In evaluating grant proposals I often find that many lack a significant amount of pre-planning. It's almost as if the author thought, "well, this sounds good so I'll write it down". While 'sounding good' may win you points on your proposal it could set you back later in the grant cycle and result in the revocation of grant funds.
It's always important to remember that what you put in the proposal will impact the funder's evaluation of you for the duration of the cycle. While changes can often be made in the form of an amendment, it is important to remember that too many amendments can be a bad thing. In my three years of a program manager I consistently review amendments from the same programs. This shows the funder that there was an overall lack of planning before the original proposal was put together.
I have decided that I am going to do a two week series of blogs focusing specifically on the planning of grant proposals and, ultimately the program.
When was the last time you took a long hard look at your program and any plans, strategic or otherwise, that you have in place? Are you still working these plans? Do the plans still apply to the community trends and needs. Take some time to review what you have in place and evaluate whether or not these plans truly help the facilitation of your program or whether they're just documents put together as a formality.
Feel free to discuss the types of plans your programs use in the comments and provide us with what has worked for your programs and what hasn't. I will be back on Wednesday to provide some of my insight as a funder on how to really engage program planning into the grant writing and management process. Until then, happy grant managing!
As always, if you have any questions that you'd like me to address in "Ask the Grant Lady" please feel free to e-mail me at pkcooney82@gmail.com.
