May 2004 — Features
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How to Write GRANTS: The Best Kept Secret in the School Business
Technology is expensive -making innovation beyond the reach of most school budgets. And since constant improvement requires continuous funding, how do school districts, buildings or classroom teachers fund the products they need to improve student learning? The answer is through external grants. But grants require applications, and few, if any, colleges or graduate programs have courses or workshops that teach educators how to write grants; consequently, few professors can write them successfully.
While rural schools have too few people doing too many jobs, urban and suburban schools are often shrouded in frustrating bureaucracy. Despite these challenges, well-written external grant funding can make a big difference in technology access, updates and instructional innovation.
Systems Approach to Grant Applications
Grant opportunities have many things in common: The grant announcements come at the busiest time of year, the timeline is always short and the applications are complex. In addition, the documentation you need is never readily available and nobody wants to do it. And even after all the work, the chance of getting the funding is still low since nobody really knows how to write a grant properly.
However, applying for grants can be a beneficial experience so long as the grant writer learns a few vital skills. First, it should be known that the most important stage in a successful grant writing system's development begins before one word is ever written. I recommend putting simple tools and systems in place that let members of a grant writing team add what only they can, whenever they have the time and opportunity to do so.
Action Summary Page
The first step is developing an action summary page, which usually can be done by a secretary who takes all the important submission information from the RFP and puts it onto one page. This information should include the project name; submission due date and time; days remaining until the due date; mailing address to submit application; prior notification date and contact; number of copies; preferred font, margins and spacing; page limit and location of page numbers; preferences and eligibility requirements; restrictions on grant money use; goals of the funding; acceptable uses of grant money; and requirements for signatures and assurances.
Everyone associated with the grant application should then build a folder on his or her workstation labeled with the grant name. This action summary page should be the first document stored in that project folder. From this point forward, everyone associated with the grant application should know all of the important particulars associated with the correct and timely submission of the proposal. The coordinator of the grant writing team is responsible for keeping track of the date and days left until the grant's submission deadline. As a rule of thumb, use a boldface font for key terms, because the more important the particular, the larger the font size should be on the action summary page.
Each member of the team also must be focused on what the grant will and will not fund each time he or she opens the file to write. In addition, anyone who is required to provide an assurance or signature for the grant must be told that the application is being developed and will require his or her immediate attention when it is completed. The goal is to ensure that there are no surprises for district superintendents or treasurers.
