How Do You Learn a New Craft? The Idea of 10,000 Hours of Practice.

Ultimately, there is no secret to picking up a new skill. As Malcolm Gladwell has written, if you invest about 10,000 hours in practicing it you will get to be world class at it. I certainly found that was true of my foray into the field of oil painting. It took me about 2,000 hours of practice - over the last 10 years - until I started hearing that folks were interested in buying and displaying my paintings. In the field of grant writing, however, most of us cannot afford to invest 10,000 hours in learning this craft. Typically, we have a grant due in the next week and we need to get it done to keep our jobs or our charity afloat.

I was in a similar situation back in 1996 when I took a job at an anti-child abuse agency called Family Solutions in Santa Ana, CA. I took my second grant writing class from Carol Gueisbauer at the Volunteer Center of Orange County. When I took her class, I followed one of the tricks I learned as a graduate student at Cornell University. I followed her directions exactly, even the directions that seemed silly and pointless. I did not argue or quarrel with her philosophy or methods, I gave her the benefit of a doubt and followed them exactly. Eventually, I taught along side her at a seminar at University of California - Irvine and by then I had evolved my own unique approach, my Lightning Fast method. But I never forgot how much I learned from her by doing everything she said including going after local foundations first. I had ended up making $100,000+ for my employer by following her techniques. 

In addition to compliance with a noted authority, I also found it extremely useful to obtain and review copies of successful winning grants. In this regard, I remember being startled at the extent to which the winning grants in my possession made extensive use of charts. This is a technique that I still use today with great impact. I don't think I would have figured that trick out or employed it so effectively early on in my career if I had not gone out of my way to check out winning grant proposals from similar agencies. 

Another one of my secrets of success was simply to dive in and start writing grants. In the process, I picked up many of the skills that still work for me today and that I enjoy teaching others, including my never rewriting a draft the same day I write it, infusing my writing with a sense up urgency and economy, and being careful to answer each element of the funder's questions. To be sure, I cannot share everything I know about training new grant writers in this space, but I think I have given you the most important basics as they work for me: 

• Identify a great teacher.
• Rely on multiple sources of information.
• Pay attention and follow the resource's instructions even if they strike you as silly. 
• Take action and make as many attempts as you can quickly to build your skill level. 

Finally, please do not hesitate to call me or e-mail me if you are stuck. I enjoy helping out anyone with an interest in grant writing. You are never alone in this business. 

How Do You Find a Great Teacher: Not as Easy as It Looks

I was so cynical as a young man that I doubt I would have recognized a great teacher at all. For the most part, I thought the folks who taught me in elementary school and high school were losers because they were not college professors. Later, I discounted my college professors because they were not highly published research university professors. Even as a graduate student, I despised my graduate school professors for being unsupportive, distant and unhelpful. Nevertheless, I concede did stumble across great teachers and I found that the really great ones had a manner of teaching which made everything easy, unintimidating and clear. They remain in my mind the greatest teachers in my life because they showed me the techniques which made my chores easier to accomplish. I try to honor them in my own teaching whenever I get an opportunity.

When a Physics Teacher Knows His Stuff

Accordingly, if I'm looking for a great teacher, then one of my first requirements is that I need to be able to understand what they are talking about. I have reached a point in my life where if I find I do not understand something, I no longer blame myself. I blame the lousy teacher. 

As a political scientist, for example, I am opposed to the deliberate obscurantism of philosophers like Jacques Derrida. In the New York Review of Books article "An Exchange on Deconstruction" (February 1984), John Searle offered one of my favorite comments on deconstruction: 

. . . anyone who reads deconstructive texts with an open mind is likely to be struck by the same phenomena that initially surprised me: the low level of philosophical argumentation, the deliberate obscurantism of the prose, the wildly exaggerated claims, and the constant striving to give the appearance of profundity, by making claims that seem paradoxical, but under analysis often turn out to be silly or trivial.

I have also found it useful to seek teachers who have succeeded in the fields where I want to see some success myself. To be sure, a track-record of extraordinary success does not necessarily make someone a great teacher since teaching is an entirely different skill set. Nevertheless, if I want to learn about grant writing, I'm not going to study under someone who has not won many grants or someone who has stopped writing them all together to focus instead on teaching. I need someone who is still active in the profession, who is also aware of the current trends and other significant contemporary issues in the field. 

Unfortunately, you may not have access to a great teacher in your community. Accordingly, I think the next best thing is to create your own best possible teacher. You can do this by buying at least three books on the topic of grant writing and then reading all of them in order. The trick is to look for the common themes which appear in each book. For example, if all three books say it is important to follow the funder's directions, then you can be confident that this is a major point to reflect on and remember. If a key idea appears in only one of these volumes, you may be well advised to write it off as an individual idiosyncrasy for now.  

Along these lines, I prefer to have a teacher who has produced a book or a workbook. Although I get a lot of good information from listening and taking notes from an expert in the field, ultimately I have found that I learn best if I have something to read. I need to be able to study an idea, review it, and reread it later when I'm in a bind. I just cannot do that with a typical classroom lecture. I have also found that I need to keep that book around for a while as a reference tool. Too often I have found that my memory of what was written, particularly the step-by-step procedures they recommended does not stay locked in my memory banks. I need to go back to the source and refresh my memory to really grasp what I need to do. So, I've found it pays to work with an instructor who also has written materials to distribute to the class.