Yesterday we started our little series here on how you can make grant writing a viable part of your freelance writing business. Check out “How to Write a Grant - Part I” to get caught up on Where to Look and What to Look For. Now we’re going to move into a bit more of the mechanics of grant writing. I feel like I need to say at this point that these are just some basic suggestions. If you really want to learn how to write a grant, you might want to consider taking a course at your local college. In fact, a lot of community centers even offer workshops on the subject.

So, let’s jump back in to our tutorial!

Taking the First Step

If you’ve agreed to help your new client write a grant proposal, then there are a couple of questions you’re going to need to answer pretty quickly. For example:

• Where are we applying?
• Do we fit the guidelines?
• Does the funder even want to hear from us?

That third question often gets overlooked, and when it does, everyone’s time has been wasted. If you spend weeks writing a proposal to a foundation that doesn’t accept unsolicited proposals, you’re not going to do anything but waste your client’s money and possibly annoy the grant maker. One of the best ways to know if the funder is interested is because he sent an “RFP” to the client’s organization. This is a “request for proposal” that comes directly from the grant maker to say, “Hey, we’re going to be offering some grants pretty soon, and we think your organization might be interested in applying.” It doesn’t mean that you’re guaranteed anything, but it is always nice to be asked, right?

Oftentimes, you will follow up the RFP by sending n a “letter of intent,” especially if the funder has asked you to do so. Remember, you always want to follow the funder’s requests to the letter. After all, they’re the ones dishing out the dough. The letter of intent is basically a short (no more than one or two pages) document that sums up the project you’re looking to fund, gives a little history of the client’s organization, and makes a good case for how you fit the grant maker’s guidelines. With luck, this will get you an actual invitation to submit a grant.

Writing the Grant Proposal

Does it seem odd that it’s taken us two days and this many words to get to the part where you actually start working on the proposal? Welcome to the world of grant writing. Unfortunately, much of the process is tedious and painstaking – with the added bonus of unrealistically quick turn-around dates to make deadlines. Doesn’t that sound like a treat? I’ve been known to do some of my very best writing under pressure, and these situations can be nerve-wracking, but a heck of a lot of fun.

In writing the proposal, you’ll basically need to go through the stack of papers supplied by the funder and make sure that you read, fill out, and triple-check every line of text.

Most likely, the grant proposal will include a narrative of the project and a history of the organization. These are generally the most enjoyable parts to write. You can use a little creativity here, although you always want the organization to come across as professional. In addition to this narrative, however, you will also need to include any other documentation requested in the proposal packet. This often includes:

• The organization’s overall budget.
• The budget for the specific project or program for which you’re seeking funding.
• Previous years’ annual reports.
• Information about key staff and board members.

In addition, many grant makers will require you to explain to them the method the organization will use to evaluate the success of the grant. These could include surveying the organization’s clients, meeting some sort of financial goal, or meeting other pre-determined benchmarks.

The important thing to remember when it’s time to gather all of this information, is that it’s generally going to be someone else’s responsibility. It will be the client’s responsibility to get those budgets to you (or to include them in the documents later if he isn’t comfortable sharing that information with a freelance writer). All of the supporting documents will need to be collected by him and his staff. Since they are the ones who will be reporting back to the funder later, they also need to be prepared to follow through on the evaluation process and should therefore be instrumental in developing one that works.

This part is very, very hard. Nonprofit professionals are busy. Sometimes they misplace things. Yours is one of 50 deadlines they’re probably facing at any given time. If you want your grant proposal to be successful, you may find yourself having to get a little tough on your client. Be professional, but remember that it’s for his own good.

Submitting the Grant Proposal

As with every other step in this process, the most important part of your job is to follow the funder’s guidelines exactly. Many grant makers will request a certain number of copies to be submitted. It makes sense. If they have 100 (probably more) grant seekers each submitting a 20-page proposal, they are not going to pay to make all of those photo copies so that the entire board of directors can read what you have to say. If they say not to photocopy front-to-back, don’t copy front-to-back. If they say not to staple the documents together, don’t staple the documents together. I think you get what I’m saying here.

Since you’re a freelance writer, it’s possible that you’ll just be doing your portion of the grant proposal and will then send it back to the client who will do the actual submission. While it might not technically be your job at this point, I think it is totally worthwhile to make the client extra aware of any of the submission guidelines we just mentioned above. He might be busy and just think he needs to tuck your documents into an envelope and mail them off, rather than make copies and mail them via Priority Mail – or whatever it was that the grant maker required.

Even if you’re done writing, you still want the client to have the best shot possible at the grant, right? If he doesn’t get it, you can move on.  But if he does get it, well, you look great; and you’re going to get more business from him and from other organizations when you explain to them what a great funding record you’ve developed.

Now that you’ve got some of the basics of how to write grants, we’ll spend the last installment of our series looking at what you really want to avoid if you plan to become a successful freelance grant writer.

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