Don't Let Grants Stress You Out
Thanks, Diane Leonard, for recently reminding us that grant professionals are superheroes. We need to hear this, especially when we are fighting to make the world a better place despite current troubling events. As grant professionals, we must remember to take a breath, stay positive, and pat ourselves on the back. In July 2018, thanks to grant funding, I had the privilege of attending my…
Does this scenario sound familiar? You have a grant deadline coming up so you open the grant application or pull up a blank page to start writing, but your grant team hasn’t given you all the information you need and you can’t think of a single thing to write. The blank page looks hauntingly back at you. It happens to all grant professionals from…
You may wonder what do grants, bequests, direct mail appeals, monthly donor campaigns, and social media outreach all have in common, and the answer is storytelling. I was honored to be a part of the team that spoke at the Nonprofit Storytelling Conference in Orlando. You can probably guess that given the DH Leonard Consulting team’s sole focus and love for all thing grants, that…
Grant writing often involves big ideas and things we’ve never done before. Involving multiple people. And multiple ideas. And conflicting ideas. This is why I traveled across the county to attend a Compression Planning® Institute. I wanted to learn Compression Planning®. The formal definition of compression planning is: a visual brainstorming process designed to bring out a group’s best thinking and energy on a specific…
It is that time of year…conference season! I have the pleasure and honor of speaking/presenting/teaching at 8 different events around the country this fall talking about my favorite topic…grant writing and best practices in our field including the Nonprofit Storytelling Conference and Grant Professionals Association National Conference. Wondering what I’m talking about at the Nonprofit Storytelling Conference? As I started to prepare this summer for…
Stress Relieving Techniques During a Busy Grant Writing Season… ..or Why 2pm Chocolate is a Healthy Professional Coping Mechanism We all know that in the midst of a busy grant season it’s important to keep self-care in mind, but we also know that this is typically the first thing to come off of our “to do list”. When deadlines are looming, self -care…
Writing an Effective Demographic Statement for a Grant: How to Use Data to Tell Your Story When I served as a reviewer on a federal grant panel, the vast majority of the applications I read were from communities I knew nothing about. The demographic statement was the opportunity for me to get to know the unique challenges and assets that the applicant community had and…
How many times do you read the RFP when preparing a grant application? I read the RFP (also known as the RFA, NOFA or FOA) at least twice: initially, to learn about the grant opportunity, and a second time after the client confirms that they will apply, to reinforce my understanding of the program and extract all of the information needed set up the…
When we plan vacations in our family two of us are planners and two of us are fly by the seat of your pants travelers. Over the years we’ve adjusted to half our family’s “need to know where they are going to sleep and find food” with “hey, you never know what great adventure you’ll stumble upon” for the other half. We have learned to…
If there is any grant that crushes the myth that “grants are free money,” it is the capital grant. Capital grants are used for physical infrastructure, such as constructing a new building or installing an HVAC system, and are not as prevalent as program grants. Applying for a capital grant, especially from a government funder, typically requires significant planning and expense. If you are…