Pro Tip: How to Work With an Expert Consultant

Federal grants are highly competitive. These grants can become quite technical and your ability to win may depend on the last minute relationships you build with people who have very specialized expertise. Below, I will give you a peek at the techniques I use to manage these temporary but very important relationships.

 
Since I do not do academic research full-time anymore, I find I am now more dependent on the goodwill and understanding of national-level research/evaluation consultants. I still remember how to do regression analysis, survey research, or program evaluation; Nevertheless, my expertise is stretched to the limit when it comes to understanding the literature reviews of other fields -- particularly in the hard sciences or in the sometimes obscure details of esoteric educational theory.
Here are some of my best tips for working with experts in your field:

1. Give Experts Your Best Work: I think the most important thing is to get a very polished draft ready to submit to the outside research consultant. I have found that many of these extremely talented individuals are more than happy to comment on or improve your grant application, but you need to be careful with their time and their attention span. By waiting to send them a virtually finished product, you demonstrate that you are conscientious and that you have gone as far as possible on your own expertise and power.
2. Follow Up on Expert's Suggestions: I am careful to follow up on their suggestions in terms of additional reading material, theoretical perspectives, or new ways of displaying information. I have found it surprisingly easy to follow up on the outside expert's suggestions simply by looking for the same information on line. I do not need to become an expert in their field. Nevertheless, with a little on-line research, I can get my understanding up to the 80% level needed to win in a federal grant competition. By following up on the consultant's suggestions and being a good student, you win more of their time and their respect. 
3. Reward Your Experts: I am generous about including the outside expert in the federal grant application. Often, I will include an outside expert as an evaluation specialist, a role that entitles them to at least 10% of the gross revenue coming in from the federal grant. On a million dollar grant, this will give the expert the possibility of a $100,000 payday - more than enough to engage their full attention in perfecting your grant. 

Finally, if you are having a hard time finding a national level expert to help you out, you can sometimes get leads from the folks teaching at major universities. Often the federal government itself will provide you with a list of outside experts that have passed their standards of approval. All in all, it is best to approach the national level expert when you have completely run out of ideas and absolutely done your level best. This way you will demonstrate that your project and your work effort are worthy of their best attention.

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.

Pay Attention to the Points: Simple Tips for Winning Federal Grants

Writing a successful federal grant demands the exact same skills, resources, and product positioning skills discussed in A Really Great Booklet on Grant Writing.  The only real difference is that you need to apply these skills with even greater depth and discipline.  As you may know, I created my best, early successes writing federal grants.  

I have found them to be an arena that verifies everything I have said earlier on the sudden appearance of money, and the need to move quickly when money arrives.  The necessity of quick action in this field makes perfect sense to me because of the process surrounding federal grant applications.  After these grant appropriations are approved by Congress, the money slowly trickles down, and then the government agency that is giving away the money needs to scramble to let everyone know that the money is now available.  Often, it is not really their fault that they could not move faster, simply because they are not sure what is going to be available.  (I imagine this was done on purpose in the past to give an advantage to existing interest groups over insurgent interest groups.)

For whatever reason, the same process is still taking place today.  Accordingly, to win one of these federal grants, you need to have everything set up ahead of time.  The main season for federal grants runs from January to May.  So, ideally, if you get yourself set-up with grants.gov in the Fall, you will be able to apply for funding in the Spring.

There are some things about applying for federal grants that are remarkably different from applying for corporate or foundation grants.  It pays to know, for example, what some of these differences are if you want to get ahead.  For example, federal applications list their guidelines so that you can find out what criteria are used to screen your application, and you can even find the score attached to each separate criteria. 

It is best to request this on behalf of your agency, not as a consultant to an agency.  (I tried this as a consultant and federal staff frightened the nonprofits into backing down and not insisting on their rights.)  I have found it extremely profitable to pay great attention to the weighting of the different sections of a federal grant application.  There are also great advantages in answering questions exactly according to what the federal request for proposal demands from you: word for word.  This operating strategy can, at times, create an almost idiotic question and response style of writing useful to nobody in the real world.  As crazy as this sounds, perfect and consistent compliance will win you funding in the long-run.

In my experience, it seems to help to have a good friendship with your member of Congress, Senator, or other political official.  They and their staffs can be very helpful in assisting you in finding available pots of money.  Surprisingly, you can even include letters of support from local political figures in your applications for funding - a fact that first struck me as almost like cheating.

Finally, one good idea for winning money from the federal government is to focus on those programs which have the largest amount of money and the largest sheer number of potential grants.  I like looking for programs like Drug-Free Communities which offer up to 300 grants every year in the $100,000 to $200,000 range.  As a taxpayer, you may be very disappointed by how easy it is to receive funding from the federal government for your pet project.  As a recipient, however, I think you will be very happy.