Careers in Grantwriting
 
with Paula Chambers, Celeste DiNucci, Joseph Legueri, Cara Seitchek, and Sherri Wilcauskas

April 10, 2006 - April 14, 2006

 

The following Guest Speaker Discussion originally took place on WRK4US in April 2006. Because WRK4US has a confidentiality policy, all names and email addresses have been altered or removed, except for the moderator’s and the Guest Speakers'.

The discussion can be read in two ways- by simply scrolling down and reading the whole thing, or by clicking on the topical links below, which take you to specific places within the discussion. The discussion can also be printed out in its entirety for your reading convenience.

• Introductions
• Starting a Career In Grantwriting
• Where can you find volunteer opportunities?
• Do you need to support an organization’s mission to write for them?
• The Relationship between Grant Writing and Program Planning
• Career Mobility
• How to get started on that first grant application
• How do freelancers earn money?
• Compensation in Non-Profit Organizations
• Job Title Uneasiness
• How does grant writing in an academic setting compare to professional grant writing?
• Honesty and Integrity
• Grant writing for Individuals
• Grantwriting Workshops: Are they useful?
• Institutional Learning Curve
• Information about working as a Freelance Grant Writer
• Relationship-Building as Part of Grant Writing
• Writer or Fundraiser?
• Researching Grants
• Success Rates
• Looking at an organization’s tax forms
• Final thoughts and closing remarks
  

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Introductions

Paula Chambers
Director of Development
Los Angeles Children’s Chorus

My professional life has been a long, circuitous and I am happy to say successful quest for the ideal career. I spent my twenties in the film business here in LA, graduating from Cal Arts film school in 1986 and working for 5 years as an Assistant Director of motion pictures and television. Card-carrying member of the Director's Guild and everything. I worked on a few well-known things ("Die Hard," "L.A. Law") and a whole lot of forgettable shlock--a typical showbiz career. Then in 1991, at 29, I left The Industry and went back to school with the intention of becoming an English teacher. Got my master's degree at Cal State Northridge in 1995, started teaching during that time, loved it, and went on for a PhD in Rhetoric and Composition, studying with Andrea Lunsford and the late Kitty Locker at Ohio State University. I finished my PhD in December of 2000. My dissertation was an ethnographic study of rhetoric in a mid-sized corporation where upper management had alienated the workers.

It was around the second year of my PhD program, in 1997, when I began to question whether The Academy was the best place for me. I loved the creativity and autonomy of teaching and found research fun and exciting, but was dispirited by the drudgery of grading stack after stack of papers for students who mostly did not appreciate the care that I took in doing so; the increasing triviality of my scholarship the more advanced I became in my subject area; the unacknowledged subjectivity in the ways "rigor" and "merit" are measured; and the basic boringness of big, entrenched institutions. I did finish the degree, thanks to a stubborn streak on my part and a lot of emotional and financial support from my family, and built some good relationships with my colleagues, but never went on the academic job market because I knew I wanted out.

Oh yeah--here's a detail that affects you personally. In 1999, while I was dissertating, I founded this little thing called WRK4US, precisely because I wanted to leave the academy and I suspected that others in my position across the country were probably pondering the same thing. (Right-o on that one!)

My first career choice after graduating was to be a communication consultant, essentially taking my "writing teacher" identity and exporting it from the academy into the business world. A reasonable notion, except I failed because my values were not corporate values, so I could never reach out to corporate clients and explain to them in their terms why they should hire me. Corporate values are driven by profit--but I don't care about profit at all. What motivates me, I discovered, is mission. Social change. Making the world a better place. I made that important discovery through a series of volunteer experiences I had in 2002, in which I used my research and writing skills to help several nonprofits. These volunteer experences helped me realize that the NON profit sector was where I belonged (duh!). From there, grant writing emerged pretty quickly as a good point of entry for a person with my skills and background.

I started writing grants in January 2003, when I got my first steady gig in the nonprofit sector (how funny--first The Industry, then The Academy, and now, The Sector). It was a volunteer position actually, two days a week in the Development department of an environmental nonprofit called TreePeople, but hard to get all the same. I did different types of writing and editing there, from research reports to grant applications to newsletter articles, and it was tremendously fun and satisfying. I felt like every day I was personally helping to save the local environment.

Six months later, needing to earn income, I applied for and got a full-time position as Foundation Grant Writer at MALDEF, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, which advances civil rights for Latinos in the United States. What an incredible learning experience that was! For all my liberal academic politics, did I know the first thing about Latino culture, Latino perspectives on current events, or the Latino presence in my country? Did I have any idea exactly what civil rights were or how activists go about really changing society? Hell no! I apparently did not know bupkis. But somehow they hired me and there I was, writing grants and reports about Latino civil rights all day, five days a week. The amount of new information that I had to absorb right away in order to do my job was just staggering. I hope to talk more about that in this discussion because I feel that continuous learning about new subjects is one of the major perks of being a grant writer.

Anyway, after a year at MALDEF, though I loved the mission, I felt a need for more variety in my workday, more decision-making authority, and a shorter commute, so I applied for and got my current position as Director of Development at a small music organization called the Los Angeles Children's Chorus. With 250 talented children singing in five ensembles, Los Angeles Children's Chorus is the premiere source of child singers for the Los Angeles Opera, Los Angeles Philharmonic, and Los Angeles Master Chorale. Quite a change from both TreePeople and MALDEF, but I love the position. As Director of Development in a small community-based organization, I rule over a staff of one point five (myself and a half-time assistant) in a seldom-vaccuumed eight-by-ten area where I am personally responsible for raising about half of our annual 1M budget. I do this through a combination of classic fundraising techniques like major gifts solicitation, special events, and grant writing. About 35% of my time is focused on grant writing and I continue to love it, so I still consider myself very much a grant writer.

I do not miss the academy one bit because this job is way more challenging and fun on a number of levels than academic life ever was. It is wildly intellectual, deeply rhetorical (important for a lover of rhetoric like me), delightfully fast-paced, and has a direct impact, however modest, on the world. As I said to my students in an informal grant writing class that I am currently teaching, "Grant writing is the intersection between rhetoric and reality." It is here where research and writing can really make a difference. That is why I love doing it and that is why I have scheduled this discussion. I feel that grant writing is one of the best nonacademic careers on earth for educated Humanities folk like us.

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Sherri Wilcauskas
Assistant Director of Grants
The Franklin Institute

Greetings, everyone, my name---as the “from” line proclaims--is Sherri Wilcauskas.

I’m a longtime reader of WRK4US, though quite an infrequent poster. I’ve found the information here quite useful to me at different moments in my own career development, so I very much appreciate the chance to serve as a guest speaker here.

1. WHERE I AM AND HOW I GOT HERE

I am currently working as the Assistant Director of Grants at the Franklin Institute Science Museum in Philadelphia. (You might have heard about us because we'll be hosting King Tut next year instead of the Metropolitan Museum in NYC.)

I have an A.B. in English and music from Mount Holyoke College, and I went straight from college into a Ph.D. program at UPenn, first in musicology, later transferring into the English department, and all the while presuming that I was going to become a college professor.

I can see, in retrospect, how my slide into grad school and my expectations of future professor-ness were influenced by my extreme naivete about a lot of things, including the actual life of a professor, the breadth of career paths available in the world, and my own temperament and work preferences.

Once receiving my M.A., I began working on my dissertation and fell into that black hole (familiar to some) of the ABD life. The job market was awful, but, more importantly, I was growing ever more sure that I didn’t want to be a college professor. At this point I began aggressively researching other career possibilities, using this listserv as one of my resources. I zeroed in on the non-profit sector (including academic administration) as the most viable arena for a career and began seeking opportunities.

I ended up falling into a part-time job as a Development Assistant at Partners for Sacred Places here in Philadelphia. Although I was working beneath my capabilities, and we all knew this, it was a great way to get some current non-profit experience on my resume and develop professional references. Within five months, I was beginning my first grant-writing job, at the National Adoption Center in Philly. From there, I moved to Widener University as their Grants Manager, and at the end of January 2006, I started at The Franklin Institute.

2. WHAT I DO

Although I know that the terminology “Grant Writer” is everywhere, I think a clearer sense of my daily professional activities are better suggested by my current title, because my job isn’t just about writing, nor is the writing I do entirely grant proposals. Among the hats I wear in my career are: writer, editor, researcher, storyteller, translator, and teacher. I am a nonprofit manager, a project manager, and a relationship manager. I’m happy to unpack the ways these many roles intersect in my day-to-day professional life as the discussion unfolds.

3. JOYS AND CHALLENGES; GRANTSMANSHIP AND ACADEMIA

What do I like about my work? What are the challenges? What do or don’t I miss from academia? These are all worthy topics, but aside from painting a few broad strokes, I think such reflections will be more productive if prompted by your specific questions and concerns.

Broadly: I enjoy my work for its variety, its mixture of concreteness and abstraction, and I very much appreciate having a job that (in large part) I can leave behind at the end of the workday. The people and personalities can be challenging, and when the job ad says “must be able to handle multiple projects in a high-pressure environment,” believe it!

I hope this gives everyone enough of a springboard to prompt questions, and I look forward to participating as this discussion unfolds!!

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Cara Seitchek
Foundations Relation Officer
Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars

Hi everyone!

My name is Cara and I’ve been a grant proposal writer in some form for about 12 years. Currently, I’m the foundations relation officer for the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (so I work with academics daily) and freelance writing grant proposals for some non-profit organizations. I also teach a class on how to write a grant proposal – an in-person version at the Writers Center in Maryland and an online version for UCLA.

I got into grant proposal writing when I was working on my second M.A. I took a course on fund raising and wrote a sample proposal for the class. My teacher suggested that I start freelancing as a way to build my resume and for some extra money. My first proposals were pro bono for a small museum where I volunteered, and then once I had a few samples for my portfolio, I started contacting area non-profits and soon had several clients. And having that experience then helped me be offered full-time jobs in development, where I specialized in foundation and corporate relations.

My original intent had been to have a career where I could use my history degree (my first M.A.), and I knew that having development skills would be useful no matter what type of job I found. So I volunteered with a number of non-profits – answering phones at the public radio station during their fund drive, checking in guests at galas, making calls for my alma mater for annual fund donations – while I worked on my second M.A. And then, since I collect degrees, I went back for a third M.A. in writing. My academic career has encompassed a wide variety of universities and some degrees have been full-time and others, part-time. I guess I feel that I’ve never fully left academic life as I keep going back for another degree; I teach the occasional class and since I work with people in academia, it’s a bit like being on campus.

A typical work day is spending part of the day researching potential funders for the variety of programs here at the Center (with topics ranging from Asia to water issues to global health) and the rest of the day is a mixture of writing and editing proposals, as well as thank you letters, articles for the newsletter or annual report, or specialized solicitation letters. What I like about my job is that I use the skills I enjoyed most as a student – researching and writing. What I don’t like is that I wish I could pick the topics because sometimes the topic seems so obscure or it’s a topic that just doesn’t interest me personally.

Feel free to ask questions!

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Joseph Legueri
Freelance Grantwriter/Grant Mentor

I am a Freelance Grantwriter; I also work as a Grant mentor. I have a home office located in Northern Minnesota deep in a forest of 60' tall Norway Pines. My wife and I raised our family here, and now that both children are educated, married and gone, we enjoy the forest by hiking, snowshoeing, and cross country skiing. Many of my clients claim that they initially hired me because I live too far north to be perfidious. The phenomenon that they sensed intuitively we refer to as "Minnesota Nice."

I have always had a love of words. Because of this, I pursued and earned my bachelor's degree in English at the University of Minnesota, Duluth. A few years later, I earned master's degrees in both English and Education at Bemidji State University, Bemidji, Minnesota. I was lucky enough to be hired for a job teaching College Writing and Advanced Placement English (Language and Composition) at a traditional high school here in Northern Minnesota.

One evening in 1985, several flannel-shirted members of our rural volunteer fire department made a stop at my home. They explained that they needed certain equipment for the department. They heard that grants were available for this equipment. None of these brave firefighters wanted to apply because, as they said, they couldn't use English properly and they were intimidated by educated people. I told them I'd be happy to check into this matter. I was successful at securing all the grants they needed, and that started my grantwriting career. Those men spread the word, and soon I was a full-time teacher and part-time freelance grantwriter serving many local clients. I kept my teaching job until the grantwriting started to provide a living.

A freelance grantwriter is an independent contractor who earns his pay by securing grants for tax exempt nonprofit organizations like humane societies, community organizations, and many others. About two years ago, I analyzed my credentials and decided to restructure my business. I became a Grant mentor. A Grant Mentor is a successful, experienced grantwriter who works with nonprofit boards and teaches them by example how to analyze their needs, determine which needs are fundable, and then seek grants. Once the board is prepared to do its own grantseeking, the Grant Mentor can move to the next client on the list. So that you understand the possibilities that this job offers, in 2004 there were 1,392,689 nonprofit organizations in the United States. Most of them need help securing grants because they don't understand the grantseeking process.

I have a website at grantsalert.com. That website and the kind words of satisfied clients provide me with a steady influx of new clients. There are no typical workdays for me; however, on most days I spend the first three hours communicating with my present and prospective clients. Prospective clients must be interviewed carefully and screened thoroughly. Present clients must be shown the intricacies of the grantseeking process which is also known as the grant cycle. I spend the rest of the day on research and grantwriting activities.

I miss certain aspects of the academic life, especially the interaction with my students and fellow faculty members. The security of a regular paycheck was nice also. However, I found that security is insidious. It can minimize a person. It can take away a person's initiative, and like Macbeth, one can become "cabined, cribbed, confined, bound in to saucy doubts and fears." Security can become "mortals chiefest enemy." I feel happier now that my brain can soar unencumbered by the dictates of the school bells.

If you think that you might enjoy the challenge of making a living by your own wits, don't hesitate to ask me for more information.

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Celeste DiNucci
Grant Writer
American Philosophical Society

Hello, WK4US subscribers. My name is Celeste DiNucci, and I am (probably unlike the other speakers) currently a grad student, finishing a Ph.D. in English at the University of Pennsylvania, while I work as a grant writer part-time.

