The primary responsibility for this position is grant writing. You will be writing for foundational, corporate, and government funders. The most effective way to stay on top of this is through maintaining a grant schedule shared with the Executive Director that notes all upcoming grants by name, due date, and project or program to be funded. This file is typically kept in the shared Grant Applications File on Dropbox, where both the Executive Director and you will have access.
Workflow
The process of writing a grant will more or less follow the following steps every time:
1) Devise the Language of This Year’s Grants with the Executive Director
Every year, the executive director will meet with the development associate and write answers to common questions about the various programs of Taller that explain what they’re currently doing, what they intend to do going forward, and what is our most up-to-date evidence of our program’s effectivity. These are questions asked by most grants every year that get redrafted to stay relevant. Once these answers are written, they are stored in a file on your personal computer and used to answer common questions quickly. These files should typically be saved in Dev Helper.
2) Assess What is Due and When.
At all times, you should be checking in on your grant calendar and assessing what your next three months of work look like. Calendars are always changing as new information is made available, so the only way to maintain a sense of control over deadlines is to begin the process of writing grants due next month immediately, rather than waiting until you are close to deadline.
Grants are laborious processes no matter how simple, and tech failure, missed meetings with collaborators, and other unforeseeable problems can endanger a grant when it’s in its last week before the due date. For example, the typical grant website will crash a few hours before the due date for any popular grant is due because of a surplus of people logging in at the last moment. If a grant deadline is missed for this reason, you cannot appeal for an extension. Thus, all grants should be done well before their deadlines.
Consider keeping a sticky note or physical calendar that allows you to visualize everything on your schedule for clarity’s sake. Once you have a clear understanding of what is due and when, you should select the next grant for you to focus on and work on it until it’s done.
3) Study the Selected Grant’s Guidelines.
Every grant application has guidelines the funder expects you to respect and follow, which you must live up to or possibly loose the opportunity.
Guidelines are usually outlined on the grant’s website, or encyclopedia-style websites dedicated to sharing information on grants. Google the name of the grant you are focused on, and look for their dedicated website or a grant information website. Study the rules very carefully. If we’ve been funded before, look up the file from previous years in dropbox or Taller’s filing cabinets for context on our previous funding amounts or program’s applied for.
Overlooking small details may result in hours of work going down the drain. Some grants will have a day’s worth of work that may not actually be necessary if you are a previously funded program, and other grants which have previously been available to Taller may have changed their rules this year and no longer fund programs dedicated to Art or Education.
For this reason, you should leave no stone unturned in the grant guidelines section. Always try to take note of:
Any special conditions applying to this grant. (Does this grant only apply to Education during certain times of year?)
What program is most likely to be funded by this grant? What branch of Taller is most in line with the funder’s mission?
What additional doccuments do you need to prepare as attachments? (This includes budgets, audits, our W9, our board list)
4) Report Your Current Plans to the Executive Director
Once you have a clear understanding of what you need to do next, you should schedule a quick meeting with the Executive Director to explain what you plan to do next. The Executive Director at Taller is usually very clued into your job process, and will usually have feedback, advice, or directions for how to best approach any grants on your list. They will also let you know if any staff in charge of Taller’s various programs need to be directly involved in the process of writing this grant.
Their advice in this domain is invaluable throughout the process of writing a grant, so plan frequent meetings where you can update them on the status of your current and future grants.
5) Assemble the Basic Necessities
With some rare exceptions, all grants will request the following documents. They should be always kept handy in the Dev Helper file. They are:
501(c)3 IRS Letter
Board List
Audit
Organization’s Budget
Annual Report (only if we were funded last year)
Staff Bios (uncommon)
Articles of Incorporation
All these documents are saved in Dropbox under the shared file “Development Reference.” Inside is a subfolder named Reference Docs” which contains most of these documents. Keep a copy on your desktop for faster access.
6) Drafting the Grant Narrative
Every grant features a “Narrative” which is mostly made up of answers to questions asked by the funders on what your organization’s project or program is or will need. Most narratives are completed on a web portal dedicated to submitting grants to the funder’s organization. Every question will have a character number that you should take note of and try to stay within as you write.
You will start a new word document and copy/paste the grant narrative’s questions into a word document, which is then named (Year)(Funder Name)(Grant Narrative)(Draft 1) and added to a new subfolder titled (Year)(Funder Name) in the Grant Application’s section of Dropbox.
Some of these questions will be ones you previously drafted in Step 1 with the Executive Director, and will essentially be cut and pasted into the narrative. Others will be questions too unique to have a canned answer. Bring these to the Executive Director or whoever is in charge of the program/project you are trying to fund. Create an answer for these questions with their help and fill them in.
Once all questions have answers, send the Executive Director an email clarifying that the first draft of the Grant Narrative is done and saved to Dropbox. She will make changes and send them to you via dropbox or email, which will feature her changes and feedback on your work. (Large amounts of edits and changes are an expectation, and should not be taken personally. There is always something, big or small, that needs to be clarified or coaxed.) Once you have the new version reviewed for changes and fixed, you should save this as a new version in your (Year)(Funder) subfolder.
Now you send back an email to the Executive Director saying you’ve made changes, and repeat until the Executive Director and you have no more changes to make. Once you are sure the grant fully answers all questions and follows guidelines correctly, mark the latest file as “final,” fill the online portal questions out with your finalized narrative answers, upload the requested files, and submit the application for review.
The sooner you do all this before the deadline, the better chances you have for receiving funding. Grants submitted early have higher chances of being considered, and problems that may occur during the grant uploading process can be more eloquently and efficiently fixed when there isn’t a pressing time limit. A rushed grant is always a flawed grant.
File Hard Copy
Now that the application has been submitted, you should print out the narrative’s final copy and a printed copy of any other documents that were required for submission (excluding common files like the ones listed in step 5) and place them in a named physical file. This file is placed in the alphabetized cabinet near our printer machine. Check if the grant you’re filling is a corporate, government, or foundation grant before placing them in their alphabetized spot in one of the cabinets.
