Don't Let Grants Stress You Out
Dear ExperiencedGrant Writer, I’ve been a grant writer for a few years now, and I’m taking over as a lead grant writer in the industry that I’ve been a part of for the last few years. My job is to find large grants for the nonprofit that I’m a part of and I also oversee the other grant writers that are attached to the departments…
It often feels like a big world for new grant professionals. There is so much to learn and so many decisions that are left to the grant writers. The decisions, I think, are what cause new grant writers pause, like a new writer coming to an empty page. One person reached out to Diane and mentioned that she was a grant writing intern fresh out…
It is hard to admit when you’re wrong. See what I did there? YOU are not the problem in the difficult topic I want (not really) to discuss. I am. Or at least I was. And I was seriously wrong about something particularly important. Something so integral to success in grant-seeking that it held me back when I wrote my first applications, lo, those many…
Dear Experienced Grant Writer, After being in a couple grant writing workshops, and then having received a letter that let me know of my declined grant application, I wanted to know if there are any questions to ask the declining grantmakers or if there should be a follow up after a rejection. Should I continue the communication I have with the grantmakers? Signed, …
Can You Cure Writer’s Block? The short answer to that question is yes. I would say that most people would agree that writer’s block is the tornado to Dorothy’s house–and instead of sending us over the rainbow, we end up on YouTube for a couple hours. In my experience, this is not the solution. Forms of entertainment mostly lead to forms of procrastination that don’t…
Dear Experienced Grant Writer, I’ve recently been given the responsibilities of a Grant Writer as the nonprofit I am a part of. I just took a federal grant class and it felt like swimming upstream. There is so much information and I don’t even know what I don’t know about grants. I want to enter the grant seeking world with confidence but I feel…
A Louis Vuitton purse. An inflated salary and over-the-top office decor. Triple payment for the same work. What do these things have in common? If you guessed “lists of things no grant will fund”, you’d be correct. You’ll find all these “what not to dos” and more in Fundraising HayDay’s latest installment of Ripped from the Headlines: Ripped from the Headlines: Grant Fraud Ain’t No…
The More I Learn About Grants, The Less I Know At what point would you consider yourself an expert in the grant profession? Is it based on the number of years in the business? Once you’ve earned your Grant Professional Certified (GPC) credential? Your first multi-million-dollar grant award from the feds? When you make the transition to consultant? Or how about when you are a…
Whether you are first getting started with federal grants, or you have a few federal grant submissions (and maybe even awards!) under your belt, you may feel the pressure of the highly competitive process. The dollars at stake are huge and so are the impacts on your organization. As we’ve been designing Grant Writing Boot Camp in collaboration with MyFedTrainer.com, I put together a…
A Tale of Two Funding Types: Comparing Public and Private Funding It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness…from A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens My high school career was a tale of two cities. As an army brat, I was used to moving every few…