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GRANT STRATEGIES
How to prepare a winning grant application
By Jeannie Beckett, Principal
The Beckett Group
Grant writing is a combination of being very detailed and following the directions to being a creative marketeer in developing the story about how your organization will implement a project that will bring benefits to your customers, community and region. The following tip from United States Department of Transportation (USDOT) summarizes what they believe is the “key” to a winning grant writing strategy.
USDOT TIP: The key to an “attractive” application is crafting an effective, compelling, and comprehensive story that demonstrates funding need, commitment, and impact.
Below are 10 steps that I have found helpful when advising clients on how to prepare a project to be “grant ready,” and tips on the application preparation.
Steps to building the grant application
1. Build your team and timeline 2. Prioritize your projects 3. Develop a funding matrix for each priority project 4. Define the problem 5. Identify the solution 6. Collect your data (supporting documentation/statistics) 7. Prepare an initial summary of the project including scope, schedule, budget and funding plan 8. Demonstrate the impact of the investment 9. Craft the story 10. Prepare the application
1. Build your team and timeline
This first step is to assemble a team of key players and determine the length Having the right leadership in place is especially important to establish control around oversight, transparency, and accountability.
of time your project will take to implement. If this is an infrastructure project, your team will include both internal and external experts possessing knowledge of such topics as engineering, environment, finance, marketing, operations, grant writing, and lobbying. This will be the team that drives the project through your organization and prepares and reviews the grant application. The leader of this team will be responsible for identifying the timelines, responsibilities, and duties of the different team members. Assemble your team — Having the right leadership in place is especially important to establish control around oversight, transparency, and accountability. This team will probably follow the project through the development process including grant application, award, obligation, implementation and close- out activities. Determine the timeline — If you are going to try to fund the project with federal funds, this is a long process which starts with project planning, preengineering, preliminary engineering, public outreach, environmental review, final design, construction, and closeout. Getting a federal grant can take multiple applications. Most U.S. federal funding programs solicit applications once per year. It is not unusual for a project to take three to four funding rounds to secure federal funds. If you are looking for quick money, federal funding is not your solution. Instead, look at internal funds or local funding sources, private partners, or financial institutions.
2. Prioritize your projects
With the timeframe and list of projects in mind, prioritize which project needs federal funding and has the characteristics that meet federal funding program guidelines.
Once your priority projects have been identified, build a funding matrix for each project. This matrix should list source of funds and amount, indicate whether the funding is secured, or requested. General funding source categories can be listed as internal, local, state, or federal.
4. Define the problem
What is the problem that this project is trying to address? Try to define this as specifically as possible. A suggestion is to describe the current status or “No-Build” option. The “No-Build” alternative describes the current status and what will happen if the project is not built. If necessary, do a needs assessment to refine the problem.
5. Define the solution
This is the “Build” alternative. What will the situation be when the project is completed? Again, be as specific as possible. Describe the elements of the project and any analysis of project results, such as volumes moved, speed increases, etc.
6. Collect your data
The more thorough you can be, the better. You can break down this step into three critical stages:
Determine the area of demograph-
ics — Look closely at the population numbers of the stakeholders you intend to serve and / or affect (both positively and negatively).
Your goal in this step is to make sure you capture everyone who will be impacted by this project. Your needs assessment in Step 1 can be a helpful reference here. Recently, U.S. Federal Grant solicitation has been identified as additional merit criteria that the agencies will be looking at, including climate change, environmental justice, racial equity, and barriers to opportunities. Traditionally, these areas may not have been elements that ports would consider in project development and outreach activities. This is a good time to step back and put a new lens on your project with this criteria in mind.
Analyze the project data — As mentioned before, determine your who, what, where, and when. For example, for an infrastructure project, do you have a schematic of the project? Do you have a “purpose and need” statement? What level are your engineering documents (do you have a set of plans marked 10, 30, or 60 percent)? Have you done any level of environmental review? If so, there is usually a lot of great data in these documents. Does the project focus on urban or rural considerations? (Remember to check the definition of urban versus rural in the specific grant program and Notice of Funding Opportunity as it can change from year to year and program to program. Do you have specific customers that will use the project or specific services offered when completed?
Identify any data gaps and make a plan to gather the lacking data.
Identify stakeholders / project par-
ties (partners) — Lastly, you want to present all relevant data and include all relevant stakeholders for the project and make sure this aligns with the potential grant program. Start to “market” your project to gain support. Prepare a public outreach plan and work with your project neighbors to gain support for the project.
Based upon the previous steps, identify data and documentation needs. Identify data gaps and / or missing statistics (for example, job estimates, detailed cost estimates, or economic impact).
The next step is to prepare a project summary, commonly known as a “1 pager.” This is usually an 8”x11” sheet front and back. Elements to include are the project name, project location, short description of the project, a graphic showing the project schedule, a chart showing the budget, and a funding plan. Don’t forget to add a contact for more information on the project.
8. Demonstrate the impact of the investment
Prepare your benefit and cost analysis to demonstrate the societal benefits and costs resulting from the completion of the project. This will include preparing a monetized analysis of the benefits of the project as well as a comparison of the no-build to the build alternatives.
Photo courtesy of the Port of Bellingham
9. Craft the story
As you refine and craft the story, it is helpful to list the problem that the project is addressing and how the project solves that problem, followed by the impacts to the community, region, and nation when the project is completed. Try to be as quantitative as possible — when specific data is not available try to qualify the results as best as you can.
All of these steps can be completed before a specific funding round is announced. Once a Notice of Funding Opportunity is posted, read it carefully for eligibility, as the project sponsor as well as for the project elements. There is nothing worse than spending months on a grant application only to find you as the project sponsor or the project elements you are trying to fund are ineligible for the specific funding program. Use a prior solicitation to review the specifics of the funding program and, if time and resources are available, prepare a draft application as a starting point.
10. Prepare the application
Once the Notice of Funding Opportunity is posted, read it carefully and diagram out the sections that are required in the grant application. If the solicitation lists the merit criteria and selection process, prepare a scoresheet to self score your draft grant application.
Follow all instructions, do not assume that last year’s notice or application will match this year’s project characteristics or requirements.
Once the application is prepared, have someone who has not been working on the grant review it for content, grammar, and spelling. Does it tell your project’s story, or does it need refinement before being submitted? Make sure that you follow the submittal guidelines and deadlines. The second most common error behind not being eligible is miscalculating the grant deadline to your time zone.
Jeannie Beckett has 30 years of experience in port management, rail facilities, agricultural transfer facilities and economic analysis. Prior to taking the lead position at The Beckett Group, she was Director of Operations for the Port of Tacoma. Becket has also held several other senior roles including, Sr. Director, Inland Transportation, Sr. Director, Budget and Business Planning and Director of budget and Internal Audits.
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