Should you pay for a grant writer?
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ďƒ˜The art of grant writing is really an overlooked skill. Many people think they can be a grant writer just by picking up a pen or these days in using a keyboard. ďƒ˜ Essentially if your organisation or business wants to lodge grant submissions either you have to have the skills in-house, you have to pay for a grant writer on a casual basis, you have to hire a full time or a regular grant writer or find a grant writer who will undertake the work for free.
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Developing in-house skills Grant writing is an easy skill to pick up. It is just a matter of filling out a form and writing a story about your project – right? Effective grant writing requires a strategic approach, you need to be able to identify available opportunities for starters, you then have develop your project concepts to make them more “fundable”. There are a myriad of other issues to consider such as organising referees, developing budgets, coordinating partners etc . So if you decide to develop the skills in-house you really need to identify someone with great research and wordsmithing skills.
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will take a novice grant writer at least 6 months to get yup to speed. So as you can see this is not an easy or cheap process. Good grant writers are in great demand so you could train someone up and have them poached by another organisation to start the process all over again.
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Hiring a Casual Grant Writer/Grant Writing Consultant ďƒ˜The casual grant writer might be a viable solution. However you need to find a highly skilled grant writer willing to work on a casual basis. Also you need to consider their availability. ďƒ˜You might have a pressing need for a submission to be prepared but your grant writer might be working for someone else and not be available. Such is the nature of a casual/consultant. ďƒ˜Also a casual grant writer/consultant will also charge a dearer hourly rate generally or cost you more that someone you engage who has regular work. 07/14/14
Hiring a Full time/Regular Grant Writer/Grant Writing Consultant ďƒ˜A regular/permanent grant writer/grant writing consultant really is only really a viable option for larger organizations of if you have many projects that require funding. ďƒ˜You can either find someone and employ them on salary or you can find a grant writing company and engage the services of a grant writer on a more regular basis under a retainer arrangement. ďƒ˜Engaging a grant writing company such as Red Tape Busters ensures you have a grant writer at your disposal as and when you need them.
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Engaging someone like us on a retainer basis ensures you will always have a quality consultant available and we can do everything from developing your projects, to finding grant opportunities, to matching grants to projects, to writing the submissions and everything that goes with that process, to assisting you acquit the funding opportunities. Essentially hiring a company to provide grant writing services means you only pay for the consultants when they are working for you – there is no down time, no lost time, no sick leave or holidays – you only pay for productive time.
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Free Grant Writer Now I am not aware of any free grant writers out there. I have heard some offer a non win no fee service but those grant writers will be starving and out of business in a few weeks or months. The sad reality of grant writing is that you can be the best organisation, with the best project with the best submission and still not receive funding so working on a no win no fee basis is a flawed strategy in the grant writing world. Free grant writers might be out there offering a pro bono service but again I haven’t heard of them. If good grant writers were out there and were free gee they would be busy! 07/14/14
Each organisation however is different with different needs but where organisations think that developing the skills an in-house is the cheapest and best way of winning grants – seriously I suggest they should think again. Contact us at Red Tape Busters http://www.redtapebusters.com/ should you require specialist grant or tender writing experience to help your organisation or business win grant funding or achieve successes with tenders.
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Contact Us Red Tape Busters Pty Ltd. ABN: 39 094 823 417 PO Box 3126 WARNER QLD 4500 Telephone: 07 3882 2055 Facsimile: 07 3882 2066 Email Address: admin@redtapebusters.com.au