Don't Let Grants Stress You Out
(*Note: Yes, that is a picture of me, in the pink headband on the right, immediately after the race with a dear friend who ran with me to celebrate the five year anniversary of my Achilles rupture. Back to normal professional headshot style pictures after this, but the analogy didn’t feel as solid to share with you without the real post-race picture.) There are so…
*Note from Diane: The flexibility that can come with the life of a consultant can be wonderful, but can also present unique challenges. Julie offers us a great, honest perspective on those challenges in her latest blog post to give insight for potential consultants and camaraderie of experience to fellow consultants. I would imagine that for employed grant writers, many have also faced similar work…
Last Friday was International Grant Professional’s Day as the capstone for International Grant Professional’s Week. It was a fantastic week as there is so much to celebrate and be excited within the grant profession! In fact, I’m still in a celebratory mood, and that celebratory mood has me pondering how it is that we celebrate our work as grant professionals, and *when* we celebrate with our…
**Note from Diane: We are so pleased to have Dr. Judy Riffle back as a guest blogger again this week. Judy is the owner of Santa Cruz Grants & Consulting, LLC. No Weaknesses Noted: The Benefits of Serving Since 2012, I have served on six federal grant review committees. Every time, I learn something different; it is one of the best forms of professional development…
If you read the Grant Writer’s Blog last week, you know that grant professionals don’t dawdle. Procrastination is not a method that we practice. As a follow-up to talking about not procrastinating, I wanted to share 3 action points that can help you as a grant professional focus at work. We all have multiple responsibilities, yet multi-tasking might not be the answer. We can’t check…
I believe grant professionals don’t dawdle. We’re always working with deadlines, but we’re not the pros that put off the work until its due date. Procrastination is not a word that we write or practice. Part of what makes us grant pros is that we know all the layers of information it takes to submit successful applications. We are confident. We have no fear…
Last year ended with big news in philanthropy: $45,000,000,000. That’s the Facebook stock that Pricilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg will transfer to the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) for philanthropic giving. The CZI will operate as a Limited Liability Company (LLC) instead of the more traditional private foundation. CZI is not the only philanthropic LLC initiative. As a grants professional, I wonder if a grant…
Note from Diane: We are excited to have Dr Judy Rifle, of Santa Cruz Grants & Consulting joining us as a blogger for the Grant Writer’s Blog in 2016! She kicked off her series of posts by providing us her own “Seeing Grant Funding in Action” story. Did you miss the other posts our team has written about how we have seen grant funding in…
I have written numerous pieces the past few years about how our active team of grant writer’s balance our work and deadline-related stress with exercise and movement including setting fitness goals as a team and building custom treadmill desks for our offices as part of our quest to move. We have all found that incorporating ways to move during the day is critical not only for…
Grant writing mistakes can quietly sink an otherwise strong nonprofit grant application. Instead of focusing on what to say, let’s look at what NOT to say — five common grant application pitfalls that weaken your proposal in the eyes of reviewers, drawn from years of experience as a Program Officer, Foundation & Grants Coordinator, and grant writing consultant. After years as a Program Officer…