Government Grants: Pay Attention to the Questions and the Points

I have enjoyed a rather remarkable level of success in winning government grants. Most recently, I won two prestigious grants from the National Science Foundation. I think the following two tips have made the biggest difference for me.

Tip #1 Answer the Question

Much of my success has been due to my careful habit of answering the questions posed by the government - federal, state, or local - with answers that carefully address the gist of the question along with each separate element of the question.

For example, I am often confronted with questions like the following from a recent federal grant application: "Describe how the impacts align with the goals and objectives."

In my answer, I would be careful to hit on each element of the question so that I have something to say in regard to each of the following words: impacts, align, goals and objectives. I might write something like this: "The impact measures indicated above were aligned with the long-range goals and short-term objectives by searching for tangible evidence of how our ABC Veterans Housing Program was making a measurable difference for all of our stakeholders - especially the elderly in our program. Alignment was obtained by choosing the existing program performance measurements which were the best possible fit with the specific goals and objectives established for each element of our program."

Notice in this example that I am trying to touch on each element of the question. This way the reviewer would have to award me full points for my answer because I was fully responsive to each element of the question. At times, this can lead to repetition, some awkward sounding phrases, and a sort of pedantic approach to the grant topic. Nevertheless, I have found that this method works out quite well and that it forces me to carefully read and consider the questions posed in the government's request for proposals (RFP).

Tip #2 Pay Attention to the Points

The second most important thing I would advise regarding how to win government grants is to simply observe that it pays off to notice how many points are assigned to each question or each element of the grant application.

For example, let us say that you have a 60 page grant application. If the guidelines indicate that the first question they ask is worth 10 out of 100 total points, then I would assign 10% of my allotted pages, that is 6 pages in this example, to answering that particular question. Accordingly, if the second question is worth 20 points, then I would devote at least 12 pages to answering it.

I have found this to be a useful rule in apportioning the amount of text I assign to answering each particular question posed by a government RFP. This is also a useful rule because it helps you trim back your text if you have gone on too long on a single particular topic.

Funder Research: How to Narrow Down or Enlarge the Field

As I have grown my business, I have found I now have to spend more time training our staff on the basics of grant research. It turns out that grant research is both extremely important and surprisingly difficult to do right. Most grant researchers find that they stumble on a ton of possibilities or else none at all. Consequently, they need to know how to adjust their search to find more or less prospects. By and large, I think most grant researchers are unfamiliar with the options available to them when they use a standard grant research database. In particular, they may be unfamiliar with their range of options.

There are four general categories that will be most useful to you: subject matter, location, target population, and type of grant.

Subject matter: The first step, in my view, is to focus on broader terms like education, social welfare, healthcare, or justice. If this gives you too many hits, then you can simply switch to narrower terms like low cost housing, minority education, teen pregnancy, or electronic health records. Of course, it helps if you have a general understanding of the work done by non-profit organizations when you follow this procedure. In my experience, however, this sort of knowledge will just come to you naturally over time and you start researching grants. In a pinch, however, it pays to review sample grant proposals or the project innovator form filled out by the client to get a better idea of the range of wording available for your search.

Location: If I stall out with this option, I next turn to the project's location. For example, I ask if my project is going to have an impact on a specific city, county, state, regional, national, or international location? Most grant funders, of course, focus their resources close to home. Nevertheless, I think that adjusting your geographic focus will increase funding opportunities. In addition, it is generally extremely easy to use geographic search terms.

Target Population: After searching on subject matter and location, I then turn to the target population itself. This is basically the group of people who will most benefit from your grant project. Sample target populations would include single moms, the frail elderly, disadvantaged youth, the homeless, persons with low incomes, at-risk youth, international journalists, HIV/AIDS patients, and so on. In general, I find that there is more funding for children than the elderly and for less stigmatized rather than more stigmatized groups.

Type of Grant: Finally, I focus in on the type of grant that the charity or individual or business wants to win. Most of the database search engines you use will offer to search under a variety of different types of grants such as: capacity building, challenge, conference, construction, consulting, demonstration, dissemination, endowment, equipment, exhibition, general purpose, land acquisition, matching, operation, planning, publication, renovation, research, scholarship, seed, special project, subvention, training, and travel.