Thursday, March 29, 2012

A Fresh Look at the Wonder of Lightning Fast Grant Writing

When you have a long string of successes, I think it is easy to start thinking that everything you do – whether rational or not – is worth sharing with an audience.  I guess I'm sensitive to this issue, in part, because I just returned from a visit to the mixed results on display at the San Francisco Musuem of Modern Art. (See the YouTube video below.) Accordingly, I’m scaling back to the things I believe, objectively, will make the most difference for you.



This is because you can gain enormous advantages by learning how to write grants quickly and understanding that you need to properly use a team of people to create a winning grant application. In the next few posts, I want to leave you with 6 to 7 simple, easy-to-remember techniques that you can apply right now or when you go back to work, techniques that will allow you and your team to begin benefiting from this increased grant productivity immediately.

As you may know, I had an early talent in high speed writing. I have a PhD in political science, and one of my claims to fame is that I wrote my doctoral dissertation in about half the time spent by most graduate students. I was also surprisingly effective in working with my doctoral committee as I gradually won them over to my ideas. I think the evidence shows I did a good job too. My dissertation won the William Anderson Award from the American Political Science Association. I have been a professor at Williams College - the number one liberal arts school in the nation according to U.S. News and World Report. I know I was not the brightest graduate student in the nation. Nevertheless, I was the one applying these same lightning fast grant writing and team management techniques I’ll be sharing with you in these posts. I have applied this model to help produce $2.1 million in successful grants for the Coast Community College District (CCCD) and to compile an outstanding record that includes a 90% success rate.

Accordingly, I'm going to cover the most important techniques that have made the biggest difference for me including defining the proper role and timing needed for getting the most from the grant writer, the optimists, the pessimists, the budget preparer, and the proofreader.

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