Recently, I attended MyFedTrainer’s Grant Writing Boot Camp (GWBC) hosted by our team’s founder and President, Diane H. Leonard, GPC, RST. Having written many federal grants in the past, I was excited to hear insights from another seasoned grant professional. There was helpful new information provided, as well as important reminders to remember when working on federal grant applications.
Some of those takeaways are below:
1. Diane shared helpful resources that I hadn’t come across in the past! Just a brief sampling includes two tools for prospect research: www.sam.gov and www.usaspending.gov. The prior is a listing of all funding opportunities from the government – ever! It’s not a list of funding that’s currently open but shows funding that has been made in the past. It can be good to use as a planning tool and can help grant professionals understand how funding levels for various agencies have fluctuated over time. The second site, www.usaspending.gov, shows you the percentage of applications that were funded for each opportunity and also lists which organizations were funded. Diane shared that this site can be used to look at previous grantees for specific funding programs, and even more ingeniously, taught that you can use this tool to look for collaborative partners already/recently receiving funding.
2. Another helpful tip from Diane was her Cup of Coffee rule: as a general rule, don’t research more grant opportunities at once than you can finish in a cup of coffee. This helps reduce the feeling of drinking from a fire hose when doing prospect research.
3. The last new-to-me takeaway I’d like to share is helpful framing Diane provided on the difference between an application’s Theory of Change and Logic Model:
| Theory of Change | Logic Model | |
| Time Frame | None | Time Bound |
| Level of Detail | Low | High |
| Elements | Few (do + get) | Many |
| Primary Display | Graphics | Graphics (columns, colors, arrows) and text |
| Focus | Generic | Targets and specific results |
As I mentioned previously, Diane’s Grant Writing Boot Camp course also came with key reminders for any grant professional to keep in mind while working on federal grants. Among the many important reminders shared, two are listed below:
1. Grant writing is not a solo sport! It’s important to build a grant team, build it early, and be thoughtful about the people who are coming to the table. Don’t forget that partner organizations are a valuable part of your grant team.
2. Set deadlines early. Build in time for the unexpected, like issues with the portal, out of office time for your “Authorized Organization Representative”, internal delays in getting necessary information, etc. Embedded in this timeline should also be time for the ever-important mock review, a process of having your grant scored by people who are not part of the grant team working on the application. This also gives you, the grant professional, an opportunity to build your own scoring sheet based on the funding guidelines and further deepen your understanding of review criteria.
We hope to see you at any of our upcoming sessions. View the lineup of upcoming sessions here.
