Guide to writing successful grants and proposals

Guide to writing successful grants and proposals
Patricia Habeck
Tulare County, Maiposa
1-2

This was also a really good program! Patricia is a retired (I think adult literacy coordinator) who now professionally helps others write grants. It sounds likes she has written hundreds. Apparently she typically spends 8 hours teaching this program and had to boil it down to one hour.

We started with workshop exercise where we spoke to the folks in our row about their grant ideas so we could all conceptualize the important pieces of a grant (who, what, when, where, why, how).

We then went around the room and heard samples from some of the rows about grant ideas - how to "pitch" it to the "banker" who would want to fund the idea.

Much of what she covered has been in our grant training through the Staff Innovation Project. I did enjoy her presentation of the information - she is a "tell it like it is" "spitfire" type of a person. Ex. include - you have to get over feeling bad about being rejected - no point, work with partners on grants you can't qualify for yourself, fill out an mou with grant partners otherwise you become the "stuckee" providing all the services. Very amusing.

I did get a handout with many websites to check for grants - not sure how many are different from the info. we received in our workshop. Some fun ones she proposed seemed out of the box - USDA for literacy funding, rosie o'donnell, home depot for a ball field. She also said the USDA offers a "supernofa" where you can apply for 3 to 4 different grants (different departments) with one application.

She said she thought it took about 80 hours to write a federal grant. She said the most important tip for grant writing is working backwards -

- when is it due
- who needs to sign
- budget

I'll scan and put the grant handout info on the I drive when I get back!