Having always been a “late starter,” I didn’t go to graduate school immediately after I earned my college degree. I was 26 by the time I got my B.A. in Liberal Studies (from a college that had no departments and no majors), and I spent nearly a decade after that trying on some financial stability. I became a technical editor and writer at first, working in environmental consulting, eventually for a “beltway bandit” (translation: a consulting firm in the greater Washington, DC, area whose revenues come primarily from contracting with government agencies) in Alexandria, VA, with several contracts with the EPA. My services were most often used there in managing large proposals to the EPA or other government agencies (with budgets in the neighborhood of tens to hundreds of millions of dollars), though I did little “wordsmithing” on those projects, acting more as a project manager. I learned a lot about writing, editing, publications, and general management, but I eventually faced up to what I knew all along--that I would be getting a graduate degree. So I entered a graduate program in English at Northwestern University, studying Shakespeare and performance theory. A rash of faculty defections left me without a committee there, so I transferred to Penn, losing a year of coursework in the process.

At Penn, the peculiarities of transferring into the program’s second (rather than first) year, combined with an incompatibility between my research interests and those of the faculty, made for rough going. Midway through my second year at Penn, I opted to take a leave from the program. I was suddenly faced with the necessity of earning a living, and I made a contact through a friend with the Development Director of a social service non-profit here in Philadelphia, the National Adoption Center. They were in sudden need of a grantwriter, and I was in sudden need of a job, so I stepped into the somewhat new arena of writing grant proposals to foundations.

I found the job felt like familiar enough territory. I used my general writing skills, obviously, for drafting proposals, but I also had to use my research skills to find prospective donors and dig into their particular agendas. My management skills came in handy in creating systems for cultivating prospects, keeping track of required reports, and establishing and tracking fundraising goals. Most important, however, I felt that my experience as a teacher (not so different from my experience as an editor, btw) helped in interpreting program content to funders, and likewise interpreting foundation interests and requirements to the personnel responsible for creating and running the programs.

I left that job after a year or so to take another job in development for a performing arts organization that promoted “arts for social change”-using classes in performance (mostly dance, but also some theater and music) as a basis for creating a community center in one of the most economically deprived neighborhoods in Philadelphia. Unfortunately, I had to leave that job sooner than planned in order to return to Penn to finish program requirements.

At Penn, after I had finished my comps and begun to write my dissertation, the financial support for graduate students underwent some drastic changes, and the results were that, especially for those of us “caught in the middle” between funding packages, there were no guarantees for funding, requirements were changing at the drop of a hat, decisions were capricious, and there was no room for appeal. After dealing with these vagaries for a year, and seeing no hope that the situation would improve in the future, I decided to forego funding from the university and support myself otherwise (and pay my own tuition). While looking for work to tide me over for the summer, I happened upon the American Philosophical Society here in Philadelphia, where I was initially hired to do some research on prospects for their Capital Campaign.

At the end of the summer, the Director of Development wanted to keep me on, and after reading some of my writing samples, she offered me a job as a grant writer. She was hoping for me to come on full-time, but I was able to negotiate a schedule of three days a week, which leaves me an extra two days for working on my dissertation.

I have now been at the APS for about two and a half years. For those of you not familiar with the organization, the APS was founded by Benjamin Franklin back in 1743 and it continues to be one of the most prestigious learned societies (and the oldest) in North America. Members are elected on the basis of outstanding achievement in (nearly) all fields-humanities, social, life, and physical sciences, medicine, and “the arts and professions.” We have about 900 members (about 150 of them outside the U.S.), and about 100 of them are Nobel laureates. The members are invited twice a year to come to Philadelphia for the APS Meetings-like an academic conference, in that papers are given, questions are asked and answered, and conversations continue during meals and receptions, but the topics addressed range across all fields. Other than the Meetings, the Society has a world-famous research library, a program of grants and fellowships, a publications program, and a museum. (You can see the range of the Society’s programs, members, and holdings, as well as programs of recent and upcoming Meetings, at www.amphilsoc.org ).

A typical day for me might be meeting with the Librarian to talk about the needs of the history of science collections, or meeting with the Curator to talk about plans for an upcoming exhibition on Darwin or the educational programs associated with the current exhibition on Princess Ekaterina Dashkova of Russia (our first female member, nominated by Franklin himself in 1787). I meet with the Society’s CFO to talk about ways of reporting our budgets to prospective funders or the controller to talk about tracking grant monies spent or how we are going to secure needed matching funds. I write follow-up letters to funders, informing them of how programs are going. I research new prospects and talk with program officers at foundations to see how the Society’s programs might fit into their philanthropic mission. And, of course, I write proposals, with an eye to making the case to funders that a particular APS program is effective, innovative, and is a good match for their funding priorities.

The job has all of the drawbacks of working in an office, on a fairly rigid schedule, and having a “boss.” But as a grant writer and a scholar, I am fortunate to be able to work with other scholars and to write about scholarly programs and resources. I get to write proposals that other scholars will read-to the NEH, for example, or to the Pew Charitable Trusts. I am also fortunate to work for an organization that values my efforts to finish my dissertation-they have actually given me the use of a second office, other than the one in the Development Department, to use as my dissertation office. I also have the perqs of rubbing elbows with some of the intellectual giants of my age (and the previous one): I have met Benoit Mandelbrot in the buffet line, received correspondence from Claude Levi-Strauss, and had cheerful banter over dinner with the first man to perform a liver transplant or the General Counsel to the State Department. Clearly, my credentials as a humanities scholar played an equal role with my experience as a professional writer in landing me here.

Looking forward to your questions.

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Topic: Starting a Career in Grant Writing

A.B. asks about getting started in grant writing:

Paula, I enjoyed reading your pro bio--it's always encouraging to learn of others' "fits and starts" careerwise. I wish I had the courage you did to go ahead and make the change.

I've thought about grantwriting for years, but haven't been able to get into it for reasons that are at the heart of the questions I'd like to ask.

1.) Experience: I READ lots of postings that seek grantwriters or identify grantwriting as the primary job duty, but they all want a degree of experience I don't have and don't see how I can get. I've been involved in writing to obtain (and obtaining) one grant and participated in fulfilling a second grant.

So, a.) Is it possible to present those experiences positively in seeking a position, and b.) If you can't work for free, like you did, how do you get enough experience to land a paying position?

2.) Skills: I think I'm a great writer and researcher, and like you, I enjoy digging around learning new things--and have done all of the above quite a lot in 16 years of teaching and also in the business I have that is not associated with teaching, but I remain unsure of how to present such traits in the context of grantwriting.

I guess what I'd like to learn from this discussion is how those who hire/work with grantwriters THINK when it comes to the experience and skills and other qualities they seek in a relative "newbie" grantwriter.

Thanks for organizing this opportunity. I'm looking forward to hearing responses.

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Response from Paula:

Thanks for those questions--I hope the other speakers will respond as well. Here are my two cents.

1.) Experience: I READ lots of postings that seek grantwriters or identify grantwriting as the primary job duty, but they all want a degree of experience I don't have and don't see how I can get. I've been involved in writing to obtain (and obtaining) one grant and participated in fulfilling a second grant.

Great! You're nosing onto the onramp! Now you need to get some more volunteer grant writing experience under your belt in order to accelerate onto the freeway.

So, a.) Is it possible to present those experiences positively in seeking a position?

You bet. How are those experiences anything BUT positive? Be sure to watch for the results of those grants--if they actually get funded (or have already been funded), then you can immediately say "wrote two proposals which were funded." That right there is a good start. You'd be surprised what just a couple of proposals can do for your hirability (see my story below).

b.) If you can't work for free, like you did, how do you get enough experience to land a paying position?

Are you absolutely sure you can't work for free even a little bit? Let's say you set aside some of your personal time to write grants on a volunteer basis, like on weekends or evenings, and commit to this practice for a few months. At the end of that time, you may have five or six more grants under your belt and you will know the results of maybe three of them. That's enough to calculate your success rate, or at least to say "three of my proposals were funded." That, in turn, may be enough for a nonprofit to hire you, with a little bit of luck (again, see below).

2.) Skills: I think I'm a great writer and researcher, and like you, I enjoy digging around learning new things--and have done all of the above quite a lot in 16 years of teaching and also in the business I have that is not associated with teaching, but I remain unsure of how to present such traits in the context of grantwriting.

Everything you just said would be absolutely fine to say in an interview. Enjoyment of learning and research is definitley a positive trait in a grant writer so those statements require very little "spin" to make them appropriate in the context of grant writing.

I guess what I'd like to learn from this discussion is how those who hire/work with grantwriters THINK when it comes to the experience and skills and other qualities they seek in a relative "newbie" grantwriter.

My answer to this is, it depends on the type of organization. For example, there are big organizations and there are small organizations. There are older established ones, and newer ones that are struggling to get their act together with respect to fundraising. There are organizations that depend heavily on government grants and others which pursue only foundation and corporate grants. All of these factors will influence how they think and how they will view you as an applicant. The larger, older, more established ones may require more of a track record before they hire you--but on the other hand, MALDEF hired me, so there goes that theory. But I did have a small track record even then--my six months of part-time volunteering at TreePeople allowed me to add the following section to my resume:

Development Intern, TreePeople, January 2003-present
(Nonprofit dedicated to healing the natural environment of Los Angeles)
· Grantwriting: Wrote three grant proposals totaling $30,000 and four award applications totaling $190,000; results pending.
· Grant & Award Research: Investigated grants and awards TreePeople might be eligible for; created master list of awards & developed tracking system to track application status.
· Writing & Editing: Wrote 25 documents for internal and external audiences, including newsletter articles, program documents, research and progress reports, strategic plans, and PowerPoint presentations.
· Database Mining: Used DonorPerfect and the internet to identify donors who also support certain elected officials.
· Event Planning: Supported senior management in planning donor cultivation and fundraising events; conceived & proposed a new event.

Pardon the funky formatting (it may not have translated well to email) but you get the point. Even though this looks quite modest to me today, and I had to say "results pending," it still shows that I had written SOME proposals. It also shows that I gained experience with a range of Development activities, including the identification of grant and award prospects and the all-important tracking system that was way more important than I realized at the time. That, combined with other things, was enough to get me hired.

Now here's how luck played a role in my getting hired at MALDEF. (And when does it not?) The guy interviewing me (my future boss) happened to have a bias in favor of highly educated people because he was ABD himself, in Education, and one of his big regrets in life was not finishing. So I immediately looked good to him in that regard (a welcome reversal of the usual anti-PhD bias). He also liked my assertive, outgoing personality--another stroke of luck because not everyone does. And finally, other things on my resume (namely WRK4US) showed that I was savvy about online communication, which he viewed as a bonus. Turns out it had nothing to do with the job, but what EVER, the dude hired me, and voila, my career took off. It happened to me, so it could happen to you.

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Response from Sherri:

You can certainly present your experiences to-date as relevant for grants jobs. I didn't mention it in my intro, but the first ever grant proposals I wrote were to support a choir that I served as a singer and a board member. Those first couple proposals gave me a basis to sell myself as a beginning grants professional.

So, like Paula, I'd encourage you to think creatively about identifying volunteer opportunities for yourself. Are there any groups in which you participate, or groups you already support? Non-profits are generally eager for volunteer help, and extra-eager for any fund-raising support they can get. Perhaps explore those avenues for getting extra experience before "quitting your day job."

I would also second what Paula had to say about the possible flexibility of job requirements. Although Paula's experience with MALDEF is a happy exception, my own experience with the big established orgs does suggest that they'll be more sticklers in looking for a proven track record, at least for a job at my level. OTOH, I currently supervise a Grant Writing Coordinator---her background is in communications and marketing, and part of my job is teaching her to apply her skills in this new (to her) context of fund-raising.

My first full-time employer, NAC, was not so inflexible about a track record. In part, I was lucky: my predecessor there was an ABD from my very own graduate program, so her skill and good work had taught the management about the transferability on my skills into this job. Additionally, I did have that direct experience from the choir, however limited it may have been.

When I was making the transition, I emphasized a few elements of my writing and researching skills to help sell myself as a job candidate.

One, I emphasized an odd detail from when I was teaching writing seminars: I never held a piece of student writing for longer than a week. Looking back, I can't remember why I set myself that goal, but I did. So, I used that to talk about my comfort with deadline pressure, and my ability to consistently meet deadlines.

Two, I talked about the variety of writing I had done, particularly anything for a non-specialist audience and/or done in response to a set of instructions. Conference papers, fellowship applications, anything to show my ability to interpret and obey funding guidelines and explain concepts (and, by implication, your NPOs programs) to a variety of audiences.

Three, I used my informational interviews and the Regional Foundation Center at the Philly Free Library to learn the barest basics of grant researching tools. So not only was I making a general claim ("I'm good at research, so I'll be good at grants research"), I was able to back it up ("I'm good at research and I've used those skills to learn about grants research tools.")

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Response from Cara:

When I teach grant proposal writing classes, I always recommend that my students find a real organization to write a sample proposal for as their class assignment. Some already have an organization or project in mind, but others have managed to locate a non-profit to write for by asking their local school or religious organization - some have approached the local chapter of an organization like the American Red Cross. Several of my students have used the one proposal they wrote for my class (and pro bono for the non-profit) to find both full and part-time proposal writing jobs.

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Topic: Where can you find volunteer opportunities?

A.B. posts a query about finding opportunities:

OK, next question: Guidestar used to have lists of volunteering opportunities (I think you are right--surely I can work something out), but I can't find them anymore. Do you have any useful links?

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Response from Sherri:

Idealist.org still maintains a database of volunteer opportunities, though I have no first-hand knowledge about ease of use or quality of information.

Most orgs, especially smaller community-based ones, can be approached directly about volunteering---which is what I would recommend. Volunteer opportunities are even more prone to the "hidden job market" syndrome than paid positions.

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Suggestion from list member W. M.

I just started doing volunteer work as a grant writer (to get onto the onramp, as Paula puts it). I used Volunteermatch.org and found many opportunities for grant writing listed in my city. Different organizations have different time requirements for volunteering (some as little as 10 hours per month, which seems doable even with a busy schedule).

