Overview

Grants are highly useful in education and can be utilized to fund a wide variety of projects. They may help kick start or broaden the use of a school garden, iClickers in the classroom, teacher research, after school homework and activity programs, behavior intervention programs or summer school field trips. They can range from several hundred dollars to several million given over multiple years and may target specific demographics based on age, gender, SES, or SPED and ELL designations.

Chances are if you’re visiting this wiki you may already have a project in mind, but are probably a first-time grant writer daunted by the process. Don’t worry! We’ll give you some useful advice and resources to help you hone your grant writing/finding skills.

That said, your first move should be to tap into any pre-existing grant writing resources in your school, district, or social networks. Many school districts actually have an in house grant writing expert. A living, breathing advisor that can help edit documents, hone your searches and be a sounding board for ideas will always be more useful than a written list of tips and resources.

Your second move should be take your idea and try to find a matching grant. This may take some time. To help in your search we suggest visiting the Grant and Funding Sources page for a list of some of the biggest aggregate sites for listing grants. If your project is smaller scale, think about writing up a brief project proposal that you can submit to relevant local businesses that may be looking to make a donation of time, resources or money. Go to your community or university library. University librarians can be an especially amazing resource for locating that grant because so many institutions of higher education participate in grant funded research. There are often databases of grants that the schools have access to that are not available to the general public. It never hurts to ask!

The third step, you’ve got your project, you’ve found a relevant grant, the question is should you pursue it? At this phase you need to ask yourself a series of questions. Grants are essentially a contract. You will fulfill requirements x, y, and z, and the granting organization will release funds to you. How much do their requirements align with your original mission? If you have to bend over backwards or completely alter your project to meet stringent grant requirements, the fit might not be as good as you initially thought and you should keep looking for other grants.

The next question you need to ask yourself is whether you are pursuing the grant on a volunteer or paid basis. If you are a volunteer, how much time are you willing to commit? Look at how in depth the grant proposal needs to be. Do you have 5 hours a week for two months to put it together? If you are a paid writer you need to do a quick cost benefit analysis. How many hours do you expect to work on the grant? How big and competitive is the grant? If it costs 500 dollars to write a proposal for moderately competitive 1500 dollar grant, it might not be worth the time and expenditure, whereas the expenditure for a 15000 dollar, highly competitive grant might be worth it. This is a discussion to have with yourself and your employer. Along those lines, always run grant proposals by higher-ups because granting organizations often look for their approval. Do this early in the process, not later on.

The final major consideration before starting to draft a grant proposal is a look at what they require and the deadline they have in place. LATE APPLICATIONS WILL NOT BE ACCEPTED! If you do not think you can reasonably complete the grant by its deadline do not pursue it. Keep in mind that asking for the help of a colleague to meet a strict deadline can be essential. Multiple authors can work on different sub-categories of the grant so that the overall flow of the proposal is more seamless.

There you have it. You've matched your project with a grant, thought carefully about whether or not to proceed and have given proposal writing the green light. At this stage you should visit the Grant Writing Tips page for dos and don’ts, the Grant Writer Audio Interview for some excellent advice from a successful grant writer, the Sample Grants page for an idea of what lengthy proposals can entail and finally the Online Resources page for more in depth sources.