Don't write a proposal for a grant competition just because you happened to have found out about it. Pick your project, then go out and find the right source to fund it.
Grants are a wonderful way to inject your organization with cash to accomplish all sorts of spectacular things. Whether you're making the world a greener place, providing services to support underprivileged children in impoverished areas, or working on a cure for cancer, grants can provide the resources to take your mission to a whole new level. Grants are cold, hard cash; cash that buys the equipment, supplies, training, personnel or just about anything your organization requires to go toe-to-toe with the social issue you are battling. Who doesn't want or need cash?
Believe it or not, lots of organizations don't want grants, or at least there are individuals within organizations that don't want grants. While this may seem insane to the rest of us, these folks have a perfectly valid reason for not wanting grants - they've been burned.
Some went after the wrong grant (one that wasn't aligned with their mission) and found their organization strained by the pitfalls of mission creep. Some lacked the organizational capacity to implement the grant once they received it and created chaos and burden for their people. Others were forced to implement a grant they had no hand in developing and became resentful. While still more found the implementation to be nothing more than added work and couldn't see the benefit in it.
The moral of the story is: use grants wisely. They are one of the most valuable opportunities out there, but once an organization is burned, it is very hard to bring it back around. The best way to avoid getting burned is "Don't put the cart before the horse: pick your project, then your funder."
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