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Response from Paula:

Rather than look to the internet to find these opportunities, I recommend locating four or five nonprofits near your home, learning about them from their websites, and approaching the ones you like best. There are several ways to approach them, including what I did, which was in-person visits, but not everyone is cut out for that. Writing a letter is a perfectly good approach as well. Write to both the Development Director and the Executive Director (you can find out who these people are by poking around on their website and also by simply calling the main number and asking). Make the letter one page, no more. Give them a brief summary of your current grant writing experience, state your objective to pick up more experience by volunteering, and tell them how much you love their mission and want to work for their particular cause. Tell them you will work from home or in the office, whichever they prefer (I recommend working in th! e office if they let you). Make clear that you expect no payment, not even if the grants are funded, and will work with their Development staff (if any) to make sure your efforts are coordinated with theirs.
I bet you will get some invitations, especially from the smaller organizations which tend to be more desperate for grant writing services.

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Response from Joe:

I have another angle regarding your message about writing the grant proposal.

In my work as a freelance grantwriter, I have found that the key to success is the letter of inquiry. (Without a good letter of inquiry, one will never get to the grant proposal.) Many grantmakers still want to be contacted first either by e-mail or postal mail. That initial contact is called the letter of inquiry (LOI).

If a grantwriter decides to work with a nonprofit, and if the grantwriter determines that the nonprofit's needs are fundable, then that grantwriter must do intensive and creative research to find foundations or other grantmakers which have missions that are compatible with the nonprofit's needs. (Don't waste a lot of time doing internet searches. Get into the reference section of a good library. Your brain is a far better computer than the one in front of you right now. Believe me or forever remain mundane.)

After the grantwriter has a list of compatible grantmakers, a one-page letter of inquiry must be constructed (Will you forgive the use of the passive voice just this once?). Foundations have many worthy organizations to fund. The letter of inquiry must stand out in the crowd. If the syntax is bad in the LOI; if the paper smells like cigarette smoke; if the letter has many distracting errors; or if the writer has not considered the weight of his words, the LOI will be rejected. And rightfully so. Foundations are careful with their money, and foundation directors and boards are not fools. They want to help nonprofits which appear to be reliable. They seem to shun the LOI that is doggerel; they seem to shun the LOI in which the grantwriter intellectualizes the text.

Grant proposals are important also, but they become necessary a bit further along the grant cycle.

In my business, I need to be able to entice the grantmaker to ask us to apply for a grant. If I can do that, we have a good chance of obtaining a grant-------that is, if the grantwriter can then write a good grant proposal.

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Response from Celeste:

I am endorsing Sherri's response here, not because it needs another "vote," but mostly because we're trying to iron out a kink or two in my ability to post to the listserv, and this will serve as a test. I will add that directing your energies toward an organization that genuinely interests you can afford a couple of advantages: first, it's always easier to write glowingly about a program that you personally endorse; and second, if you in working for a particular kind of organization or "sector," even volunteer work can get you familiar with the particular funding environment in that field, which is always a huge plus. You'll begin to know local and national funders whose interests make them good candidates for proposals, and you'll begin to cultivate relationships with grant program officers.

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Topic: Do you need to support an organization’s mission to write for them?

Paula’s comments on the relationship between a grant writer and an organization’s mission:

I have to play devil's advocate for just a moment regarding Celeste's perfectly reasonable statement that it is always easier to write glowingly about a program that you personally endorse. Of course that is basically true on several levels. However, when the cause is very VERY close to your heart, it can actually make you a LESS effective writer. You already "buy in" to the program so thoroughly that you may miss some possible objections on the part of the reader, you may be tempted to bypass factual research because it's just so obvious that this program is needed, and you may be less able to flush out biases and assumptions between the lines of your argument.
Maybe this is just because I'm a die-hard rhetoric person, but I think it is fun to construct arguments, and that craft can be practiced in some ways better--more dispassionately, unsentimentally, with a a greater emphasis on researched facts--when you are not deeply, personally invested in the cause or program.
That said, of course I would never write a grant for something I thought would be actually bad for the world. You do have to be basically in favor!

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Response from Celeste:

Paula is absolutely right--the ability to write grant proposals for an organization is not at all predicated on your own investment in that organization's mission. But familiarity helps, as I've mentioned--not only with one's ability to translate field-specific concerns into convincing arguments, but also with knowing the "funding landscape." I wouldn't say that my current employer is an "ideal" employer for me--I'm actually much more interested in the arts, especially performing arts, and in fact spend many volunteer hours supporting those kinds of efforts. (The irony about the APS, for me, is that the one field that they don't seem to recognize is performance: no actors or directors, of either stage or screen.) But doing the kind of proposals I do for the APS keeps me speaking a certain kind of discourse--an academic discourse, specifically, and I know what I'm doing in that arena. I know the terms to use ("investigate," "interrogate," "archaeology of knowledge," etc.) and I know how to speak with the scholars that I work with. (Paula, as a rhetoric person, you certainly know what I mean here!)

But it also helps to know the funding landscape. I recognize names that I'm familiar with from a long association with academia, and I can follow up on those leads for possible funding opportunities. I can go to various venues--academic libraries, or museums--and recognize those who support their collecting or preservation activities. I know that the Sloan Foundation is a prospect, and the Annie E. Casey Foundation is not.

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Topic: The Relationship between Grant Writing and Program Planning

Comment from Paula about the many roles a grant writer can take on in an organization:

Sherri, I was fascinated to read the following:

“Among the hats I wear in my career are: writer, editor, researcher, storyteller, translator, and teacher. I am a nonprofit manager, a project manager, and a relationship manager.”

It's so true--that is an excellent summary of the spectrum of activities that occupy many grant writers. Can you say a little bit more about your "translator" and "teacher" roles?

I would add that grant writers sometimes also serve as program developers, because their unique perspective as the people who have to make it make sense on paper gives them a real voice, or should give them a voice, in the program planning process. I am one of those pushier grant writers, not easily cowed by the predictable resistance from program staff. The more experiences I have in this field, the more I feel my point of view has real value and is worth sticking my neck out for, even when others would prefer that I just "stick to writing" and leave all program design issues to them.

For the truly uninitiated, let me unpack some basic concepts in that paragraph that were not at all obvious to me three years ago when I started. A "program" in this context is an organized effort on the part of a nonprofit to deliver some service or solve some problem in society. One nonprofit may have several programs, many programs, or just one or two programs, depending on its size. Each program has a budget that includes staff time, overhead, and direct costs associated with that program. Very often one staff person will work on several programs, so maybe 10% or his or her will be assigned to this one, 20% to that one, 5% to this other one, etc. So a typical program budget will look like 5% of Person A, 15% or Person B, and 25% of person C, plus overhead and direct costs.

Anyway--Most grants are made to support particular programs. Let's say you're wealthy and you have set up a foundation to distribute some of your wealth to charitable causes that you support. If you're like most people, you would prefer to support a specific project or program rather than give general operating funds to an organization for them to use however they want. (There are exceptions to this.) Naturally you would want to feel good about the program. You would want to feel that it is effective in addressing the problem; that it uses resources efficiently; that it is run by capable people; and that it sets reasonable goals as opposed to promising things it cannot deliver.

That, my friend, is program development. It's easy to throw some effort at solving a problem. It's much harder to craft a program that really makes sense, on every level, including the "proven results" level where you have to actually show the impact your program had on the world.

In most organizations, the program staff are officially in charge of developing programs. However, they often do not have the grant writer's sense of what looks good and makes sense on paper. They don't see how anyone could possibly question the merit of their program--how anyone could not see its effectiveness--etc. People have their egos wrapped up in these things. I would too, in their position. But as the grant writer, it often falls to you to construct the arguments that support the program and that "sell" the grantmaker on supporting it.

So, very often I find myself in a dialogic relationship with program staff, discussing next year's programs and trying to mold them just a little bit to make them as fundable as possible. I guess that makes me a bit of a pain in the ass. Oh well. I do what is necessary to help my organization!

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Response from Sherri:

“It's so true--that is an excellent summary of the spectrum of activities that occupy many grant writers. Can you say a little bit more about your "translator" and "teacher" roles? “

Sure!

First, translation. The primary metaphor I use to understand what I do as a grant writer/manager is to tell the story(ies) of my org's programs and the good they accomplish---and to tell the story in a way that the funding agency can understand. In a way, ultimately, that encourages the agency to support our programs with a grant.

Most often, the internal program officers I work with are accustomed to using the language of their specialty---whether it's an academic specialty (at Widener), a professional speciality (NAC), or a mixture of both (Franklin Institute). However, the funding officers, particularly at foundations or corporate foundations, are not likely to have the same insider knowledge or the familiarity with a field's jargon.

I tell my program staff to think of their proposal reader as an "intelligent generalist"--you don't talk down to that reader, but you need to minimize specialized language, and define key terms. I bring my own generalist's eyes to a program concept/draft proposal and help my project team describe their project with clarity and without jargon.

On the other hand, some funding agencies have jargon of their own---this is especially true of the more directive foundations and of government agencies. In those cases, I must also interpret and translate the proposal guidelines so that my program folks know what information is required of a proposal.

Next: teaching. The grant-seeking process can be an intimidating and a mysterious one, and I've worked with any number of faculty and program folks who are new to grant-seeking. In those cases, I am as much teaching the process and the skills of grant-writing as I am managing the construction of one specific proposal.

I also do teach grant-writing in different forums: I did workshops as part of Widener's Lifelong Learnign program, I've led round tables on grant-seeking for AFP (Association of Fundraising Professionals), and this summer I'll be teaching an MSW seminar in program design & evaluation and proposal writing.

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Response from Joe:

I would like to respond to your missive about grantwriters sometimes serving as program developers.

As you know, I have been making a living as a freelance grantwriter for over 20 years. During those 20 years, I have never put myself into the position of program developer for any of my nonprofit clients.

My prospective clients contact me because their organizations have needs. After they contact me, but before I begin work for them, I ask them to fill out a detailed questionnaire which helps me understand their organization and their programs. This questionnaire is designed to cull out those organizations which don't have viable or fundable programs. In many cases, the organizations can't answer the questions or they don't have the documentation necessary to continue the relationship.

If they can complete the questionnaire, I can tell by the answers which of their programs and needs are fundable. If I decide that the programs aren't fundable, I advise the organization that they need either to restructure their programs or to look for another grantwriter. I can't afford to waste time with programs that are not fundable; and, I can't afford to spend time advising organizations how to restructure their programs.

I only earn money if I obtain grants for the organization.

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Response from Paula:

"As you know, I have been making a living as a freelance grantwriter for over 20 years. During those 20 years, I have never put myself into the position of program developer for any of my nonprofit clients. "

Of course not--you're freelance! As a freelancer, it is totally none of your business how your clients construct their programs. However, as a full-time employee, and especially as Director of Development who bears executive-level responsibility for all fundraising efforts, I feel it is TOTALLY my business to do everything I can to help the organization fulfill its mission more effectively and raise as much money as possible. When a few tweaks or adjustments can make a program more fundable, you bet I am going to advocate for those changes.

And I agree with Celeste on this one--program development is one of the most fun and satisfying parts of the job. Challenging, too. But I love a challenge.

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Topic: Career Mobility

Comment from Paula on the career mobility that is possible for grant writers:

Celeste, you are so lucky to have wound up in an organization that is sort of academic in its orientation! For a person who loves academia, that would be a great place to be.

Again for the uninitiated, there are many different types of nonprofits one could work for. Here's a basic list with some super-oversimplified definitions:

Education (e.g. schools and universities)
Religion (e.g. churches)
Health (e.g. hospitals, disease research groups like AmFAR)
Social Service (feeding the hungry, housing the homeless--providing services to needy individuals)
Social Justice (changing the way the world works)
Arts (e.g. theaters, symphonies, etc)
Environment (e.g. advocacy, policy work, or hands-on environmental repair)
Professional Associations (e.g. MLA, Celeste's group)

Did I forget anything? Probably--it's late--but I want people to get a basic idea that the nonprofit sector is itself divided into sectors. One person might feel happiest writing grants in a professional association (like Celeste)--another person might prefer to work for social justice, or the arts, or the environment, or something else. There is a place, or multiple places, for everyone in this field.

Note--do not try to decide right now which sub-sector is right for you. I did that three years ago and I was dead wrong. I thought the environment was the ONLY cause I could work for. Then I took the job at MALDEF and discovered that there are a LOT of causes I can personally support, some of which I don't even know about yet. I like having the flexibility to change jobs when appropriate without being chained to one particular mission or social movement. That is the beauty of being in Development as opposed to being program staff. Program staff do what they do, have specific training for that, and have far fewer choices where mobility is concerned. The tree-planting guys at TreePeople are mostly still there because no other organization in LA allows them to do that work. The civil rights activists at MALDEF are still there, or maybe in city government now that we have a Latino mayor, because they can pretty much only work in the civil rights field.

WE, however, as grant writers, have enormous mobility, as the speakers' careers have testified. We can save the environment for a few years, then help some professional community move forward through a professional organization, then try our hand at the arts, all within less than a decade. I think that is really neat and am surprised by how broad my interests have become as a result of choosing this profession.

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Response from Joe:

I enjoyed reading your message about the career mobility which grantwriters enjoy.

In my 20 year career as a freelance grantwriter, I have remained a grantwriter; therefore it would seem as if I've had limited career mobility. But I have worked for many different kinds of nonprofit organizations from humane societies to community orchestras and beyond. There are nearly a million and a half nonprofits in the United States and many of them have their own unique programs. Most of them have pressing financial needs. Most of them need a competent grantwriter.

My style of "mobility" has provided the creative surge I get from trying to extract foundation money for a struggling nonprofit which really provides a service to society. Right now, I'm working with a newly formed nonprofit which provides African immigrants an introduction to the American society (in Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota).

That project takes up only a part of my day. So I am mobile in the sense that in a few hours I'll move on to another project that interests me. Sounds almost hedonistic, doesn't it?

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Response from Paula:

Joe said:

"So I am mobile in the sense that in a few hours I'll move on to another project that interests me. Sounds almost hedonistic, doesn't it?"

Exactly!! I love the variety! For me, as a full-time employee rather than a freelancer, I change every few years rather than every few hours, but still, I love that about this career. Tired of arts? Try social justice. Et cetera.

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Response from Sherri:

Joe wrote:
"So I am mobile in the sense that in a few hours I'll move on to another project that interests me. Sounds almost hedonistic, doesn't it?"

