sources of matching funds. It may help to have a two- or three-year chart showing how much you’ve received each year from each source. You also should indicate planned submissions, showing funders, amounts, and dates. A simple spreadsheet is sufficient.
• Floor plan showing access for people with disabilities, or description of plans to accommodate people with disabilities if the facility is not readily accessible. It is rare that you will actually have to submit this document, but you may be asked to describe the facilities available for a program and to show that you have the ability to accommodate people with disabilities. If you cannot do this, you should be able to describe other locations you will use, or other programs in the community that do. For example, if your school isn’t accessible to children with physical disabilities, you may explain that a newer school, designed to be barrier free, accepts all children in the district with this need.
• Personnel policies and procedures demonstrating compliance with Equal Employment Opportunity Commission requirements, Americans with Disabilities Act, Drug-Free Workplace, and so on. If you do not have such policies and procedures in place now, you will need them as your organization grows. Borrow and modify examples from similar organizations to make it easier and less time-consuming to put these in place. A board member may be willing to help with this. And have an attorney look over the document to ensure that all current regulations are addressed.
• Disaster plan. Although such a plan is not likely to be required by most funding sources, there may well be occasions when describing it in a proposal will enhance your reputation as a reliable and well-prepared organization.
In addition to specific documents, lists, and charts, it is useful to put together some boilerplate materials (paragraphs that can be used repeatedly, with small modifications for a particular grantmaker) in the form of brief narratives. Among these items, include:
• Your organization’s history. A paragraph or two about when and how the organization started and significant milestones in its history. This “boilerplate” can be used over and over, with modifications to emphasize different elements of your growth (when you started programs for seniors, when you initiated youth programs) for different funders.
• Current programs. A paragraph or two about each program you operate, including a description of the population it serves, objectives, and any demonstrated successes.
• The community. We’ll address a lot of the kinds of information that might go into a description of the community when we get to Lesson 7, describing the need for a program in a proposal. The point here is that a lot of this information can be collected during those few quiet moments and developed as a set of paragraphs on the population, the schools, existing services and institutions like teen centers or hospitals, health issues and data, crime statistics, and other topics that you can pull out as you need them for a proposal. Remember that this information must be updated regularly; it can become obsolete in no time.
• List of existing formal linkages with organizations in the community, area, or city, and letters of agreement or memorandums of understanding specifying how each organization participates or will participate in collaborative work with the others. In Lesson 10 we discuss funders’ interest in giving grants to partnerships rather than to individual organizations, and you need to begin thinking about these things long before a funding opportunity appears. The letters of agreement may need to be updated periodically, but you can establish a basic agreement—for example, that a program for children and parents will refer to a counseling organization when a need is identified; or that a school will provide space and custodial services for an after-school program and that the program will provide snacks as well as activities; or that a church will provide a meeting room for the senior center, and the center will make its programs available to church members. You might keep a chart showing all the existing relationships with other organizations in your community.
• Any recent needs assessments, program evaluation reports, and examples of forms or procedures you use. As we explain in Lesson 11, grantmakers want to know that you’re using their money effectively and that you are committed to evaluation. Most organizations do not have the resources to hire outside professionals for needs assessments or formal evaluations, but if you’ve ever been able to do this, be sure the documents are on file. Refer to them in any proposal when it’s appropriate (that is, almost every one!). If you don’t have any external evaluation documents like this to show, be sure you do have some indicators that you use to inform you about how well your programs are working. You should collect data and report at least once a year on every program you operate; many excellent organizations expect programs to report monthly. We’ll talk more about this in Lesson 11 on evaluation.
• Recent publicity (news clippings) and a list of awards to the organization, its programs, and its staff members.
IF YOU’RE A GOVERNMENT AGENCY OR SCHOOL DISTRICT . . .
OPENING REMARKS
When I started working for city government, an agency program manager told me that she wasn’t allowed to write grants, except to apply for formula funds or certain entitlements. Her boss felt that if she had time to fool around with “pie in the sky proposals,” he wasn’t giving her nearly enough to do to keep busy.—EK
LEADING QUESTION
We Get Plenty of Formula Grants. Why Should We Bother Applying for Federal Grants That Take So Much Time?
