I’ve been thinking about grant proposal writing. It’s that time of year again when proposal writers for education projects finish up this year’s efforts and begin preparing for the next major funding cycle. Both my thinking and proposal writing are pedantic!
I don’t know how many proposals I’ve written. I stopped counting them. Most received funding, but not all.
Later, I’ll share thoughts about reviewing proposals submitted for competitive funding by the U.S. Department of Education and a smaller agency. Maybe someone will find these thoughts useful in planning how to obtain and use a Tablet PC in a school or classroom.
Above all, try to keep everything simple. Most projects become complicated without anyone trying to make them so.
Grant Proposal Writing. Teachers hear others frequently say they are “writing a grant.” Please note that people may write a grant application; a funding agency issues a grant, usually in the form of a contract designating use of funds to pay for some specific result an educator proposes to generate.
Contracts. Funding agencies offer grants, but contract for results. If you want more funding, make sure you can meet or exceed the terms of the contract.
Funds for Projects. A few agencies fund programs, but most fund projects within existing programs or as prototypes for future programs.
Team Effort. Grant proposal writing is a team effort. So is fulfilling a contract. No one knows it all or can do it all alone, successful, all the time, to perform competitively at the highest levels of funding.
Educational Politics. Every proposal writer should know his or her position in education politics. I mean the overt politics of diverse interests among professional educators, not just the private interactions and cliques among colleagues.
It’s tricky. One term (such as school reform) or a consultant with a specialty in advanced technology can trigger an educational reviewer with a preference for slow-schools to downgrade your proposal. Do your political homework. Know where your idea stands in educational politics. Then word-craft your proposal to address the interests of student achievement in ways acceptable to multiple educational political positions of your proposed funding agency or individual.
Brain Trust. Assemble a brain trust of people who specialize in various important aspects of the program you want funded. Successful grant users have a brain trust of people who listen to and critique specialized ideas that may or may not lead to funding before, during and after you write a proposal. Business people use brain trusts to monitor and clarify their thinking about business related topics. Blogs in education serve some of that same function. But, nothing substitutes for people you can call anytime you want to talk through a point you know is in their specialty.
Writing Time. Many of my colleagues scheduled at least 100 work-hours to prepare a competitive proposal. We used this time to assemble relevant information from databases, professional literature, previous project reports, funding agency requirements, etc. A smooth running, experienced team can eat up this time quickly. Beginning teams may take longer. We spent additional time meeting with funding agency representatives, assembling or adjusting our team, arranging for consultants and project evaluators, etc.
Purpose. State a working purpose before starting to write a proposal. You may change it, but know the results you want measured before funding expires. For example, First grade students will raise average mathematics CAT scores 10 percentile points by using XYZ Tablet PC based mathematics software. Make sure these changes exceed measurement errors on standardized tests or their proxies.
The Problem. Granting agencies and individuals offer to assist specialists solve a problem. Grant applications require a problem statement. Probably this statement must address a specific aspect of the Leave No Child Behind public policy. Reduce this statement to one sentence of 10 to 12 words, maximum. Then, support your claim with empirical data that leads logically to your proposed increased measurable achievement(s).
This can be tricky. Funding agencies expect to fund successful people involved in successful programs. That means you must demonstrate with data your successes and how you propose to use their funding to add to results you already obtain from your other resources.
Evaluation Section. Begin proposal writing with the Evaluation Section. That’s where you operationalize results you expect to measure. If you can’t measure your results, then delay asking someone for money to fund your project until you figure how to evaluate your results credibly.
Start Small. If you or your school district is unknown to the funding agency, start with a proposal for a small, easily manageable project appended to a successful, on-going school program. Call it a pilot project, if administrators and board members accept that term. Know you can deliver the results you propose, because you have already operated an even smaller version of this project without external funding.
Budgeting. School and external agency funding cycles may not mesh. So, create your own mesh that seems to maximize student benefits from your proposed project.
Determine what indices your funding agency uses to define acceptable parameters of funding. For example, calculated the number of Professional Years (a technical term for some funding agencies; maybe your funding agency uses another construct with a similar function) required to complete the project, and then multiplied by $100,000 per Professional Year (or whatever amount your funding agency accepts). That amount covers one full time equivalent professional, plus support personnel and resources for that professional. Then, distribute that amount across personnel, resources, and other allowable budget categories.
Also, negotiate with the school to receive back some of the overhead the school collects from the funder for operating the project.
Before Funding. Figure out a way to begin informally to conduct your project before external funding arrives. This may mean adding more time to your daily schedule. This is an operational way to demonstrate your commitment to make this project a success.
An early start offers an advantage over those who fill the lag time between application and funding with other activities. An early start also helps to put this project into the same stream as those who work one-up in project funding. That is, they already have preliminary processes and data in place before preparing the proposal. Then, with new project funding, they begin working on processes and data for a future proposed project.
Final Report. While writing the proposal, begin assembling your project final report. At least, draft a table of contents, and insert relevant sections of the proposal into chapter notes or drafts.
Evaluation Criteria. Somehow I forgot to include carefully reviewing evaluation criteria the funding agency will use to determine awarding a grant. Study these criteria before writing anything beyond your one sentence proposed results. Frequently, these criteria include words and phrases that indicate the direction, tone, and focus the funding agency intends to award. Sometimes these words differ from descriptions in other parts of the grant application package. Proposal writers must artfully find common technical references across these differences (knowing relevant professional literature helps this discovery). Then artfully address these references by describing what you plan to accomplish. Address each direct and inferred criterion to earn as many evaluation points as possible. Proposals with the most points get first funding from available designated money. You want to be first in line, before the money runs out.
You should mention that in addition to writing many grants that you also have reviewed grants for the government.