And Paula replied:
Exactly!! I love the variety! For me, as a full-time employee rather than a freelancer, I change every few years rather than every few hours, but still, I love that about this career. Tired of arts? Try social justice. Et cetera.

I'll add my own amen to this notion. In my introduction, I mentioned enjoying the variety of my work, and the intellectual and career mobility described above capture my own enjoyment at the range of projects with which I work.

One of the things that prompted my to look for a non-academic career is my complete UNsuitedness for the kind of specialized research I would need to do as a professor. Even setting aside the variety of orgs that could employ me as a fund-raiser, the variety of work I do here at TFI keeps me interested and engaged. Today is a Body Worlds breakfast, final editing on our donor newsletter, and a final report on our aviation exhibit. Tomorrow is a foundation meeting to discuss our place in Philly cultural landscape and preliminary drafts of cultivation plans for two foundations (one interested in our educational outreach and one a potential match for an upcoming exhibit). And that list of "tentpole tasks" doesn't capture the array of smaller tasks and events that creates a full and fulfilling workday.

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Topic: How to get started on that first grant application

A.B. asks about the first steps one takes when writing a grant:

I've been following advice from this discussion and have introduced myself and my goals to a non-profit. Their rep responded with considerable welcome and has asked me what I need to have to get started. Right off the top of my head, I said I'd need to have their vision and mission statements; a summary of their clients, staff and volunteers; a description of their physical plant/facilities; their organizational chart; past, current and projected budgets, if available (they aren't on guidestar); plus their short- and long-term goals.

That was just one great big guess. Hence my next question: what next? I'm not asking for how to interact with them, but rather whether someone has a good resource for developing a fairly comprehensive "getting to know you" kind of file (or "profile") on an NPO which could enable you to start researching grant possibilities.

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Response from Joe:

I can respond to your query about getting to know a prospective client. I have been a freelance grantwriter for over 20 years, so the response will come from that perspective.

I have a three page "Getting Acquainted" package that I send to all my prospective clients. From their answers to my questions, I can tell whether or not their needs are fundable. I can also tell whether or not I would be intrigued (and therefore motivated) by their missions.

This package has worked well for me for many years. I would be willing to share. This package should at least give you an idea of what you should know about prospective clients. Of course, you'll have to refine the package to fit your needs. A grantwriter must not jump into a relationship until it is clear what that relationship involves.

Finally, I noticed that you mentioned "long-distance grantwriting." Please be aware that many states require that you sign up with the attorney general before you can work as a grantwriter in that state. Minnesota requires a $200 annual fee from a grantwriter, along with a review of each grant one seeks. That law was enacted because of the unscrupulous, cloak-and-dagger grantwriters who ply their trade from smoky, dingy offices over backstreet bars. They dirty our noble profession and arouse the wrath of lawmakers. Then we must pay.

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Response from Paula:

Congratulations A.B.! You're off!

If they have a comprehensive list of all proposals that have been submitted and the results of each, that would be very helpful for you to have, but they probably aren't that organized. It may be worth your time to spend a few hours pawing through their files to get a sense of their grant history (if you can make it to their office). You want to know which foundations have they already approached, what did the proposals say, and what were the results? Ask for electronic versions of any successful proposals. Part of being a grant writer is working with text that others before you have written. You have the option to not use any of it, but I personally find "inherited text," as I call it, a very useful resource, at least for information if not for polished prose.

You also want a clear conception of what their programs are. As I said, most foundations prefer to support specific programs or projects. You'll want to know what you will be writing about.

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Topic: How do freelancers earn money?

Question from T.R about compensation for freelance grant writers:

Thanks to the guests for their participation.

I would be interested to learn how you package your services so that you are paid. Particularly, as in the case of Joe who works as an independence agent - do you charge a flat fee? Do you get a percentage of the award? Do you negotiate with each client or do you have a schedule of fees? Where does the money come from that pays you – the award or grant?

I understand how it works when I work for a non-profit but don't know how I would organize for consulting gigs.

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Comment from list member S.I.:

Along the lines of T.R’s inquiry, one summer while in grad. school, I wrote grants for a big school district. I was expected to meet deadline after deadline, but when it came time to getting paid, it was a nightmare. I was supposed to be paid $20 an hour and one project, it was $30 an hour. I determined my own hours, but I was told that I would be paid for writing hours, not the time spent researching the information and consulting others working on the project. Then it took forever to finally get paid - I cannot tell you how many emails I had to send to the director. The delay - the money was coming from donations.

This was my first stab at it, so I walked in blind. I am sure that those of you who are grant-writing savvy have your own strategies to make sure that you are paid for the actual work that you do and get paid in a reasonable time.

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Response from Cara:

When my students ask about how much to charge for proposal writing, I refer them to the following web site, which contains a good explanation about why hourly and project based rates are preferred. I also refer them to locate their local writer or non-profit groups because rates can vary so much depending on where you live.


http://www.grantwriters.org/resources/ethics.htm

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Response from Joe:

I would like to respond to your message regarding payment for grantwriting services.

I have been a freelance grantwriter for over twenty years. Because I have a wife and family, along with all the related expenses, payment for services is important to me.

After a prospective nonprofit client contacts me for grantwriting services, and after that prospective client fills out my questionnaire, and after I determine that the nonprofit's needs are fundable, I conduct an interview with that nonprofit.

I have learned from long experience that nonprofits and their representatives will try to Don Juan the grantwriter into working for little or nothing. This results from their intense belief in their mission. Knowing that, the grantwriter must make sure that the nonprofit can afford to pay for the work.

It is rare that the grantwriter's fee can come out of the grant money he obtains. Nonprofits must know that right from the start. So either the nonprofit must have the money available to pay the fee, or it must be willing to put on a fundraiser to pay for the grantwriting services. All nonprofit's can raise the money if they try.

So, I give the nonprofit's rep a copy of my contract: I work for $45 per hour or 10% of the amount of the grants I obtain, whichever is less. Most nonprofits are happy to sign a contract of this nature because they can't lose. I ask the nonprofit rep to take the contract back to the board of directors. The rep explains the nature of the contract to the board. If the board passes a motion that they will sign the contract, they are obligated by law to pay for the grantwriting services within the allowable time.

After I learned how to present my simple, one-page contract correctly, I have never been burned by no pay or slow pay.

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Question and Comment from Celeste:

Joe wrote, “So, I give the nonprofit's rep a copy of my contract: I work for $45 per hour or 10% of the amount of the grants I obtain, whichever is less. Most nonprofits are happy to sign a contract of this nature because they can't lose.”

Forgive me, Joseph, but I'm trying to puzzle out this formula. It sounds as though the nonprofits actually pay less if they are awarded the grant that you have written the proposal for--am I right? Can you speak to the logic of this?

I have also done freelance grantwriting, and I would caution against having your remuneration based on the success of the grant proposal. Grant awards are dependent on so many other things than the skill of the grantwriter--the particular decision-making process of a foundation, for instance, or the strength of the programs at the non-profit. Joseph may be able to overlook these vagaries because he can pick and choose his clients, based on the strength of their organization (which is great!). But for those, like me, who may have the occasional freelance opportunity or who are building a business, I would say emphatically: make sure you get paid by the hour, and for ALL the work you do, not just the "writing" part, as in Randa's case. (What an odd way to measure one's "work"! As if writing is only the manual labor of fingers on typewriter keys! Randa, my advice is to stay away from that client.)

That said: My experience is like Sherri's, program-wise: I've had a lot of influence at the places I've worked in helping program staff to rethink their approach to their goals and how they accomplish them. I've helped to shape projects from the get-go, and I've helped to rework existing programs so that they are better able to demonstrate their achievements (or better able to achieve, period). This is one of the most interesting parts of the job, I think--this is where the "teaching" element comes in, as I am helping those personnel to clarify their thought processes regarding what they're trying to accomplish.

Anyone else with me?

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Response from Paula:

I could not agree more! The payment method Randa has been offered is really bad, and may emerge in part from an extremely naive conception of what "writing" is. Research time doesn't count? Puh-leez!

Also I would like to point out, at the risk of irritating Joe (not my intent), that the Association of Fundraising Professionals feels very strongly that it is unethical to compensate a grant writer by a percentage of the funds raised. Their reasong goes very much like what Celeste said above, and they also add that when a proposal is submitted, it always includes a budget, and grant writing services are NEVER included in the budget! So, what you're essentially doing when you pay a grant writer a percentage of the grant is spending the money differently from how you said you would spend it. In short, you are lying to the foundation.

Joe, how do you finesse that particular point in your consulting constracts and grant proposals? Do you, for example, add a line item to the budget for your own services? I don't mean to make you uncomfortable but I am truly very interested in this issue in the profession, so I hope you will comment.

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Response from Joe:

I certainly will be happy to speak to the logic of my contract with clients: $45 per hour or 10% of the amount of the grant, whichever is less. No Grant-No Fee.

Please keep in mind that I'm responding to these queries from the perspective of a freelance grantwriter. My methodology may not fit your situation at all.

I select only the most promising clients, and the terms of my contract perpetuate my business in a way that's hard to believe until you try it. I keep a client base of 50 clients. Presently, I'm booked solid through the end of 2007. Because I have a certain amount of longevity as a grantwriter, I can tell which clients have needs that are fundable. To some extent, I can even tell how much funding I should be able to get for them. Svengali, I'm not; but longevity in the field bestows a certain wisdom.

Several times a year, a struggling nonprofit will come to me asking for help. In many cases the nonprofit is having an emergency situation. (I can be more specific if, after you read this, you still don't see the logic behind my contract.) At the same time, I also working with my long-term clients.

Because I have been freelancing for so long, and because I can select my clients wisely, I can often arrange a $20,000 grant for that struggling nonprofit in an afternoon's work. Should I then get paid $2,000 for four hours of work? Most of the nonprofits I work for are struggling to remain viable.

I consider it unethical to charge an across-the-board 10% or 20% of the amount of the grant money that I secure for a nonprofit. I also consider it unethical to charge $45 per hour if I can't get a grant for a nonprofit. I have to perform before I can get paid, and I know how to perform. (In grantwriting, one has to be arrogant to be successful. In this profession, the meek don't inherit the earth. However, when I leave my office, my arrogance disappears. My wife sees to that.)

My contractual $45 per hour or 10% of the amount of secured grants (No Grant-No Fee) has made it possible for me to earn a good living for my family. It has also made it possible for me to look at myself in the mirror and not feel like regurgitating. That's the logic behind my contract.

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Topic: Compensation in Non-Profit Organizations

Question from I.J. about salaries in non-profit organizations:

Thanks for the great discussion! I've been considering the benefits of grant writing over academia, and now that I'm just a couple weeks from defending and graduating (yay!), I need to think more concretely about what I want to "do" with my life. Because I have two small children to support and a mountain of student debt to repay, I'm wondering about wages. Given I only have written one grant (which I did 8 years ago and don't know whether it was funded or not), it sounds like volunteering will be a necessary way to break into the business. But, once I am able to transition into paid work, what sort of wages could I expect? I understand there will be great diversity, not only by region but also by size and type of organization. Which kinds of organizations tend to pay the most? What might typical pay ranges be?

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Response from Paula:

Salaries definitely depend on the size of the organization, and to a lesser extent on the subsector the organization is in (for example, arts tend to pay less while health and education may pay more). I'll be transparent here: at MALDEF I made 48K and my title was Foundation Grant Writer (they had another person doing the corporate proposals). The overall budget at the time was around 6M and they had over 100 employees in five different states (qualifying it as a big national organization). It was also my first position; had I had more experience, I could have gotten maybe 60. When I moved to my current Director of Development position, I took a 20% pay cut because the job appealed to me so much. The Children's Chorus is a small community-based organization, and it's an arts organization, meaning everyone is underpaid. Even the Executive Director makes under 50. But the vacation policy and scheduling flexibility they offer are truly superb--another form of compensation that matters to me more than money.

Each person of course has their own situation with its own needs. Money may be more important to a lot of people than it is to me. I can afford to take this fantastic job that I love, but which doesn't pay well, because I have a higher-earning husband and no children.

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Response from Sherri:

Paula wrote: “Salaries definitely depend on the size of the organization, and to a lesser extent on the subsector the organization is in (for example, arts tend to pay less while health and education may pay more).”

In addition to sector and org size, the geographic region has great influence on salary ranges. One resource to help sort through geographic differences are geographically-based compensation surveys. Some of those are indexed by the Nat'l Council of Nonprofit Associations here:
http://www.ncna.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=Page.viewPage&pageId=333

I would expect that AFP has also done compensation surveys, though I haven't yet searched their website to confirm or deny.

I've also used Guidestar to estimate a particular org's payscale. The IRS form 990 requires NPOs to disclose the salary of the five highest-paid employees and provide the total number of employees earning more than $50K annually: I've used that data to make quasi-educated guesses about an org's capacity to pay. (And you can rest assured, as Paula's experience attests, that if the ED only makes $50K, then the fund-raisers are clocking in below that threshold...)

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Response from Celeste:

I agree with Paula's description here. One thing I'd add is that it also depends on the degree of "professionalization" of the organization with regards to development. When I started at the NAC, their development department was fairly new, and the pay range was correspondingly low--I was making only $34K at the time. After I left, they went through a couple more grant writers and then asked me to come back on a consulting basis to take care of some large grants while they looked for someone more permanent. The pay had gone up considerably, not only for my temporary services, but also for the permanent grantwriter they eventually hired (who happened to be one of the other speakers on this panel--hello, Sherri!--and who I "recruited" for the job through the grads listserv at the program we were both in). I don't want to take full credit, but the Development Director led me to believe that the jump in the salary offered was in part because the way I performed the job made the Executive Director take the position of grantwriter more seriously (and thus encouraged her to allot more of the organization's budget toward that particular line item).

So what's the moral? I'd say it's twofold: (1) If salary is a major concern, go to an organization that is not only one of the larger, better-funded ones, but that also has a development track record that enables them to really value what a grant writer can do. (2) If you are working for a smaller organization that hasn't quite recognized your full worth yet, don't fret! As they realize that "grant writer" is a bit of a misnomer (you do so much more than write), they may take the steps they need to keep you on--i.e., find more money in the budget to pay you more in line with what you deserve.

