Law Enforcement Technology

FEB 2014

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16 Law Enforcement Technology February 2014 www.officer.com GRANTS & FUNDING A lot of people ask me about writing grants. How hard can it be? After all, it's just putting some information down on an application about how great their non-profit organization is, how many great things they do, or how broke they are, right? And then shortly afterwards the money should start rolling in. That's it, right? Anyone that's actually attempted putting together an application for a grant program would answer, WRONG. Note I said "putting together an appli- cation," not "writing an application." It is correct that you could write a lot of sen- tences and submit a lot of applications in a short period of time, and maybe one of them will hit. There's also that saying about a blind pig and truffles that you might want to keep in mind. In my expe- rience of putting together grant applica- tions I've learned the whole process is meant to be competitive. Since time is the most expensive commodity in the world, why waste yours on any efforts that aren't going to pay off ? If you need funding you need to ensure you're doing everything possible to avoid being just another file in the stack. Do your homework At the grant-writing workshops I teach, I often throw out this simple statement: 95 percent of grant writ- ing has nothing to do with writing a grant application. This short statement is both profound and confusing for a lot of folks. This is the moment when students start to realize it may not be such a simple endeavor to try and solicit funding from grant programs. The truth is, putting together a com- petitive application package involves a lot of work, before your files even get touched. The reason why we can say that writing an application is only 5 percent of the effort is the fact that ALL grant applications ask the same basic 5 questions in varying formats: ■ Who are you? ■ What do you need? ■ How much will it cost? ■ What good will it do? ■ How will it improve the organization? Since every grant application asks these same questions, there is no reason why we shouldn't have the answers at any given time. Don't wait to look for the answers when the grant deadline is announced. How to write a successful grant application, one step at a time By Brian P. Vickers LET_16-17_GrantWriting0214.indd 16 1/24/14 12:34 PM

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