Choosing the Right Grant Writer

In a previous post, I explained why a grant writer can't be judged by their batting average. I also promised to elaborate on the four basic elements needed to select a grant writer for your organization: knowledge, expertise, familiarity, and clarity.

Knowledge and expertise are two distinctly different qualities in a great grant writer. Knowledge is simply knowing about grants - knowing who is making grants, what grants are out there, where to find funding notices, why particular issues are being addressed by funders, how to read an RFP, and what must go in the proposal. Knowledge can be gained a variety of ways, through a formal education or by reading and conducting research. (In fact, knowledge can even be gained by reading this blog!) Anyone can be knowledgeable about grants if they invest the time and effort to gain that knowledge.

Expertise, on the other hand, cannot be gained simply by reading a book or taking a class. To gain expertise, you have to roll up your sleeves and set about the dirty work of actually writing funded grants. Expertise isn't just about experience. You can gain a lot of experience writing a hundred grant proposals, but if none of them are funded, you haven't demonstrated that you have expertise in writing grants (just lots of experience in futility). On the same token, just because someone managed to write a single funded proposal, that does not make them an expert. Sometimes beginner's luck really happens and even a blind squirrel finds a nut once in a while.

Familiarity is a little trickier to define. As I've posted previously, true professional grant writers are typically generalists. You don't need a green energy grant writer or an education grant writer or a municipal projects grant writer - you just need a grant writer. That being said, the grant writer still needs to have a general familiarity with what it is you are trying to accomplish. A grant writer doesn't need to be a thirty year teaching veteran and a nationally renowned health education expert to write a school-based teen pregnancy prevention grant. But, they do need to know whether you intend to deliver abstinence only or comprehensive sex education and have a general understanding of the differences between the two. This is a fairly simplified example, but it's adequate to make my point about the level of familiarity required to write a grant. Don't believe me? I've written successful grants for K-12 public schools, municipal projects, and green energy, just to name a few. I've also never taught school, worked in city government or taken chemistry or physics. I do, however, have general understanding of best practices in preventing school violence, the economic development impact of storm water management, and the amount of carbon emissions offset by a five kilowatt photovoltaic power installation, among other things.

The last element, clarity, is a two-way street. Obviously, you are going to want a grant writer who clearly communicates what you can expect in return for your investment and exactly how much you should expect to invest. What a lot of organizations miss is that the organization must also have the capacity to clearly communicate the information needed by the grant writer. To make your relationship with your grant writer work, you must be prepared to provide: reliable, responsive points of contact; well-defined goals and priorities; background information on past and existing revenue streams, particularly past grant awards; and, organizational documents, including, but not limited to, letters of incorporation or charters, proof of non-profit status, accounting records, organizational charts, and resumes of key personnel. If you know internal barriers to effective communication exist within your organization, it is advisable to resolve or eliminate those barriers before commencing a relationship with a grant writer.