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Topic: Job Title Uneasiness

Question from Celeste about job title and the responsibilities the title conveys:

I alluded to this in my last post, and Sherri mentioned it in her introduction, but I'd like to ask the panel: Do you ever have a problem with the title "grant writer"? I am chafing at that title in my current position, simply because, even though I work only 60% time, it doesn't cover half of what I actually do. I wouldn't care too much, except that I don't intend to stay at the APS forever, and the simple title "grant writer" seems to be a much more junior position than the job I perform, which might not translate well when looking for my next position. Any thoughts?

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Response from Joe:

I would like to add some information about the job titles you mentioned below. If my early explanation does not seem to address your question directly, it's not because I don't understand the question. Perhaps the last paragraph will be more relevant.

Grant Writer--One who writes grants. In my work as a member of the Board of Directors of the Mesabi Range College Foundation, I will write a grant. Students apply for this grant.

Grantwriter--This is the commonly recognized name of a grantseeker. The grantwriter applies for grants on behalf of nonprofit organizations or other organizations. The grantwriter may be either freelance or an employee of an organization.

Grantseeker--The Foundation Center's name for a person who applies for grants on behalf of a nonprofit or other organization.

Grantmaker--The Foundation Center's name for a public or private foundation (or other entity) which awards grants.

During my association with the AAGP and with the BHTB forums, I noticed that a number of people who do the grantseeking for schools, colleges, corporations or businesses had a variety of titles to describe their work. However, I can't recall one specific title that I thought lent dignity to the work while still conveying the nature of the work to interested parties. We may have to appeal to the muses to enlighten us on this matter.

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Response from Sherri:

Absolutely. When I applied for the grants job at Widener, the job title on the ad was "Grant Writer." During the negotiation process, I brought up the issue of that job title. I outlined the manner in which their their desired job functions (and the capacities I brought to the table) were more complex than the term "grant writer" captured. I also suggested that I would be more effective as a public representative of the university with a job title that more accurately told external stakeholders my administrative role and stature.

Although I did not make an altered job title a firm condition of accepting the job, the title was changed to "Grants Manager" in fairly short order.

Lucky for me, I did not have to fight this same battle with TFI: they have the fund-raising infrastructure (mentioned by you in another thread) to have already made this conceptual leap.

My next professional step (some years hence) will likely be to a fund-raising job that requires much more than grants work (well, more "much more" than the "much more" I'm already doing ...), so the title question might be a non-issue. However, if I were ever negotiating for another salaried grants job, I would do everything in my power to make sure I had a title in a similar family to my current one.

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Topic: How does grant writing in an academic setting compare to professional grant writing?

Question from T.H. about how grant writing for organizations compares with grant writing for individuals:

I have some questions -- and a confession -- about the basics of grantwriting: how exactly does it work, outside the confines of the ivory tower? How do the projects you work with differ from the sort of grant applications graduate students write to organizations within and outside the university to get funding for their research? And which skills and assumptions from that "grantwriting" experience have proven/would be useful in writing grants for non-profits?

Specifically and immediately, I'm wondering how to get a headstart volunteering to write grant applications for my son's non-profit preschool. I want to figure out how to persuade staff there I'll be helpful and not a burden, but I also want to start developing skills I can transfer to paying grantwriting work down the road.

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Question from B.K. about the role of university offices of sponsored programs in the grant writing process:

I have another basics question. How does the grant writing that happens in those offices of sponsored programs at colleges and universities differ from the grant writing that happens in other non- profit organizations? In other words, are the jobs similar? Can somebody talk a little bit about those offices of sponsored programs and what they do?

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Response from D.S.:

The most important thing in volunteering to write grants at your school is to talk to the principal. Because, as many posters have pointed out, grant writing often involves program development, your efforts would need to fit in with the plans for the school. Just because a funding opportunity is out there doesn't mean an organization should apply for it, since it might not be a good fit for any number of reasons.

Some background: I am a longtime reader and very rare poster (PhD in English) who writes and edits grants, among other things, at an academic health center. I was a freelance grant writer for 5 years, both for medical research grants and for a wide variety of program grants. A couple of years ago, I made a successful proposal to the VP for Research at our local university to create a professional development program for researchers, one that targeted their grantsmanship skills, and so now I am also an academic administrator. (So grant writing really is a useful and extensible skill to develop.)

I wrote a number of successful grants for my daughters' school (as a volunteer but while I was freelancing), the largest of which was a multimillion dollar application to the US Dept of Ed. But small or large, they all required the support of the principal and absolute buy-in from the teachers, who may be the ones carrying out the work you're proposing for them in the application. I suggest you talk to the principal and see what sort of needs they have and whether grant funding is the appropriate way to get the money, and then offer your services as a volunteer. It is an excellent way to begin, as long as you are helping them achieve something they want to do.

The rhetorical skills you use for research grants and program grants are the same--as long as you can assess an audience and write for their needs, you should be able to write either kind of grant.

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Response from Cara:

As for offices of sponsored projects - the Smithsonian Institution has an office of sponsored projects, and my understanding is that they serve as sort of a "traffic cop" - making sure that proposals from all the divisions dont conflict with each other and have all the correct boilerplate information in them. They also handle alot of the negotations when a grant or contract is awarded.

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Response from Paula:

I have never written a real grant to support research, but one of my Research Methods classes did have a unit on grant writing, in which we did have to write a mock proposal to support our own dissertation projects, and from that experience I can say that the basic art of grant writing is the same no matter what you are writing about. It's about building a case. Showing the funder why the world needs this work--what problem does it solve?--and then showing how your project will address the problem effectively.

Recalling my earlier post about the danger of writing about things that are too close to you, I'd say that would be a major danger in writing proposals to support your own academic research. "Of course the world needs it--it's so darned interesting!" the researcher privately exults. But you have to break out of that and answer the tough questions if you want to persuade grantmakers to fund you. Tough questions like the toughest of all, SO WHAT??

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Response from Celeste:

For the most part, I agree with Paula on this issue--grant writing skills are very transferable. It's been a while since I've written a grant proposal to promote my own research, but I have had to deal with writing proposals to the National Science Foundation (for the APS), and they are set up to receive proposals mostly for individual research. I would characterize the differences I see (and remember) as these:

1. Grants reviewers for individual research are going to be more impressed by a CV. In other words, your work rides on your shoulders--they're funding YOU as much as the work. Foundations are more likely to want to see a well thought-out, real-world plan, based largely on constituents: they want to see that the people you serve are involved in the planning process, etc., and they want to hear from the people served when evaluating the programs.

2. My impression is the same as Cara's re: the role of a "grants office" at a university--their function is to centralize the proposal process, rather than be actively involved in developing or writing proposals. However, there are people who write grant proposals for specific research centers. I also worked for a biology/medical research lab at one point--these folks are largely funded by grant monies, and therefore they need someone there full-time just tracking down the next source. This role isn't so much different than a non-academic grantwriter, except that you would need real expertise in the field, as I see
it.

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Response from Joe:

I can answer your questions in a brief, concrete-operational manner from the perspective of a freelance grantwriter. These answers apply to grantseeking for grassroots nonprofit organizations.
YOUR QUESTIONS:
1. How does grantwriting work?
2. How do the projects differ from a student's request for research funding?
3. What skills are necessary for seeking grants for nonprofits?
4. How can I get a head start on becoming a grantwriter?

Grantwriting follows a cycle. First, the struggling nonprofit will contact you. (I know, this requires some background, but we need to start somewhere. You'll figure out a way to become known.) During the initial interview you will predetermine whether or not the nonprofit's mission is fundable (using research or past experience) and whether or not you would like to become involved with them by seeking grants. If you think it's a GO, you will send them the "Getting Acquainted" package so that you can get to know the nonprofit thoroughly. After reading the information in the completed package, you have to determine whether or not there are grantmakers whose guidelines are compatible with the nonprofit's fundable mission. If the mission is fundable, and if you think you can get funding, you have the nonprofit board president sign the grantwriter's agreement.

Next, you have to define the nonprofit's needs. Then you have to research thoroughly for compatible grantmakers. Following that, you will have to contact each of the compatible grantmakers in the manner which they request: Letter of Inquiry, phone call, full proposal, e-mail, etc. After the initial contact, the grantmaker will either give you a rejection or an application. You will study and file the rejections. You will fill out the applications exactly in the manner required by the grantmaker. Then hopefully you will receive funding for your nonprofit...........

Although the procedure to complete the grant cycle for nonprofits remains basically the same, every project is different. The kind of research you must do is much more in-depth than what you might have to do for academic research grants. You need to use every undistracted IQ point that you have in order to find and search all the avenues to the doors of compatible grantmakers. Poor or hurried research can doom the project to failure. Using the internet search only will not be acceptable. Get to the library, and to paraphrase Alexander Pope, let you brain roam freely over the huge books in front of you..........

There are many skills required to be a successful freelance grantwriter. Innately, you need to be honest or you won't last long. There can't be any larceny in your heart whatsoever. You need to be intelligent and you need to be able to concentrate. You need to be a good judge of people. You need to be mature and other-centered. Outwardly, you need to go through a few grant cycles so you can practice the art of grantwriting. You need to be able to write well so that you do a good job of representing your client; but, you must not intellectualize the text in the letter of inquiry or the application. You need to have a tidy, organized mind. You need to be tenacious. But most importantly, YOU NEED TO BE ABLE TO TAKE REJECTION WELL. If you're insecure or if you don't respond well to rejection, you're done before you begin. You need to be professional in all your dealings with clients and grantmakers.................

To get a head start toward becoming a grantwriter, do what you're doing. Do some grantwriting for your local school, humane society, animal shelter, your hockey league, community orchestra, historical society, or any other nonprofit that interests you. (In the reference section of the library, you should find a list of the nonprofits in your state.) You will be a bit clumsy at first, but at least you won't be hurting anybody. I would suggest that you keep your day job until you see your way clear to making a living as a grantwriter. Of course, if you want to get a nine-to-five job working for a firm, the requirements would be totally different.

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Topic: Honesty and Integrity

Comment from Paula about the honest grant writers need to demonstrate:

I loved it when Joe said:

"Innately, you need to be honest or you won't last long. There can't be any larceny in your heart whatsoever."

I had not heard that said out loud before, but these words were music to my ears. Thank you, Joe, for saying them. I am reminded of something in my experience. One of the organizations I have worked for sometimes has the unfortunate habit of promising more than it can deliver. They say ABCDEF in the proposal, but after the grant period is up, they have only done B, C, half of A, a little bit of E, and oops, they never touched F at all. One discovers things like this when one writes reports on grants where one did not write the original proposal.

I would never say these promises were made in a spirit of dishonesty--not at all--but there was a certain lack of rigor in assessing what could be accomplished.

That lack of rigor is not necessarily a moral failing. Maybe the person was just a little dumb and believed the pie-in-the-sky dreams of the program staff. Maybe other pressures influenced the drafting of the proposal. For example, maybe the Executive Director, Development Director or some other senior manager insisted on making those promises because then we could get more money, and the grant writer had just run out of political capital and could no longer safely push back. Maybe there were internal political issues involving a program person wanting to raise his or her profile by getting involved in as many big projects as possible. Maybe a lot of things. A grant proposal is very much a social construction because multiple people have to buy in and feel they have input on what it says.

But the grant writer's role, I feel, is to remain vigilantly focused on maintaining absolute integrity with every proposal and report. It's a form of honesty, as Joe says, and it does have a moral dimension, to the extent that one's mind is capable. You can't hold a stupid person accountable at that level, but a smart person, oh yeah.

I personally enjoy this aspect of grant writing because honesty happens to be one of my most important personal values. When I "push back" and insist that we say what we mean and mean what we say, I feel like I am being very deeply myself in the world, guarding against undue puffery, maintaining substantive congruence between rhetoric and reality. A person who plays things a bit looser than that, who is comfortable with a little bit of dissembling, will have to either straighten up or pick another career where integrity isn't so important.

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Response from Sherri:

I'd like to add a thought or two about the sometimes-occurring disjunction between proposal and report, and the various ways that integrity come into play.

I agree with Paula's advice about diligence with project planning and proposal writing. However cliche the wording, my program officers are very used to hearing me remind them "Don't make promises you can't keep."

But the reality is that any proposal and any project plan, however well-conceived and honestly presented, it still just a plan. We can never see unerringly into the future, and stuff can--and will!!--happen.

And it's when things go awry that I think one's integrity as a grants professional can be most tested. I've worked with staff (and high-level management, even) who have wanted to hide these realities from funders. They've asked me to "vague up" interim reports, hoping always that the remaining six months will get the outcome measures back to predicted levels. Again, I don't think the requests were made in a fraudulent vein. It's only human to want to underplay something that could be interpreted as a failure.

However, funding agencies understand that the world takes unexpected turns. So my advice in these situations is always the same: tell the funder what's going on! With honesty and integrity, explain what happened, what you're doing to adjust to the new circumstances, and what (if any) adjustments are anticipated for end-of-year results. In my experience, the integrity shown through that reporting does more to strengthen the funding relationship than the adjusted outcomes do to weaken the NPOs reputation.

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Response from Celeste:

I couldn't agree with Sherri more. In fact, I recommend that this kind of communication happen even before interim reports are due. To facilitate this, we recently implemented a system of internal reporting (at intervals roughly midway between grant award and interim report, or interim and final reports). Nothing too onerous, just a one-page form that allows the Exec Dir to check in with the program people and make sure that things are going as planned--and, if not, that the program director communicate with the foundation _before_ any surprises in the reports.

(Program folks can tend to get caught up in, or perhaps more accurately, be overwhelmed by the tasks they have to do--it's our job to remind them of the harsh reality that they are accountable not only to their own superiors within the organization but to the host of outside organizations that are making what they do financially possible. I feel for them.)

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Response from W.M.:

I'm not a grant writer, just a researcher that works as a subcontractor. I do want to add one example to this discussion, as a tangent. I had one client, a city, that failed to use one of their federal grant funds according the to timeframe required by the agency -- the project/budget period requirements -- and had to forfeit the monies, as in return them. A large sum. This caused a bit of a problem. This use of funds during the budgetary periods is an important one with Federal agencies. Not sure about foundations, but thought it might apply and be part of keeping an organization honest with their efforts.

