WebAdmin, Author at Arts Cubed

Is your project “grant-ready”?

I participated in a great discussion today emerged in the Grant Writer’s Network on Linked In “How do you deal with clients who don’t provide you with the detailed information you need to write the grant?”

This comes up numerous times when organizations ask me to write a grant for one of their projects. They want to know, of course, how much it will cost them, but the number of hours of work, depends on how ready they are for grant writing to begin.

Normally writing a grant takes 8-16 hours of work time (depending on the program) and I am relunctant to bill more than 16 hours for any grant, because it gets expensive for the organization and it is hard for organizations to understand why a “writing” task could take longer than 2 full work days. This happens when they are unfamilar with the work involved outside of the writing task.

There are hidden hours of work when you or your staff don’t give me the information I need and I have to repeatedly request information, explain and re-explain what I need. There is also extra work involved when the project is handed over with incomplete or missing information. Sometimes I have had to research and create statistics/budgets myself from raw data or I have had to seek and request quotes for capital costs. One time I had to research performance spaces and create ticket scaling in each hall to come up with a realistic ticket revenue model. These are all tasks that are far outside of what you should expect from a grant writer.

With some grantwriting tasks I have spent more time emailing the organization’s staff with questions and requests than I have working on assuring they have the best possible proposal to submit to a funder. This isn’t just stressful for me, it is an avoidable cost for your organization.

What should you expect to provide to a grantwriter?

Organizational information: Mission, history, awards, reviews, bios of key staff involved, board list
Project information: The who, what, where and why of the project
Financial information: Audited financials, current year budget, working project budget
Support letters from partner organization, or who to contact to get the support letters.
Required support documentation in acceptable formats (videos, photographs, audio, etc.)

I’d suggest that you keep all the annually updated organizational information in a zipped “organizational information” folder for easy emailing or post the documents in a password secured location for downloading. That will save you a lot of time finding the documents individually.

Project information seems to cause people more difficulty. If you lack program details you aren’t going to be able to effectively raise money. You cannot wait to “see if you get the money” before finalizing your plan. Plan your optimal project and contingencies, then you are ready to raise the money!

Larry Carbone, Veterinarian and Animal Rights Activist

The Project

Starting with content on a WordPress.com blog, create a multi-faceted site for an individual with streams of activity including consulting, activism, nature photography and crafting.

The Look

I drew on colours from the site owners photography and pottery.

Logo

The site logo was taken from art on the site owner’s pottery.

Sanko Japanese Foods

I saw an article about this store in Blog TO and just had to go take a look.

Kensington Market-Cheese Magic

This is the Cheese Magic shop in Toronto’s Kensington Market neighbourhood. A predominately Jewish owned shop location in the 1950’s and 60’s, it has welcomed numerous waves of immigrant shop owners and now is an iconic tourist destination.

It was also the setting for a much-loved CBC sitcom “King of Kensington”.

I was drawing from a photograph in this sketch and working only in markers.

I have been taking a course in using markers and I think I’m getting the hang of these new techniques but. . . really missing my water colour box.

Ron Royer, Composer and Conductor

This project presented several challenges. The client had been left with an unworkable site by a web developer that used multiple subscription plugins to create content. A year later with all the subscriptions lapsed, content became increasingly broken and restoring the site would mean a ridiculous investment in monthly or annual fees. The job then was to retrieve the data and reconstruct the site on a non-subscription basis while maintaining much of the same look and feel.

The “L”

Something reminded me of a sign above a hotel in Dryden, ON where only one letter remained illuminated. Locals referred to it as “The ‘L'”.

Grant writing from Rough Draft to Final

Summary:

Having a prior common understanding of the steps and process involved in achieving a submission-ready grant application helps collaborative grant writing teams work seamlessly. Before we even start writing we are assuming that all team members have reviewed the guidelines, have reviewed any additional information about the grant process such as checklists and are familiar with the project (or area they will be contributing to) and we have assembled everything we need to begin to work (needed quotes, support documents, partnership agreements, research sources, ). It is essential that no one who has not read the guidelines write anything for the grant as they might introduce fatal errors that at best will waste time correcting and at worst could lead to the failure of the application. So at the outset team members have to be prepared to recuse themselves if they lack the time to get up to speed.

