Increased Competition:

As the demand for grant funding continues to rise, the competition among organizations and individuals seeking grants has become more intense. Currently, the funding levels for many federal grants is ranging around the 90^th percentile and above.

Evolving Donor Priorities:

Donor priorities may shift over time due to changes in political, economic, or social landscapes, which require grant writers to adapt their proposals accordingly. For example, as presidential administrations emphasize their research and educational priorities, funding also changes to reflect these interests.

Demonstrating Impact and Sustainability:

Funders increasingly expect grant applicants to demonstrate their projects’ potential impact and sustainability. Grant writers must develop strategies for effectively measuring and communicating the outcomes and institutionalization of their initiatives to secure funding and ensure long-term viability for their organizations.

Limited Resources and Capacity:

Many organizations that increasingly face internal budget cuts often reduce resources necessary for grant writing efforts, such as staff time and training. These cuts pose a significant challenge for grant writers, who must often juggle multiple responsibilities and priorities while pursuing funding opportunities.

Adapting to Digital Platforms

With the increasing digitization of grant application processes, grant writers need to adapt to numerous online platforms and technologies. This may require taking extra time to learn new software and digital communication strategies to effectively submit their project proposals to funders.

So, what must grant writers and organizations do in the face of these obstacles? First and foremost, institutions need to understand that internal cuts result in much larger consequences for external giving. Secondly, grant seekers must constantly stay current on evolving donor priorities, digital platforms and technologies. Thirdly, grant writers must ensure sustainability by institutionalizing their initial funding so that they become ongoing efforts, such as train the trainers programs, infusing student learning in existing courses, or creating focus groups that can continue to serve their communities after the donor’s funding ends.

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1. Planning Ahead: “What are the steps I need to take before I write?”

Grant writing takes time. This includes excellent research, exceptional writing, understanding the donor’s mission, making the match, collaborating with colleagues, planning strategically, and developing an outstanding business plan. If your proposal is prepared correctly, it will have higher chances of rising to the top of the competition and receiving the funds. In the planning process, laying out proposal steps clearly and realistically can be achieved by organizing the activities in terms of the time it will take to effectively accomplish them.

2. Matching the Idea With the Donor: “How can you assure that you found the right donor?”

 One of the most fatal mistakes any grant writer can make is to ignore the interests of the donor. “Making the match” means aligning your mission and your funding request with the donor’s mission. The closer both of you are in what you wish to accomplish, the more likely you will be funded. Also, looking at funded projects will give you a very good idea of the donor’s interests and focus. Ultimately, donors do not care what you need or want funded; they care about what they wish to fund.

3.  Being Concise and to the Point: “What steps will narrow the scope of my proposal?”     

 One of the major reasons for proposal rejection is that the request is overly ambitious and tries to tackle far more than can be accomplished within the timeline of the grant. Rather than trying to solve every problem related to your request, focus on one or two issues that can realistically be resolved within budget and time constraints of the proposal. Also, many grants require the consideration of various potential factors before concluding that the idea is doable, focused, and promising. You need to envision as many of these elements as possible to be certain that you are on the right path. Narrowing the scope of your idea to a smaller scale is often a much safer and more successful approach.

4. Knowing the Review Process: “How do I understand the proposal review process?”

To successfully survive the review process, you must know the review criteria by which you will be judged and who is reviewing your proposal. In some cases this is easy, but in others, where the process is blind, it is extremely difficult. In the latter case, you can ask the administrator in charge of the process what the experience and expertise of the reviewers will be. Your reviewers have a very short window to review your proposal and worse yet, an even shorter window for the panel discussion. The easier you make it for the reviewers to understand your idea, the greater your chances of being funded.

5. Networking and Collaboration: “How do I identify collaborators to strengthen my proposal?”

Creating effective partnerships requires collective vision, purpose, buy-in, and mutual respect. Without these elements, it is difficult to maintain the momentum of true collaboration. Each partner must be able to contribute knowledge and expertise that would be missing without their involvement. The complexity of many projects requires interdisciplinary efforts and networking. Understanding this, funding agencies now believe in the power of partnerships; and so should you.

At the end of the day, there are many components to a grant proposal. The first and most important is spending the time to understand the donor, then positioning all the pieces of the puzzle effectively together, and finally writing a stellar request. The pieces must include careful planning, focus, and collaboration.

The post Five Common Problems Facing Grant Writers – Part II appeared first on Grant Training Center Blog.

1. Timelines: “We can never find the time to dedicate to writing grant proposals.”

The most important solution is to work proactively rather than reactively. One participant said that her not-for-profit developed a yearly timeline of the grants they wished to submit, rather than waiting for the announcements, which can come late as 10 days prior to the submission deadline. This may sound like a difficult undertaking, but once done, it will be easy to match the amount of labor to available personnel and understand the capacity of the organization.

2. Rejections: “We fear rejections and when we get them, we often feel angry and frustrated, almost to the point of not wanting to rewrite the proposal.”

The answer is to understand that a grant should be viewed as an opportunity, and not taken personally. If the team has a strategic and broad picture of the funding landscape for which they apply throughout the year, it will be understood that some grants will fail. Ultimately, when it comes to requests for funding, one has to place their ego in their pocket.

3. Telling a good story: “The reviewers said that we need to tell an enthusiastic story, but it was difficult for us to understand what they meant.”

The universal answer is to engage the donor. Thus, as a proposal writer, one must know how grants will be evaluated and, if possible, who the evaluators will be. Connecting with donors and reviewers is vital to successfully getting funded. The more one knows about them, the more effectively one can spark their interest with the story.

4. Innovation: “We had a difficult time understanding what the donor meant by innovation.”

The answer here is that innovative concepts emerge from preliminary data, pilot studies, and extensive research. In almost all cases, donors are looking for innovative approaches that will solve an existing problem or contribute to advancement in the field.

5. Overambitious idea: “Our grant was rejected because the idea was overambitious. How do we narrow the focus?”

Rather than trying to solve every problem related to the project at hand, it is best to focus on one or two issues that can realistically be resolved within the budgetary and time constraints of the proposal. Narrowing the scope of the idea to a smaller scale is often a much safer and more successful approach.

The participants chose these key obstacles, for it takes time to narrow ideas, assure innovation and write a good story. In the following blog, I will discuss other obstacles that my audience brought to the table.

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