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Response from Sherri:

This sort of "use it or lose it" clause is common, though it is sometime negotiable, even with the Feds. For example, the National Science Foundation (deceptively named, since it's a government grants agency) has a built-in mechanism for a 1-year "no cost extension." So long as you file the paperwork in time explaining what's going on, you get another 12 months on the grant.

But yeah, another function I sometimes serve as a grants professional is to remind program staff about adhering to their proposed budget. Early in my time at Widener, I was caught flat-footed because, although a grant-receiving faculty member had spent all the grant dollars on materials for her childhood education project, the actual cost categories (books vs. active storytelling supplies vs. arts and crafts materials, etc.) were not at all in line with the proposal budget. I asked her to explain this discrepancy to me so that I could explain that same discrepancy to the foundation, and she was shocked! "You mean I have to treat the grant budget like a REAL budget?!?" (No lie: direct quote.)

It was an instructive moment for me. This woman was skilled, she was well-educated, she even had experience managing part of the budget for her academic program. And yet she was deeply uninformed about her fiscal responsibilities as grant proposer and grant recipient.

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Response from Paula:

Yes, W. M. is right, and that brings up something to touch on briefly. A grant proposal is a legal contract. Most foundations require the grantee to sign a Grant Agreement or Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) before receiving the check. These documents always say something like "the moneys will be spent in accordance with what it says in the proposal." They also specify a time limit on expending the funds, and spell out reporting requirements. You or the Director of Developemnt or the Executive Director or somebody has to sign that MOU in order to get the check--and when you sign, you are committing your organization legally to abide by those terms.
Sherri (was it Sherri?) was right when she said that things don't always go exactly according to plan, and I agree that open communication with the foundation before the final report is due is the way to handle that. But when the organization is seriously not doing what it promised, yes, in the end, they have to give the money back. That hurts. Call me a hardass but I believe the pain is deserved. Somebody did not have their act together and made a liar out of the organization.

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Response from Sherri:

I don't really disagree with Paula, but I hope no one minds if I explore some of the complexities and nuances of these situations.

I've already said that when a grant-funded project changes direction, I (and my org) have an ethical responsibility to report that change to the grantor. If this change has been incredibly drastic, yes, we also should be prepared to return the money and take the pain.

Sometimes, though, the grantor doesn't want the money back, and that largesse is often based in 1) the strength of the relationship between orgs and 2) the grantor's own sense of what the most important purpose of the grant is.

Anecdotal example. A colleague of mine works for an org that's been in a capital campaign to relocate to a building with more square footage. When the campaign began, the plan was to move to neighborhood A. Now, a few years later, plans are finalized for a move to neighborhood B. When this dramatic change occurred, my colleague fulfilled the ethical duty by informing all the donors who'd pledged to support the campaign.

There were some gifts and grants (one I know of in seven figures) that were returned because the donors thought this change in the plan was sufficient to take the campaign out of harmony with the grant-makers' priorities. There were also grantors who said, in effect: "We're supporting a new, bigger, better building for your org, and we don't give a hoot what neighborhood you choose." IMHO, this org passed the ethics test with flying colors: they kept people informed, they let each donor decide how to respond to this change, and they respected their donors' and grantors' wishes.

So my advice still echoes Paula’s: Take your grant contracts seriously. If you usually keep your word but something goes seriously awry, you should be prepared to take the heat for failing to meet the terms of your grant agreement. On the other hand, the grant-maker might just surprise you with a willingness to reach a new agreement. However, if your org makes a habit of falling out of line with its grant agreements, that WILL catch up to you, because far fewer grant-makers (if any) will be willing to give extra wiggle room to chronic offenders in this regard.

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Response from Joe:

Honesty and credibility are a freelance grantwriter's stock in trade. Following is a description of how honesty with projects affects the freelance grantwriter and his client. (The name and city of the client are fictitious.)

A community orchestra in Minnesota City wants to invite an Italian violinist to put on a performance at the local school auditorium. The orchestra's board of directors needs $9,000 to cover the expenses. The grantwriter researches the orchestra's needs and finds 50 foundations in Minnesota which have funded similar projects.

The grantwriter crafts a letter of inquiry to send to the 50 compatible foundations. After a month has passed, we have 20 rejections (with regrets), 20 invitations to apply (with applications), and 10 non-responders.

We fill out the 20 applications and after another month has passed, 15 of the foundations have decided not to fund our violinist; 5 have indicated that they will send us the $9,000. Now we come to the place where honesty enters the picture. We could potentially collect the $45,000 and nobody would be any the wiser.

Here's the solution. I will construct a letter to send to the five foundations advising the program directors of the situation. We ask the directors to communicate with each other to see if they want to contribute equally to cover the $9,000 or if one of the foundations wants to handle the whole expense. Generally, one foundation steps forward because at the door of the auditorium stands this big sign: Tonight's program was made possible by a grant from Minnesota Power and Light. So MP&L funds the entire program, they get the advertising, and everybody's happy.

The next time I have to contact those foundations, they know they're dealing with an honest grantwriter. Foundation people have very long memories and they are not fools.

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Topic: Grantwriting for Individuals

Comment from Joe on grant funding for individuals:

Have you heard or heard of Matthew Lesko? His infomercials are all over the radio and TV. In a circus hawker's voice he explains how the "gum'ment" is giving out grants to everybody for everything. If you buy his book, you'll learn how to find free money to fulfill all your dreams.

In my opinion, Matthew is one step above a felonious snake oil salesman. He deludes and misleads the public and preys on people who are either ignorant or poor. His insipid role playing denigrates grantwriting and gives the profession the same stature as professional wrestling. In truth, grants for individuals are difficult to obtain. Most private foundations make it clear that they don't give grants to individuals. There are, of course, research grants and other types of grants given to very special individuals, but grant money is not intended to solve the financial or personal problems of the hoi polloi … except in some cases.

Matthew inadvertently does one good thing. He educates the lower 12% of the population who have been thrust into a position of poverty. I am a freelance grantwriter who advertises my services on the internet, and about twice a week I get calls from Lesko inspired people. Most of them are just whiners, but not all of them. Some of them deserve to be helped.

The call will go something like this: (A timid-sounding female) "Do you write grants for people who have problems?" (The grantwriter) "Yes, occasionally. Tell me why you need a grant. Start right at the beginning." (The female) "Well, you see, I was born addicted to heroin...."

Over the next half hour I hear the whole story of her life. But luckily, through her desperation and sad words she is conveying to me the fact that she is trying. She is really trying to make a life for herself and her children. She has somehow managed to finish a secretarial course at a local technical school. She has been promised a job in Phoenix. She doesn't have enough money to move herself and her children to Phoenix so she can start her job. She has made some bad choices, but she is fighting to be a dignified human being.

I tell her I'll try to do what I can. I take her name and address and we say goodbye. I sit with my head in my hands and hope my wife doesn't come into the room until after I regain my composure. Then I wonder how in the sam hill can I find the magic words that will help that girl?

There are some private foundations in each state which give grants to certain individuals. They will give a one-time grant to help a person over a hurdle or to overcome an obstacle that has been put in the way of that person's progress. They don't give grants to whiners.

These foundations usually don't require a formal application or a proposal. So I write a chronological narrative with factual information about the case. Emotion is omitted; hyperbole is avoided. In about one out of ten cases I can get a grant for an individual. This girl was lucky. She was given $3,000 to move to Phoenix and start her life anew. I didn't even tell her I usually charge a fee for my work.

I could sit here and write you a litany of stories about grants for individuals that hit and grants for individuals that missed. But the point is that writing grants for individuals is a very small part of the freelance grantwriter's job. Matthew Lesko says it's easy to get these grants. I wonder how many grants he's secured for the hoi polloi?

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Topic: Grantwriting Workshops: Are they useful?

Question from S.O. about the benefits of paying to take a grant writing seminar:

My question concerns the benefits of grant-writing workshops. The University of Baltimore has one, and I have also seen seminars hosted by GrantWriting USA. Is it worth it to attend one of these seminars? They are usually around $400-500 and even up to $1100 for one or two days, and you supposedly get some kind of certificate. Any thoughts? Is it worth it?

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Response from Paula:

There are a lot of grant writing workshops out there, of varying quality like everything else. Classes range from 2 hours to 10 weeks and cost from nothing to hundreds of dollars, maybe more. Generally speaking, the shorter classes cost less. They also, predictably, deliver less. But they can be good for a quick overview.

I took a one-week course that absolutely blew my mind and was worth every penny of the $800 tuition. It's called The Grantsmanship Training Program, offered by The Grantsmanship Center. They offer it all over the country. My mentor at TreePeople recommended it to me and I am recommending it to you.

I also took a one-day course from The Foundation Center, which was OK, but not nearly as helpful. What can you expect--they've only got 6 hours to work with. University extension programs can also be good places to look--in my city, for example, both UCLA and CSUN have certificate programs in Fundraising, which include a 9-week course on grant writing. If you are working in a university, maybe you can get a break on tuition.

In any event, as with all writing courses, the quality depends a lot on the instructor.

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Response from Sherri:

I also think your opinion of workshops can be influenced by the sequence in which you experience them. The first workshop I took was the 1-day offered by The Foundation Center (TFC), and I came out of it with good value, both for the price (which was all my then-employer could afford to pay) and for my learning stage (relative newbie).

After that, I took a half-day workshop with LaSalle's Nonprofit Development Center (a well-regarded training/capacity building org in the region). Had it not been a requirement for a Non-Profit Mgmt Certificate I was earning, I probably wouldn't have taken it---its insights were fairly duplicative of what I learned from TFC.

I took the Grantsmanship Center's (TGCI) week-long training in January 2005, and I will heartily second Paula's recommendation of its worth. It very much deepened my understanding of the work I do, and I am sure if I had taken the TGCI class first, I would have found very little in TFC's curriculum that was new or useful to me.

However, I am not convinced the full week's training is necessary when you're getting started out in grants work, especially if you're feeling uncertainty about whether you want to make fund-raising your chosen career.

One last note about GrantWriting USA. I once asked a question about them, their programs, and their training quality of a professional listserv. Aside from a couple "I'd love that info too!" the replying silence was deafening. I'll admit my suspicions were raised by the fact that no one in my professional circle had first-hand experience with that particular company. I would be glad to learn otherwise, but until I get at least one word-of-mouth recommendation, I'll continue to advocate for the training programs I know and trust.

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Response from Cara:

I teach a 10-week class online for UCLA - what I like about teaching the class is that I can work almost one-on-one with every student and help them shape their proposal over the 10 weeks. As I mentioned in a previous email, many students end the class with a proposal that they have written for a real organization and therefore, have a sample in their portfolio that they can show when they are interviewing for jobs.

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Response from Celeste:

I have attended one or two of these, and like most "professional training," I've found them to be of varying quality. The best ones tend to put together what you already know in an organized and manageable format, giving you a systemized way of approaching a task you can already do pretty much by instinct. I think that the best use for them is if you are (a) really new to grantwriting and want a good orientation to the field or (b) wanting to get certified, to add "CFRE" to your name--which stand for (help me out, fellow panel members!) "certified fund raising executive" (I think!). And make sure to ask around about the classes--there are a million of these firms out there, all promising to make you better a better grantwriter. (The Foundation Center is one of the more reputable, but I've found their classes to actually be only minimally useful, e.g.)

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Topic: Institutional Learning Curve

Question from S.C. about understanding the way an organization functions:

I recently started working full-time as an in-house grants writer after weaving through NPOs, a consulting firm and academia (including my PhD program) for the last 15 years. The writing aspect is a non-issue, but getting my brain around the vision of the NPO (primarily education/social justice) has been different....even beyond when I have been assigned to teach a new class two days before the semester started.

Is this indicative of the field or unique to my new org?

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Response from Celeste:

I've had this experience, though in different degrees at different institutions. This is where the "professional learner" in me comes out. I try to read everything the organization has re: their mission and programs, etc., and then I start to break it down into a typical grantwriter's logical train of thought: What is the problem/issue they are hoping to address? How do they [propose to] address it? And how do they measure the success of how they address it? (This is actually much easier with a social justice-type program than with, say, an arts program.)

Once that's done, I pinpoint the holes in the logical flow. That's where I go to talk to the program people to try to clarify what I'm not understanding. If I do that and am still not quite sure of the vision/mission/programs, I eventually go to the program director or even the executive director of the organization. You'd be surprised at the number of times I've gone to directors who have been doing what they do for ten, twenty, even thirty years and have never really articulated the logic behind their programs. Most often, I've reaped nothing but gratitude for helping them to clarify their own vision and even rethink their approach to solving a particular problem.

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Response from Paula:

Celeste said: “This is where the "professional learner" in me comes out.”

YESSSS! I tell you, I have no idea how anyone can possibly become a grant writer WITHOUT a graduate degree, for exactly this reason--we may be nerdy academics in some ways, inexperienced outside the academy, whatever, but as LEARNERS, we have the absorptive power of a planet-sized sponge! I have come to value that quality in myself so much more than when I was in the academy, where I took my learning ability for granted and compared myself endlessly with others using a very narrow criteria.

When I got to MALDEF, where as I said in my introduction, I had to learn a huge amount about a completely foreign subject in a very short time. Never--not in my hardest term of grad school, not even in writing my 400-page ethnographic dissertation--NEVER has so much been asked of me, intellectually.

Not to mention the learning that wasn't even related to the content of my proposals. Other things need to be learned, too, when you take your first big full-time job--how to get along with the people, what other people's jobs are and how mine intersects with theirs, how to predict what I could accomplish in a given amount of time, how the systems of the organization work, and so on. And the politics--the politics! Aaaaaagh! Just the issue of cc-ing the right people on emails was huge for me. Oh the egos, oh the complaints of being left out of the loop. Ay caramba! Not to mention that 80% of my co-workers were Latino and here I was, looking like Ms. White Suburban English Professor, not getting the cultural references. All in all, it was a daunting package of demands--*learning* demands--which I think would have obliterated a person of lesser learning ability.

Then when I took my current position in August 2004, I had to tackle a whole different learning curve--different position, different organization, different politics, everything.

Bottom line: your ability to LEARN is going to come in very handy as a grant writer!

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Response from Sherri:

One of the interesting things about my own transition away from the "professor track" was my relative ease in assessing the organizational structures and politics of the NPO. My time in academic administration confirmed something I'd always suspected: the faculty world is as rife with politics as any other collection of humanity. However, in my experience, some pockets of that group wish to deny the existence of politics, holding to the myth that the academic endeavor somehow inoculates that world from political concerns.

