The “Win More Grants” series
Get More knowledgeable to Win More Grants
If you are under the gun to produce more applications and increase grant funding at your agency, what if you are at a loss as to what to do to make that happen? You want to be as productive as possible, and you are doing all you know and feel like you have the capacity to do.
How do you increase that capacity, figure out how to make your efforts more fruitful, and have your time be used most wisely? Where do you go to make that happen? How do you turn into the “2.0” version of yourself and make best use of your time?
Here’s one idea what will help you win more grants, feel more confident, and actually gain more time as you gain more skills.
STRATEGY #5: Get more knowledgeable
To win more grants, look at getting more knowledgeable about grants. Knowing more about grants, the industry and how it works, how to be top-of-mind with funders, and win more grants, has a lot to do with being more knowledgeable.
There’s a million reasons and ways to get more knowledgeable about grants, and invest time and research and resources. Professional development increases your skills, your efficiency, your effectiveness, your win rates. For your agency to invest in yours and other associates’ professional development enhances employee satisfaction, retention, compliance and risk mitigation to name a few.
WHY COMPLIANCE?
Compliance, yes. Not just you grant writer, but all the program staff — everyone needs to understand what is meant by compliance, because if you’re not compliant with a grant agreement, the funder can take their money back. So win more grants, sure. But make sure you follow the funder’s instructions. I was working for a client and this funder of a workshop — it was like a two-day seminar we were doing as part of our grant agreement. This funder asked for their name on the title slides, the slide deck, and they wanted verbal recognition as well, and we forgot. And it was terrible, it was terrible. And that would have been grounds for them to take their grant dollars back, but fortunately they didn’t. But it’s something like that, that could be the difference between X dollars and $0, so make sure you’re compliant.
WHAT KINDS OF PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT?
And so if you want to get more knowledgeable about grants, how do you know what professional development to spend your time on? Because there’s lots of one-off webinars that can clearly help you with specific supports, and teach you particular skills in improving your grant writing abilities. One-off webinars, however, are probably an hour or less. So what they’re discussing has to be pretty narrow. It has to be a pretty specific topic or it has to gloss over and not go very deep into the topic. You can have either depth or breadth, but not both. So that’s what those one-off webinars do. But they could be very helpful. It’s like a really long YouTube video, a how-to video, there’s lots of value in that, but what ends up happening is you get really smart about something really slim or you get a little smart about something pretty broad. But they have their value.
Then, there’s multi-part courses. These can build your proficiency, your confidence and your capabilities. Just like the Unlock-Grants course. It’s best if there are skills assessments at intervals to check in. And it’s great if there’s a channel for back and forth, Q&A interaction with the instructor, and an opportunity for draft proposal reviews, such as is included in Unlock-Grants.
THE IMPORTANCE OF ETHICS
In any case though, be sure your professional development time is spent with a trainer that is ethical number one, and has their GPC — Grant Professionals Certified — or perhaps they’re a Certified Fundraising Executive, CFRE. I’m both, I’m also a GPA (Grant Professionals Association) Approved Trainer. So that kind of makes your professional development dollars investment time more well spent because you’re listening to an expert that’s been around the block and is trying to give you ethical best practices and not shoot-from-the-hip information. They should adhere to a code of ethics, or CFREs adhere to what is called the Donor Bill of Rights.
To take this knowledge-building a step further, think about going out for your GPC (Grant Professional Certified) yourself, or becoming an industry expert on something you like thinking about or doing – then presenting on it, locally, regionally, then nationally. That recognition would certainly give you a leg up in your grant seeking.
Building your grants knowledge is a great way to get more proficient and win more grants. It’s an ongoing endeavor, and I’m still learning and growing after 15 years! Professional development is key; I’m a huge fan. I attended education sessions of my chapter of AFP monthly for nine years, and then —without any studying — I tested for my CFRE designation and I got it. That’s a testament to continuing education!
