The Unlock-Grants course — developed for all those new to grants — is useful to so many in (and serving) the nonprofit sector. In this series, we’ve already seen its usefulness to grantseekers (of course), but also to those that hire grantseekers, and also to grantmakers. Next up, we’ll look at how the Unlock-Grants course can help my fellow consultants — specifically consulting groups that hire new writers for their team.
Hiring an individual to fill out your grant writing team typically means starting with someone new to grants and training them yourselves. You can, of course, do that. And the administrative piece of how your team works is all you! You have your expectations and your way of working. No one but you can train on that.
But if you hire someone new to grants, who doesn’t know:
- the nomenclature,
- what a Need Statement is supposed to be,
- how to judge if a program, funder, or case is strong enough,
- where or how to look for funders,
- what a program budget is supposed to look like, or
- how grants work
then you’re starting from the ground up with them, probably burning up time you (or another senior staffer) could be using on billable hours.
But if you have the Unlock-Grants course sitting on the shelf, your new-hire could go through the online self-paced course, and take their questions and draft proposals to the weekly live group calls that are included with the course. And you could go back to working for your clients!
Otherwise, someone new to your business’ team would have to learn not only the culture; your way of working with each other and with your clients; what is expected of them; and where they leave off and the next team member begins, but they would also have to learn about GRANTS, and that is one HUGE learning curve. They may feel overwhelmed, defeated, and discouraged if they can’t get “a win” right off the bat.
If instead, your new-hire could onboard with a plug-and-play tutorial on grants and grant writing; become conversant in the pieces and parts of a grant proposal and how to handle each; gain confidence, knowledge, PLUS know-how through self-paced content delivered by a fellow GPC, then your other team members (and you) could focus on keeping your current clients happy, and attracting more clients.
Seems like the math doesn’t add up for doing all that training, mentoring, coaching, and reviewing yourself. But you’re the boss!
Yet another way Unlock-Grants is relevant to the entire continuum of the grants industry! Contact me to explore what options we can come up with that work for your situation.
Next time, we’ll investigate how the Unlock-Grants course can be of use to the individual who wants a change, or wants more, in their career.