Hey, come on. Every little bit of extra money helps the residents of every town, city, and state. And wouldn’t (and shouldn’t) the public be outraged to learn that a city agency didn’t bother to pursue a competitive grant that would provide a sweeping rodent abatement program in a neighborhood overrun with rats because no one had the time—or the inclination—to write the proposal? And wouldn’t (and shouldn’t) the public be outraged if a county decided not to take the trouble to apply for a competitive grant that provided drug abuse prevention programs in schools or housing projects? Such grants provide funding that absolutely would not come to a locality in any other way. Yet unlike not-for-profit organizations, which understand the importance of grants to keep them and their programs afloat, municipalities, school districts, and other government entities too often view competitive grants as optional. Local government managers and staff are supposed to think about these grants only when they have nothing better or more pressing to do with their time.
It’s easy to forget that states, municipalities, counties, and school districts are (or should be) major grant seekers. Many, many interesting and important competitive grants actually require a government agency to be the applicant, specifically excluding not-for-profit organizations or universities, for instance. Everyone knows that the business of government and schools is to provide services to citizens of all ages, dealing with emergencies that rear their heads (such as terrorism, hurricanes, blizzards, epidemics, or floods). And they must defend themselves to the public and the press when children can’t read, garbage isn’t collected, roads or levees buckle, murder rates soar, traffic is congested. But many local governments are constrained by the difficulty of bringing in enough tax revenues to provide the needed services and constantly raising taxes to meet new demands. This is never popular, if it’s even possible. Grants can help.
Income Streams for Local Government
There are essentially four types of income that come to states, counties, municipalities, and school districts. Everyone knows about tax-levy funds; these come from income taxes, property taxes, sales taxes, and so on. Money for capital expenses like school construction usually is raised by issuing bonds that a government entity has to pay off over many years out of its tax-levy income. Other funds come from higher levels of government—state or federal. Entitlement funding is written into law, usually at the federal level. It must be spent on behalf of any individual (for instance, a person with the HIV virus) with qualifications specified in the authorizing legislation. The amount of money that the locality gets is based on the number of residents who qualify (thus this kind of funding also is called a formula grant). The formula for the grant might include, for example, the number of people with family incomes below a specified amount, the number of children in a school district whose parents’ income is below a certain level, the number of elderly people living in poverty, or the number of people with disabilities. Examples are Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security.
Discretionary grants, the focus of the present section, are available through a competitive process from a higher level of government at its discretion, depending on available funds. At the federal level, as the general public is learning, discretionary funding covers all government spending other than debt service and entitlements—including the military, the FBI, emergency management, Head Start and other early childhood programs, housing, education, transportation (including air traffic controllers), and health.
Discretionary grants of all kinds from higher levels of government can support state and local entities in providing services. These agencies may in turn hire—meaning subcontract or issue grants to—not-for-profits or for-profit businesses to run hospitals, conduct arts programs, provide technology instruction in schools, beautify parks and open spaces, develop housing for senior citizens, run after-school programs, and many other services. For successful grant seeking, local governments and schools have to plan ahead—just as not-for-profits do. Competition for grants pits the Los Angeles Police Department against the New York City Police Department and the Indianapolis Police Department; it pits the Des Moines Health Department against the Boston Health Department. At the present writing, as we’ve discussed, the federal sequestration is beginning to be felt, while demands for infrastructure replacement and disaster recovery are soaring. This means that federal grants to states and localities will become even more competitive than they have been for all kinds of discretionary funding. And because these grants are competitive—not entitlements, not based on formulas—they require a tremendous amount of the kind of work and homework we are stressing in this book. And sometimes a culture change is required as well. Winning competitive grants—not just relying on formula funding—must become a major priority of school districts, cities, and states.
But Really—We’re Not Kidding. When You Work for the Government or the Schools, There Just Isn’t Time!
Sure, there are commissioners, superintendents, and other leaders in government and education who claim that if their staff members have time to be thinking about grants, they probably don’t have enough to do. This is silly, of course. Every time a worker recognizes a need or gap in services that isn’t covered by the budget, that person should be thinking about programs and grants to address the problem; it is, or should be, part of the job description. And the more time staff members spend thinking about and getting ready to write a grant proposal, the more likely they are to win the grant to supplement other local money.