For me (and this is 100% an observation of my own individual experience and opinions), it was entirely refreshing to be in an environment where, yes, politics and personalities had influence, but at least everybody was up front about acknowledging that!!

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Topic: Information about working as a Freelance Grantwriter

Comment from Joe:

I would like to pontificate on the need for, the rewards of, and the drawbacks of freelance grantwriting.

There is a great need in the United States for freelance grantwriters to serve grassroots (501(c)(3) tax exempt nonprofit organizations. As I have said before, there are nearly 1.5 million nonprofit organizations in this country and I would guess that most of them are grassroots organizations. The grassroots nonprofit is the natural domain of the freelance grantwriter. Here's why.

The grassroots organizations that need help to meet program expenses often turn to companies which employ grantwriters or to "consulting" firms. These companies and firms advertise widely. However, these companies and consulting firms must make money on each client in order to stay in business. In desperation, a struggling nonprofit may sign a contract that obligates it to pay whether the company secures it a grant or not. In many cases, the company or firm cannot get grants for the nonprofit which leaves the struggling nonprofit without money to meet program expenses and without a balance in the treasury.

By the time the nonprofit finally finds its way to my door, I have to spend the first hour of the initial conversation playing father-confessor to a distraught nonprofit board member. Then I try to proffer a plan to put the nonprofit back together again.

There are some rewards for working as a freelance grantwriter. I have been doing this job for over 20 years. After one learns how to select clients carefully, one can manage a client base of 50 clients. Since I believe in having "the owner on every job," I can't increase my client base by outsourcing work. I know that I can get a minimum of $20,000 in grants for my selected clients. My contract obligates the client in the following way: They agree to pay $45 per hour or an amount equal to 10% of the grant----whichever is less. NO GRANT, NO FEE. It usually takes me about 40-45 hours to complete the work for one client (10 hour days).

Do the math and you'll see that there is money to be made after one learns how to do the job correctly. The freelance grantwriter isn't going to get rich, but the income is adequate. If the grantwriter is knowledgeable and ambitious, there's a lot more money to be made. Further, if one is interested in helping grassroots causes, one can gain a lot of satisfaction by helping these nonprofits.

There are drawbacks to being a freelance grantwriter. It takes a long time to learn how to select the clients that can pay for the grantwriter's work. Every new freelancer is going to get burnt. It takes a long time to learn to deal with nonprofit boards and overly avid nonprofit board members who want to tell the grantwriter how to do his job. It takes time to learn how to avoid lending one's name to a cause that might result in the grantwriter's loss of credibility. Hurricanes and other disasters can dry up the treasuries of a lot of grantmakers which can result in a grantwriter's having a "bad year." Finally, a freelance grantwriter usually collects most of his income during the months of August, September, October, and November. One has to learn how to budget money.

In the interest of brevity, I will not balance this essay with a conclusion.

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Topic: Relationship-Building as Part of Grantwriting

Paula’s comments about relationships between grant writers, their colleagues and funding organizations:

At this point I'd like to add a new concept that may not be obvious to this audience. Writing, research, editing, and project management are indeed important parts of the grant writer's job, but I wouldn't want anyone to think that a grant writer can just work happily away in an office as a scholar/craftsperson without having to do much relationship-building, diplomacy, networking, or image management for the organization. While those things do not occupy a majority of the grant writer's time, they do occupy maybe 10-30% of it, which is actually rather a lot.

Relationship-building activities that grant writers do include:

* Communicating with grantmakers to ask questions about giving priorities, application processes, decision-making timetables, payment schedules, etc.--even sometimes to pitch ideas for new proposals. Foundations and other grant makers are not impersonal institutions--they are staffed with actual people just like your organization, and grant writers must build positive working relationships with specific people at each one. This will be done mostly by phone and email from the office, but is also done in social situations when you may come into contact with foundation officers, Board members, and other grantmaking personnel. Those opportunities are very important, so you have to be able to smile, make good-quality conversation, both give and receive appropriate information, and do the best possible job of representing your organization.

* Communicating internally with other staff members in your organization. I have already touched on the need to communicate with program staff in order to at least learn about, if not help to shape, their programs so that you can write about them. Beyond that, you also have to build good relationships with everyone else in Development (which should be easy) and in other departments (which can sometimes be tricky). For example, take Accounting. The "back end" of grant writing is report-writing after projects are finished. Every report includes an expense report. And where do you get information on how the money was spent? The accountants. Even the "front end," proposal writing, requires active collaboration with the numbers people because every proposal contains a budget--which you create together with financial staff because it is both factual and rhetorical in nature.

In short: even though most aspects of Development work require more social interaction than grant writing does, grant writing still does require it and is therefore not a good career choice for people who are shy, who dislike networking, who prefer to focus on tasks rather than people, or who have trouble being friendly when they don't happen to feel like it that day.

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Topic: Writer or Fundraiser?

Question from B.K. about the nature of grant writing:

I liked your summary of how personality traits relate to the job of grantwriter, especially where you said specified that it is not a good career choice for people who are shy, dislike networking, etc. In the same vein--getting right to the heart of the matter--I'm wondering if you and others could reflect on the question of the essence of the grantwriter's job. Do you see yourself as essentially a fundraiser? Or essentially a writer and editor and interpreter? This may seem overly simplistic, but I ask because I wonder how much you see yourself as taking on the role of "asking for money." Of course, you are asking for money--but that still may not be the task that really defines your job. I have never been good at asking people for money--but I have written several successful (NEH) grant proposals, and I didn't really see myself as a "fundraiser."

I'm having a hard time articulating this question, and maybe it seems utterly ridiculous, but I'm still trying to ask it!

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Response from Paula:

B.K., excellent question. If I could only stop the sound of one hand clapping long enough to concentrate, I'd give you an answer.

Seriously, I can see an argument for both sides, but let me offer a third path: if seeing yourself as a fundraiser helps you be a better or happier grantwriter, then see yourself as a fundraiser. If seeing yourself as a fundraiser makes you feel all weird and uncomfortable with grant writing, then don't see yourself as a fundraiser, see yourself as a writer/researcher/editor.

Your answer to that question may also change over time during your grant writing career. When I first started, I definitely saw myself as a writer/researcher/editor. As time went on and I gained more experience, I discovered that in addition to being a good grant writer, my temperament happens to be ideally suited to fundraising. Fundraising in all of its many aspects mirrors perfectly the diverse interests, habits, yearnings and appetites that have characterized my walk on this earth for so many years. That realization led me to seek a broader position with more diverse responsibilities--the position in which I am now thriving because psychologically it fits me like a glove. What an incredible feeling.

But my story does not have to be your story. Many successful grant writers see themselves as writers and not fundraisers. I can only assume that because surely it must be true. I think that whatever allows you to do the work is how you should see yourself.

In fact, I would be extremely interested in the other speakers' perspectives on this very interesting question. Do you see yourselves as grant writers or as fundraisers? Or perhaps as some other creature which I hope you will describe?

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Response from Cara:

Paula - in answer to your question - I guess I consider myself both - I specialize in foundation relations, which sometimes means I'm writing grant proposals, and sometimes I'm involved in a larger strategy of raising funds. And since I'm part of a development office, I pitch in on other forms of fund raising such as annual giving or planned giving.

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Response from Joe:

Freelance grantwriters are classified as professional fundraisers in many states. To conduct business in Minnesota, for example, a grantwriter must register with the Attorney General, pay a $200 per year fee, and submit a bit of paperwork to the Attorney General's office. There are some exceptions. A grantwriter on the board of directors of a nonprofit organization is not a professional fundraiser (even though he does exactly the same job as a grantwriter who is not on the board).

Therefore, whether we like it or not, we grantwriters are fundraisers.

I don't like to be placed in the same category as those telemarketers who call, identify themselves as professional fundraisers, and then bug us to death with their requests. A professional grantwriter does not contact any vulnerable people; telemarketers do.

Finally, I find it odd that in the law concerning professional fundraisers, if a grantwriter even so much as advises a nonprofit about raising funds, he is a professional fundraiser. The only ones who are not classified as professional fundraisers if they advise a nonprofit are the people who drafted the law---the lawyers.

I hope that one day I'll have the time and the money to challenge that law. Professional grantwriters should not be in the same category as telemarketers.

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Response from list member W.M.:
Finally, on that fundraising note. Being part of the Beltway machine, I would have to register as a lobbyist with the State of Virginia if I made any calls on behalf of my client that were beyond basic questions, and if I was involved with a "large" amount of money. So the distinction between grant writer and fundraiser has to do with how much you represent your client. I wonder if there is a similar money issue, how large your business is. ...
Thanks again for your helpful information.

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Response from Sherri:

This was a great question, and I'm sorry my Thursday became so hectic that I was forced to abandon my single -sentence beginning of an answer!

For starters, I agree with Paula in affirming that if the work is easier for you to do by emphasizing the writing/editing functions (or the fund-raising aspects) in your self-conception, then by all means emphasize one side or the other.

Having said that, I do unabashedly think of myself as a fund-raiser. I've had program-based colleagues at every NPO who have expressed their gratitude that they don't have to ask for money. "I could never do your job," they've said. Let me try and paraphrase how I talk to them about why I have such comfort with the notion of "asking for money."

When I submit a grant proposals to a funding agency, I do not perceive myself to be in a supplicating or begging posture. The foundations with which I work were founded for the purpose of providing financial support to worthy projects. The process of allocating dollars to federal grants and corporate contribution programs is different, but once that money is allocated, it is allocated to support worthy projects.

So, when there's a strong match between my programs and the agency's priorities, the resulting grant is a mutually beneficial action. Making the grant allows the agency to fulfill its mission, and using that grant money allows my org. to fulfill ours.

My initial contacts with individual donors during these 11 weeks at TFI suggests that mutuality can also be present in individual giving relationships. But I'll leave those musings for another (non-grants-based) conversation.

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Response from Paula:

Sherri said:

"...when there's a strong match between my programs and the agency's priorities, the resulting grant is a mutually beneficial action. Making the grant allows the agency to fulfill its mission, and using that grant money allows my org. to fulfill ours."

Thank you, Sherri. It is hard to overstate the importance of that statement for the WRK4US audience. Many people on this list may feel uncomfortable with the concept of fundraising or asking for money. Few of us, however, would feel anything but wonderful about matching an orphaned child with a willing adoptive family, finding a job for an unemployed friend, or picking the right birthday present for your mom. Those seemingly disparate incidents all have one thing in common: the right match between two things. That is what successful grant writing is all about. The foundation not only wants to give away money, it has to, by law. Naturally it wants to give it away to a certain type of organization. If your organization IS that type, then you are doing the foundation a favor when you request a grant, and when a grant is given, it is exactly like the morally positive examples I gave above of two things being matched well together. There's nothing to be uncomfortable about. It's just matching the plug with the right receptacle to make the energy flow.

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Response from Celeste:

Yes--as I heard one development professional phrase it, he always approaches the foundation with the attitude, "Have I got the funding opportunity for you!"

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Topic: Researching Grants

Question from W.M. regarding Joe’s comments on the usefulness of the internet as a search tool:
Joseph has mentioned a few times that using the internet for private/foundation research is useless. What sources do you use? Do you ever use The Foundation Center's online database? If no, why? How do you know about these foundations that will help individuals with special circumstances?
I do Federal funding research, all of which is online. So not working online is a "new" concept.
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Question from E.V. regarding good hard-copy sources:

You mentioned two things I was hoping you and the other presenters can elaborate on. One was going to the library to access hard-copy sources.
Can you say what some of the more important sources/titles would be?

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Question from H.S. about researching funders:

Joe mentioned that researching grant makers requires more than Internet searching. How exactly would I go about finding funders? Where does a search typically begin and end?

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Question from Paula about Joe’s views on internet research:

I would like to hear more from Joe about why he takes such a dim view of online research tools for identifying foundations. I do all of my prospecting online and am swimming in prospects.

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Response from Sherri:

For my own part, I am hoping that Joseph's scorn is directed towards "googling for grants" rather than the use of other, reputable, Internet sources.

For me, the most important research tools I use are the computer and the telephone.

Grants.gov is the primary clearinghouse for federal grant opportunities. The federal RFP cycle can often be frustratingly compressed: "Why don't you assemble a 75-page document that responds to our questions in the same arcane and counterintuitive order they were asked. Did I mention you only have 4 weeks to do this?" (PS: "RFP" is "Request for Proposals," sometimes also named an "RFA," or "Request for Applications.") Luckily enough, there are many RFPs that recur on an annual (or semi-annual) cycle. This is where the telephone comes in handy. By talking an agency's program officer, I can find out 1) if the funding opp will come around in the next year; 2) if the timing of the deadline will be approximately similar to last cycle; and 3) if there are *drastic* changes underway for that program's priorities. If I get the right set of answers (yes, yes, and no), I can use last year's RFP to begin program planning with my staff well in advance of the new RFP's release. You can usually get a contact name directly off of the outdated RFP, but the agency's own website can provide current staffer names, as well as some insight into agency priorities and "buzzwords."

A similar process is valuable for private funding sources, only this time, my first stop in the Foundation Directory online. (You do need a paid subscription to access this directory from you own desktop, but there are "Regional Foundation Centers" in public libraries around the country where you can access that same database free of charge.) Again, I often touch base with foundation staff and the foundation's own website (if it exists) to make sure I have the clearest possible understanding of today's funding priorities and the application process.

I won't deny that these phone calls also are a relationship-building technique.

So that's my research process, painted in the broadest possible strokes. Hope it helps!

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Response from Joe:

I will have to ap, ap, apologize for saying or implying that researching funders on the internet is useless. It isn't useless. It just isn't the best way to conduct research. To make it perfectly clear, it isn't the best way for me as a freelance grantwriter to conduct research. I should have made that statement in the first place. I'm just too used to being on my own in my own domain. I'll try to be more cosmopolitan during the remaining discussions.

As you may already know, I have been a freelance grantwriter for over twenty years. During the early years I didn't have access to a home computer. I was forced to use the resources in the reference section of the main library in Duluth, Minnesota. That was cumbersome and expensive: cumbersome because we live 60 miles north of Duluth and expensive because while I conducted research my wife went shopping.