Rough Draft:

At the rough draft stage we need to:

Create a working document or documents via either working on a copy of an application form OR ,if the application is to be entered in an online portal, create a working document from all the questions contained in the application inclusive of any information about word/character count or other notes. Ideally create this document in a collaborative writing space such as a wiki or Google Drive. The weakness of passing documents back and forth or using a shared storage space such as Drop Box is confusion caused by proliferation of copies and the potential for an editor to replace the most recent copy with older copy. Don’t forget to include the description fields for document upload as you may not be able to create descriptions of video and audio uploads without input. You may need to create several documents if there are charts or tables as a part of the document. If the budget document in the grant application is unduly restrictive, you may wish to additionally create a working budget document. If working collaboratively, create the documents in a collaborative cloud space and share both documents and the folder with collaborators.
Next add rough content to the document including cut and paste content from your fodder documents (boiler plate, past applications, project descriptions, email, etc.) Don’t worry about number of words, grammar, or spelling at this point.
Mark up content flagging where content is missing, answers are needed and where additional work may need to be done (seek quotes, do research, ask permissions, look up addresses) Assign names to tasks where possible.

First Review Tasks:

Go through and highlight the best/most pertinent points in your copy with attention to what addresses the question and the program guidelines best. Query how these points might be expanded for further development
Assign the tasks to assemble missing information with deadlines attached .

First Full Draft:

Once the deadline for follow-up tasks to the Rough Draft stage is past, begin work on the First Draft. This will be a complete, compliant first grant submission copy by the time it is complete.
During this phase you will:

Combine all pertinent facts into coherent answers addressing the question, avoiding duplication and within word count.
Where there is extra content that seems valid, save it separately in case it can be used in another question, or, on reflection to be included in the Final Draft as substitute copy.
Complete all charts, schedules, lists, budgets and, if needed, adjust narrative answers consistent with budget, schedules, etc.

Review:

Review answers for any duplication or omissions and shift content as appropriate to questions as a first step
Review answers for sense, grammar, consistent tense, and tone/voice. You want to be active, positive and have a voice/language appropriate to the program. Writing for an arts council is different than writing for a community board. Don’t use jargon or academic language unless you are sure it is appropriate to the funder.
Review the budget for notes and compliance to guidelines (e.g. percentage of admin costs, ineligible items)
Send out First Draft for review by team members pointing out places for their specific review. Ask them not to edit the copy but to provide comments in order to preserve word count and style.
Tweaking the First Draft in response to feedback, you now have a second draft and are ready to create your final draft.

Final Draft:

Begin to enter your copy into the application final form or grant portal highlighting each section of your working copy and marking it “entered”. You may have to make tiny edits at this stage due to inconsistency in the way character and word count may be counted by online platforms.
If possible generate a print copy of the final submission for review before submitting and share document that way, otherwise ask team members to review Take a last look at guidelines and funder information to see if anything has been missed.
Upload all necessary attachments if that has not been done previously
If possible at this point “validate” your application to check for any missing questions, attachments.
Once everyone has signed off on the final draft, you are ready to push “Submit”.

Final Thoughts on Avoiding Difficulties in Grant Writing:

Spend adequate time on research, review and assembling materials. Expect this to take 50% or more of the time spent on working on the total grant.
Do not have editors on your team who are not fully aware of the project and grant guidelines; last minute ill-advised editing, often by a manager, is a common cause of application failures so keep the editing team small and knowledgeable.
Do not edit for grammar, voice, etc too early as you waste time editing content you might never use
Agree on one editor for tense, grammar, voice. Don’t waste time with editing back and forth on style issues
Don’t apply fancy formatting. It won’t translate to most forms and where it is possible is best done at the very end.
Have a common understanding of what is meant by “rough draft”, “first draft” and “final draft.” This is essential to success, and prevents conflict.

Church Street Pawn Shops

This month was voting day in Ontario and our polling station was at the Metropolitan United Church on Church Street in Toronto. There’s a couple of blocks of Church between old Toronto and the Church/Wellesley village where things get a bit seedy and there’s a concentration of pawn shops, loan outfits and nail salons. As I looked at this colourful block early in June, I noticed upstairs windows papered over and empty stores. I suspect this block is going to be developed soon. Probably they’ll keep at least the older storefronts.

#urbansketching

Sketching Bombay Palace

When I got my first job in Toronto about 20 years ago, the staff at the theatre took me out to lunch at the Bombay Palace where they had a great Indian lunch buffet. Over the years I’ve seen it have boom times and bust times but it keeps hanging on. It’s a bit off the beaten track tucked away on an unfashionable end of Jarvis Street but just across from the lovely St. James Park.