One important way to make sure there is time for a grant proposal is to use slow periods to develop boilerplates (material that can be used again and again) for much of the text and supplementary material that a proposal will require. In order to be able to spend precious time developing the program for a grant, you should collect and organize the following information and update it regularly:
• Overview of your locality, including the number of residents, methods of governance, description of who the local elected officials are, crime and health statistics, immigrant information, unemployment rates, number of city workers, unions, and accomplishments.
When one of us submitted a grant proposal for the city of New York to a large national foundation, she was shocked to learn (too late, unfortunately) that although the foundation was located only 90 miles from New York City, the lead reviewer was a consultant from the Northwest who did not know that the city is divided into five boroughs and that the mayor and the borough presidents don’t necessarily see eye to eye. All the reviewers were so confused about who was in charge of what that they couldn’t appreciate the enormous effort that had gone into building a workable partnership among normally warring parties. They kept asking questions such as, “Who’s responsible for garbage collection—the mayor or the borough president?” “Where does the sanitation commissioner fit into the mix?” As a result, we developed a concise two-page description of the political, geographic, and ethnic characteristics of the city that can be used for every major proposal.
• Information about the various neighborhoods or sections of the locality, for example, the number of residents, age and family composition, ethnicity, crime and health statistics, and needs.
• Overview of the school system, including, for example, form of governance, number of schools, number of students, structure of the system, number of children eligible for free or reduced-cost meals, school and district performance, number of children receiving special education services, and the types of services they receive.
• Specific neighborhood/district/school information (e.g., reading scores, math scores, dropout rates, children with language problems, attendance data, and incident reports).
• Overview of the particular agency you work for—and for which you will write proposals (e.g., police, transportation, health). Include the agency structure and mission, overall budget, staffing and “lines,” leadership, responsibilities, achievements/existing grants, gaps in services, and awards.
• Résumés of key staff members, consistently updated.
• Organization chart for your agency. For each proposal you write, it is easy to plug the proposed program into the existing organization chart showing just where and how it will fit into the organization. Show to whom the grant-funded staff (if there is any) will report and how the program will be an integral part of the agency’s business.
Unlike not-for-profit organizations, government agencies and school districts are required to follow very stringent procurement and hiring regulations. While most not-for-profit organizations can hire whoever they feel is the best qualified or the best fit for a grant-funded program (subject, of course, to equal employment laws), governments also must be sensitive to accusations of favoritism, union issues, seniority issues, and other concerns that should be addressed before applying for a grant. If an agency wants to collaborate with a particular not-for-profit on a grant, it may still have to go through some kind of formal bidding or other procurement process. This means that timing and communication are important, and tricky. In order to be ready to write a proposal, the agency will have had to qualify potential partners first; these organizations will have to go through the qualification process knowing that funding may not in fact be forthcoming.
Many cities have been working on streamlining the procurement and hiring processes so they will be able to implement grants quickly and efficiently. New York City, for instance, has developed a negotiated acquisition process that speeds up contracting. There is nothing worse, as we’ve said before, than winning a whopping competitive grant from the federal government and not being able to spend the money because of bureaucratic roadblocks.
IF YOU’RE AN INDIVIDUAL GRANT SEEKER . . .
OPENING REMARKS
Two friends wanted to make a documentary about a 75-year-old woman—an animation filmmaker who had succeeded against very long odds in a “man’s world” after her husband died. Neither friend was a documentary filmmaker, neither had ever written a grant proposal before, and neither was independently wealthy. But they had this dream of making a one-hour documentary. And somehow they did it . . . and had it shown at film festivals . . . and it won prizes! And on the way to making their movie, they found themselves engaged in a smaller project that won them an Emmy. Talk about building a track record!—EK
LEADING QUESTIONS
But I Don’t Have All Those Documents That Nonprofits and Government Agencies Have; How Do I Prepare in Advance?
You may not think you have much in the way of documentation to keep in a file, but there are items you can prepare in advance for a proposal.
• Résumé, curriculum vitae, or professional biography. You probably have something like this if you’ve been around for a while; just make sure it’s up-to-date. If you don’t have one, prepare one immediately, and get help—and samples—from people in your field whom you respect.
• A portfolio. If you’re an artist in any field, you probably have a lot of samples of your work—whether they’re paintings, drawings, poetry, photographs, essays, videos, or any other representative materials. If you haven’t done so, select the very best of these to put into a suitable presentation (e.g., slides), and keep them in a portable file. And review and update your selections frequently.
