In this blog entry, I look at six things you should look for in a grant writer or consultant. And you’d be surprised. What if you look beyond writing skills? Some leaders want to know about a grant writer’s success rate in terms of grants awarded. What else is there to consider? I’d love to know your thoughts on my suggestions. After you read it, let’s talk!
So, the first thing is that the aim is not just about writing skills, because that can be too broad and it can boil down to something like the ability to spell properly, to proofread, to edit, and to use correct grammar.
More than just the ability to write, or writing skills, would be the ability to relay the organization’s message in a compelling way, to be convincing and to know how to connect the organization’s vision with the funder’s heartbeat and what they want to fund. It is also to know how to use data in a way that relays the organization’s message, vision, and impact.
I’m going to go out on a limb here and say something that could be to the benefit of my competitors, especially new grant writers. That is to say that writing skills is not just about experience, you know, the experience that a person has with being a grant writer, the fact that they’ve written multiple grants before. Why? Because first, beyond writing skills, how does that translate? What’s their success rate in terms of getting funded?
So, it’s not just about experience, but you really need someone who’s a good storyteller. Although, having experience is good, it still wouldn’t just be about how many grants you’ve written before. A person could say they’ve written a thousand grants, but how many of them were actually funded? And someone else can say they’ve only written five grants, but three or four of them were funded. That’s a pretty good ratio. And, funded at how much money?
Even experience in grant writing in and of itself, is just not really enough. Instead, what skill do they have when it comes to writing? I know someone who, when I was coming into an organization having taken on a leadership role in development, and as they were bringing me in, they were trying to phase out their consultant. One of the things I did in this role was I created a grant application tracking database (in Excel), and I put in there all the grants that each of the team members had written, and what the statuses were, the amounts requested, due dates, and more.
I noticed that when I looked at the status of each person’s applications, for the consultant that they were trying to phase out I didn’t see one grant application that she wrote that actually got funded. It was just decline, decline, decline, all the way down. At the time, I had written less grants than her. I was least experienced, and yet I had, at the time, what looked like a better success rate of grants that were being funded versus those that were declined. I did get some that were declined.
So that was very interesting. She wrote way more grants than I did. This is also why some of us are saying not that it doesn’t matter, but organizations shouldn’t have so much of an emphasis on how many applications are submitted, and rather that you make sure that you’re submitting quality applications. And if you’re in a rush with only one or two grant writers submitting a whole bunch of applications, you want to be careful that you’re not submitting so many and getting almost the same amount declined. We need to really be careful of that.
So, it’s not just about experience in grant writing in and of itself, but what skill do you bring to the table? Like I said, in terms of experience, storytelling matters. And, the experience that they may have with writing and storytelling may not have to do with grants. Your grant writer applicants and consultants may be very good in other areas of writing.
You’ll really need to be able to pay attention to how grant writers craft their message and how compelling they are. Do they keep your attention? Let’s say they wrote – well, anything, even a book that’s off the topic of grants or even a pamphlet that they created. As you’re reading this book, you can’t put it down. That’s the kind of stuff you want to pay attention to. Being able to capture and keep the readers, not only attention but interest, is really a skill to value when you’re paying someone to get money for you, lol. We have to be unconventional here about what really matters.
Now, some experience does matter. But what experience is that? This is where people like me might have an advantage over others who do or don’t have good experience when it comes to the years of writing grants and how many they submitted. For me, one of my advantages is that I’m experienced in various aspects of the nonprofit organization. One of those areas I’ve worked in is program development and program coordination. I’ve been involved in every area of the process for program coordination and development, including starting new programs. So, I understand the development and coordination of programs, and I can use that information and knowledge when I’m writing the actual content of the proposal. I know what it takes to build and maintain and help a program succeed. So, I can use that information and knowledge that I have on programming when it comes to writing. This is an example of where experience, I think, matters most. But, it depends. If you’re going to say experience matters, you want to look at how and why.
Okay, so the first thing that I would look or, if I’m looking for a good grant writer, would be not just their years of experience, but their skill in writing, And again, we’re not talking about grammar, spelling, things like that, but their ability to communicate an intriguing and compelling message, specifically being a storyteller.
The second thing is if I tell a grant writer to research funders, they need to understand the important details to look for when it comes to research. They’re not just reading. They’re thinking, “okay, what’s the big deal? What matters? What’s what here?” Then, they know what to do with that research, how to pull it together. So, that would be the second thing.
We talked about relative experience already (where I used myself as an example with program coordination).
Now, another skill that’s needed is project management. Within project management is timeliness. Projects, such as grant writing and management, are all time-specific. They include deadlines and the ability to closely manage schedules and multiple deadlines. An example is, of course, if they’re writing and managing more than one grant.
Grant Writers need an ability to track deadlines and manage their work with strategy and timeliness in order to complete tasks with order, in such a way to meet deadlines.
Alright. Here’s my attempt to wrap it up:
Beyond basic writing skills such as spelling, grammar, proofreading, and editing, you should choose a grant writer based on the following abilities:
- Skill of Storytelling: Ability to relay the organization’s message in a compelling way, to be convincing and to know how to connect the organization’s vision with the funder’s heartbeat and what they want to fund. (Tip: storytelling and writing skills don’t have to be limited to grant writing experience).
- Know how to use data to relay the organization’s message, vision, and impact.
- Experience, in terms of years of experience and number of grants written, doesn’t matter as much as conversion rate. How many grants get funded matters more. Example: Five years of experience with a low conversion rate is nothing compared to one year with a high, or higher, conversion rate. From the article and audio: “A person could say they’ve written a thousand grants, but how many of them were actually funded? And someone else can say they’ve only written five grants, but three or four of them were funded. That’s pretty good. And at how much money?” So, success rate should matter more than experience.
- Other relative experience. For me, it was having program development and program coordination experience. I understand what it takes to build and maintain successful nonprofit programs, and I can use that knowledge when developing proposals in talking about how the program will succeed, including measuring impact, tracking data, etc. So, when you say “experience matters”, look at what experience matters, how and why.
- Research skills. Understanding what to look for, what matters, what’s the big picture, and what to do with what they find. They know how to connect the information they’re looking at with the message of the organization.
- Project management. This matters most when balancing more than one grant writing project. Projects are all about timelines and deadlines. They need to be able to track deadlines and strategically plan their work around timelines and deadlines.
That’s it! I wouldn’t look for a list of 50 different things, just the things I think matters most in getting the job done. And, based on my experience, I believe these are the things that have contributed to my successful grant writing. So, I am suggesting them to you as a nonprofit leader or Development Director.
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