As an example, let's say that I have a (fictitious) client who needs grant money so she can pay to have a social services worker placed in a children's clinic. I need to secure $20,000 in grants for this client. Right now in my home office, I have access to Minnesota Grantmakers Online and to the Foundation Center Online Database. I subscribe to grants.gov. I use those resources to search for foundations which have missions that are compatible with my clients' needs. Then, to make sure that I have exhausted every possibility, I go back to the reference section of the library.

Even though I have already done a thorough search on the internet, the library search will inevitably give me more possibilities. Here's why.

It is safe to say that I have a good working acquaintance with the tomes listed below. It is also a fact that my brain receives several million inputs at any given time. As I immerse myself in seeking sources of funding for my client, I am reading entries in the Foundation Center's Health Programs for Children and Youth. At the same time, I'm thinking that I can remember an entry in the Foundation Center's Grants for Social Services that may apply to my client. I reach for that book and open it. Sure enough, there it is. Then I remember one from the tome Public Health and Diseases. That's how it goes for hours in the library; I jump from one book to another until perspiration forms on my brow. I can't do that with my computer. The computer is too limited.

I have made the statement that one's brain is a far better computer than the one in front of you right now. I don't apologize for that statement, and I'll never assume that the computer can do a better job than my brain can.

Here is a short list of the reference section tomes I have found useful:
Grants to Individuals
Directory of Operating Grants
World Guide to Foundations
International Foundation Directory
Research Grants Guide
Guide to Minnesota Grantmakers

---and (also in the reference section) from the Foundation Center, Grants for:
Recreation, Sports, and Athletics
Public Health and Diseases
Program Evaluation
Health Programs for Children and Youth
Hospitals, Medical Care, Medical research
Information Technology
Foreign and International Programs
Technical Assistance and Management Support
for Aging
Literacy, Reading, Adult Education
Libraries and Information Services

----among many others.

The library is a freelance grantwriter's gold mine. If you have active neurons and axons, I would encourage you to try the library search.

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Response from W.M.:

Joe, thanks very much for your resources. Even though I am an online researcher (Fed research works much better that way), I know from my own experience that my brain works much better than any search engine, and why my clients have liked my work over say State Net or the like. I can read and make associations no search engine or large paid service can provide.

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Response from Joe:

W.M., your message referenced the following items: the brain vs the computer, foundation's tax information, and registration with the Attorney General.

Thanks for corroborating my assertion that the brain is a far better computer than the Dell in front of you. Here's a little test: Assume that you're a grad student in the humanities. Assume that you're going to need some financial help. Then do some online research to locate sources for that financial help. Keep track of whatever online sources you find. Then go to the reference section of the library and look through the following books:
Scholarships, Student Aid, Loans
Grants to Individuals
Literacy, Reading, Adult Education
Scholarships, Grants, and Prizes
The Scholarship Book
Money for Grad Students in the Humanities

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Topic: Success Rates

Question from E.V. about success rates and hiring:

Another thing Joe mentioned was the ability to handle rejection. If anyone had to guess, what is the ratio of accepted grants to rejected grants that one can expect over time? When applying for paid positions, is this a factor in hiring?

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Response from Paula:

E.V., you touch on an interesting point which I have heard referred to as a grant writer's "success rate"--the percentage of his or her proposals that are funded. I have done a tiny bit of research on this (speakers, please feel free to share info or alternative opinions) and currently believe that most grant writers have success rates between 25% and 50%. In other words, if your success rate is less than 25%, you're doing something wrong, and if it's over 50%, you're doing something right. Speakers, would you agree?

I happened to have an extremely high success rate at MALDEF and yes indeed, that was definitely a factor in my hiring at the Children's Chorus. Now it has gone down but is still well over 50%. It's interesting, though, to reflect on the various other factors, other than the grant writer's competence, that affect one's success rate. Why did I succeed so often at MALDEF and less often at my current organization? Because at MALDEF, I was applying mostly to foundations that had funded us time and time again for thirty years. At the Children's Chorus, they had never had a full-time Development professional on board before me, so they had not reached out to many new foundations, which means I am submitting a lot of first-time applications, and first-time apps are rejected more often. Also, MALDEF has a huge population that benefits from its advocacy. There are over 40 million Latinos in this country and the numbers are growing every day. Even peopel who for some reason don't like Latinos have to admit that Latinos represent a huge market for goods and services--which is why we had bankers and corporate executives on our board. In contrast, we have exactly 250 children singing in the Chorus, and we are providing them with a very labor-intensive service that not many people care about (top-quality music education). It's a much harder sell.

Anyway, all the more reason to get those first 10 or 12 grants under your belt--that's enough to start calculating your success rate! Keep records.

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Response from Celeste:

I once heard a man brag about the fact that, in running a certain organization, he'd written fourteen grant proposals and had gotten awards on all of them. My immediate reaction was: "Then you aren't writing enough grant proposals." If every proposal you write results in an award, you are playing it too safe.

I think that success rates are a delicate balance. If they are too low, then you're right, Paula, you need to rethink your approach. But if they're too high, you're probably not taking enough risks. Especially in the case of an organization with longstanding relationships with funders, where your success rate is going to have a higher "floor" already.

Grantwriters, as we've described, are not only responsible for writing proposals--we are also responsible for finding new prospects, or finding new ways to approach old prospects. So I tend to phrase my successes in terms of actual dollars raised. "Success rate" can come in handy, but the bottom line is really: what have you done for the bottom line?

P.S. One caveat--some proposals are written to get a "foot in the door"—put your name in front of a funder so that you can cultivate a relationship that in the future will result in more serious support. So a $10,000 grant today may not seem like much to an organization with a $7 million operating budget, but that might open the door for a future gift of, say, a quarter-million. So small grants are sometimes worth more than their immediate contribution to the bottom line.

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Response from Joe:

However, I can talk a bit about rejection from the perspective of the freelance grantwriter.

If I try to secure a grant for an individual, I have about a 10% success rate and a 90% rejection rate.
If I try to secure a grant for an animal shelter, I have a 95% success rate.

If I take a new client and have never sought grants in that client's area of need, I may locate 50 possibilities of funding for that client. Then we send out 50 letters of inquiry. Perhaps 25 will be rejected and 25 will ask us to apply for a grant. After we apply, perhaps five foundations will send us a grant. In short, one never knows what the success rate will be in this instance.

My business was built on rejection.

Finally, about two years ago a grantwriting firm became familiar with my work. The owner wanted to hire me to work for him. He asked me what my success rate was. I told him overall, maybe 50%, maybe less. He was appalled. He told me I could never work for him because the success rate at his firm was well into the 90th percentile. I told him that in my freelance grantwriting business not even God could get a 90+ percent success rate.

To answer your question, I would assume that because he didn't offer me the job, the success rate may be a factor in hiring one for a paid position. (I wouldn't have worked for him anyway. I relish being on my own.)

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Topic: Looking at an organization’s tax forms

Question from W.M. about the information found on tax forms:
Thanks very much for your resources. Even though I am an online researcher (Fed research works much better that way), I know from my own experience that my brain works much better than any search engine, and why my clients have liked my work over say State Net or the like. I can read and make associations no search engine or large paid service can provide.
I have another question about the research aspect. Many years ago I took a 1/2 day class at The Foundation Center on using their resources, and they made a big point about the importance of looking at foundations tax information before applying. Any thoughts on this claim? And why?
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Response from Cara:
The part of the 990 that I use the most is the list of grants given by the foundation. Sometimes there is a level of detail in the 990 that is either not on the foundation's web site (if they even have one) or in the listings in the Foundation Directory. Also, by comparing different years, you can see if the same 20 organizations receive funding every year or if the foundation gives to a variety of organizations.
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Response from Joe:
You also asked about the importance of looking at a foundation's tax information before applying. I DON'T KNOW THE ANSWER; I HOPE MY COLLEAGUES CAN HELP WITH THAT QUESTION. The only tax information I look at is Form 990---the nonprofit's tax information. I'm checking to see whether or not they have the resources to pay my fee.

As a freelance grantwriter, here's what I look at before I apply to a foundation: The foundation's.....
Program Purpose
Funding Priorities
Program Limitations
Geographic Focus
Types of Programs Funded
Targeted Population
Type of support
Sample Grants
Foundation Assets
Application Information

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Response from Paula:
"The part of the 990 that I use the most is the list of grants given by the foundation. Sometimes there is a level of detail in the 990 that is either not on the foundation's web site (if they even have one) or in the listings in the Foundation Directory. Also, by comparing different years, you can see if the same 20 organizations receive funding every year or if the foundation gives to a variety of organizations."

Yes, exactly right. Let me be even more specific about what the 990 contains. The 990 contains every grant that foundation made in a given year. Dollar amounts and names of grantees. This is very importent because just like with people and organizations, sometimes they say one thing and do another. For example, a foundation may say it supports "social service programs for underserved children," but their 990 shows that mixed in with a bunch of social service grants, there are four or five grants to opera companies across the US.

When you run across an inconsistency like that, there are several possible explanations:

1) There's a Board member in this foundation who is an opera lover and who is allowed to make grants to his or her pet organizations--which means the foundation has a policy of letting individual board members fund what they want, at least some of the time

2) The grants to opera companies went to support specific programs that brought opera to underprivileged kids

3) The foundation's giving priorities are legitimately shifting but their public representation (website, mission statement, brochures, annual reports) has not been updated yet

4) The foundation is really unsophsticated and does not even know that they owe the public a debt of clarity and consistency between what they say and what they do.

To find out which of these is the case, start with (2) and telephone the opera companies to ask what the grants were for. Occasionally the purpose of the grant will be stated in the 990 but seldom with the precision that I need to realy understand what the money was for. Talk to the grant writer and just ask straight out in a collegal spirit what that grant was for, explaning (truthfully) that you are trying to understand the giving priorities of that foundation. Nine times out of ten, they will tell you.

If you determine (2) is not the case, then you have to either call the foundation directly or talk to someone you know who is connected with the foundation (if indeed you know someone there). Don't ask about (1) or (4)--that would be kind of impertinent. Focus on (3) and ask how their giving priorities are evolving. Their answer to that will give you clues about what's really going on.

I enjoy this "sleuthing" part of the job very much because each foundation is like a hand carved Chinese puzzle--absolutely unique and worthy of special effort to figure it out.

990s also give lists of Board members, which are handy for running your own board and seeing if anyone knows anyone.

************************************************************************************************************************************************************
Topic: Final thoughts and closing remarks
Comment from Joe:
This will end today and we'll be as ships passing in the night.........
My role in this discussion was to introduce you to the following aspects of the job known as Freelance Grantwriting:

Great Need for Freelance Grantwriters
Documents to Read before Accepting a Nonprofit as a Client
Terms of the Grantwriter's Contract with Nonprofits
Monetary Rewards of Freelance Grantwriting
Personal and Emotional Rewards of Freelance Grantwriting
Drawbacks of Freelance Grantwriting
Personal Characteristics Needed to be a successful Freelance Grantwriter
The Grant Cycle (How Grantwriting Works)
Computer vs Library Resources and Research
Grantwriter or Fundraiser
Registration with the Attorney General
Charlatans in the Profession
Grantwriting Firms and Consultant Firms
Struggling, Vulnerable Nonprofit Organizations
Number of Potential Nonprofit Clients (1.5 million)
Grantseeking for Individuals
Grantseeking for Nonprofits
Grantwriter's Ethics (The Importance of Honesty)
Importance of Rejection
Success Rates

For over 20 years, I have enjoyed the challenge that freelance grantwriting offers. So I offer you this challenge: If you want to try your hand at freelance grantwriting, I will be available for consultation. Please, just don't send any new clients my way; I'm booked solid through the end of 2007. But I would consider it an honor to usher more grantwriters into the field. The prospective clients which I must turn away on a daily basis always ask, "Is there anybody else (whom) you could recommend to help us?" My reply is always negative.

grantwriter1@msn.com
**********************************************************************
Comment from Sherri:

I wanted to take the opportunity once again to thank Paula for her work as coordinator (and participant!) for this "grant writing" discussion here on WRK4US. I'm grateful for the opportunity to share my experiences and my opinions about a career I have found to be so greatly fulfilling.

Thanks as well to the other speakers and all the subscribers for your questions and your contributions. I'm leading a round-table on grants management in the near future, and your posts will be an invaluable help as I organize my thoughts and my "talking points" for that event.

I hope my thoughts have been of use along the way, and that my flood of Friday posts weren't overwhelming of off-putting. The middle of my week got more chaotic than I'd initially expected, and I found myself with some open time today where I could write the notes I wanted to write yesterday and Wednesday!

Anyhow, I'll stay subscribed to WRK4US as I've been for years, so if anyone wants to contact me down the line (on or off-channel), you know where to find me.

swilcauskas@fi.edu
***********************************************************************
Comment from Celeste:
I, too, will be signing off from our panel discussion. I want to once again echo
Sherri's remarks (I've been doing that a lot lately, haven't I?)in thanking
Paula, the other panelists, and the discussion participants--good questions,
and they evoked some responses that surprised and educated me. Thanks again to all.

************************************************************************

Comment from Paula
Kudos to everyone for a great, great discussion! Speakers, subscribers, everybody did a super job of asking great questions and giving great answers. On behalf of the entire WRK4US population, I would like to express deep gratitude to Joe, Cara, Sherri and Celeste. They shared very generously of their time, knowledge and experience, for which we are much in their debt.

Thanks as well to those of you who actually read my own rather prolific messages. It was a lot of fun to participate in this discussion as speaker and I really appreciate your indulgence. Way to go, everyone!
Special praise is due to Anne Whisnant, who dealt with a blizzard of subscriber requests and managed to solve most of the problems quickly and easily even during a super-busy week at her job. Anne deserves enormous gratitude from all of us for taking WRK4US under her wing and adding technical list management duties to her already full workload at the Franklin Humanities Institute at Duke. Thank you Anne!!
I am not sure what our next discussion topic will be or when it will take place, but I am open to suggestions, OFF LIST. Until then, the list will revert back to its usual mode of freeform discussion with no official "speakers." All subjects are OK as long as they relate directly to nonacademic careers for people with graduate degrees in humanities, education or social science.
pfchambers@sbcglobal.net

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