• Reviews. You should keep absolutely every scrap of press coverage that you’ve received—but sort these scraps regularly so you can always show the best ones.
• List of clients or partners. If you’ve worked on projects with or for individuals or organizations, maintain an up-to-date list of the projects and the contact persons. They can serve as references, be considered as possible fiscal conduits for a grant you may receive, or just demonstrate a track record.
You Said Your Friends Got the Film Made? And It Ended Up in Film Festivals? Please Tell Us How . . .
Basically, they followed the steps we discuss when we talk about nonprofit organizations and government entities. They developed a clear project proposal, describing whom and what their film would be about, who the target audience was, what the point of view would be, and why they felt a film like the one they were proposing should be made. In addition, they had to produce a fundraising trailer, and because they had no money even for this, they were lucky to find people who were willing to give them in-kind contributions—of their skills, time, and materials—so the trailer could be made without the two of them going broke. They found that the funders weren’t concerned about the quality of the images. They wanted to know if the film was about a compelling subject and whether the filmmakers knew how to put images together to tell a compelling story.
Then they did their homework on funding sources. They paid many visits to the Foundation Center library and searched for potential funders, using the library’s reference materials. (Today they might use the center’s Internet site; see Lesson 2 and Appendix 6.) They realized immediately that most foundations do not give grants to individuals, so they found a 501(c)(3) organization called Women Make Movies, which agreed, after seeing the fundraising trailer, to act as their fiscal conduit. The filmmakers refined their search for funders by reading annual reports to see if foundations ever funded documentary films, movies about women, or anything else related to their work. They read industry publications to see if available grants were mentioned. They also found government funding sources like the National Endowment for the Arts and National Endowment for the Humanities (which had a daunting application process), and the New York State Council on the Arts. Then they applied for everything and anything they could. And they got rejected everywhere . . . because they didn’t have a track record.
But because of all their efforts and the contacts they made along the way, they got help from an unlikely source. Four filmmakers—including the subject of the film they wanted to make—had received grants to make very short animated films. Our friends proposed incorporating each of these four animated shorts in its entirety into individual half-hour programs in a two-hour series about the process of making animated films and the filmmakers’ lives as artists. The result was an Emmy Award–winning series, Animated Women, which featured the four filmmakers and was first shown on PBS.
Now they had a track record . . . and now they started getting grants for their documentary. They told us that personal contact was extremely important. In each case when they received a grant, they had spoken directly to a program officer at that foundation. Artists and scholars who need grant funds to write, study, or paint must do the same type of homework that these filmmakers did. Sadly, no one can do it for you. The funding sources and the types of application you will need to submit depend on the nature of the work you plan to do. Most scholars wonder about applying for a Fulbright or Guggenheim Fellowship, but universities can assist in finding less-well-known sources of funding for study.
Similarly, artists, writers, filmmakers, and teachers can learn about grants, scholarships, fellowships, and awards in professional journals and newspapers—even in labor union publications—that they routinely read (or should be reading). Filmmakers, for example, might want to join AIVF, the Association of Individual Video and Filmmakers. Once again, as much as we wish this weren’t so, no one can do it for you. As much as we’d like to tell all painters to contact the So-and-So Foundation to get a grant that will pay for you to work on your canvas, we can’t. What we can tell you is this: Look at our friends the filmmakers. Think creatively. Be resourceful. Hang on to your vision at all costs. Beg friends and relatives to help when necessary. Don’t give up without a fight. Link up with a 501(c)(3) if possible. Read everything. Talk to everyone (nicely). And finally, prepare the best-developed and best-written proposal that is humanly possible using all the information we provide in these lessons.
Pop Quiz
True or False?
1. If my organization is a not-for-profit and I apply for a grant that’s directed only to not-for-profit organizations, there’s nothing special I have to do to prove we’re eligible.
2. The process of applying for a grant for individuals is completely different from the process of applying for a grant for a nonprofit or a government agency.
3. Not-for-profit organizations only get foundation grants, never government grants.
4. Individual artists only get foundation grants, never government grants.
5. School districts should stick to the three Rs and leave grants to the not-for-profits.
6. In order to get a grant, an individual must have a 501(c)(3).
Essay Question
Whether you are a not-for-profit, a government entity, or an individual grant seeker, describe the three best ways to prepare yourself for a proposal in advance of a funding announcement.