The Grant Lady

Planning is Essential to a Successful Proposal

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.

Acronym Soup

Last week my cousin sent me a text message containing the following language:

"idk, lol ttfyn."

At 27 years old, I consider myself somewhat savvy and rather with the times.  I have to admit, I had no clue what on earth she was talking about.  Sadly, grant review can feel much like getting a text message from an 18 year old.

The other day I read a fairly well written proposal that, ufortuneately used more acronyms than even my cousin could come up with.  While acronyms are somewhat par for the course in my line of business, deciphering them becomes rather daunting.  What's worse, is that more often than not, the grant writer assumes the reviewer is familiar with the acronyms they've used.  While reviewers are familiar with acronyms and know a lot of them, we're not always at the top of our game when we're trying to meet a deadline and have a hundred proposals to read.

Sadly, more than half of the proposals I've read lately have created their own alphebet soup of acronyms, changing titles of agencies, program names, and even, postion titles.  The number one challenge for a reviewer is trying to remember what all of these aronyms mean while trying to figure out what the program is asking for and why they need the money.  While it is common place to have one or even two acronyms within your proposal, you should avoid using them as much as possible.  Changing "Smith County Community Corrections" to "Community Corrections," rather than "SCCC" can make all the difference in the world for a reviewer.

The inclusion of acronyms could not only be detrimental to your grant score but also to the overall understanding of your need.  I always suggest that grant writers and programs have their grant read by someone completely un-related to a program to ensure that the proposal is written clearly.  You should always assume that the reviewer is someone who is utterly unfamiliar with your program.

Is your agency acronym happy?  If so, how do you avoid using them when trying to write a proposal or any other sort formal document?