Grant Writing

HayDay Services is bringing you a series of “how-to” articles related to successful grant prospect research. Part 1: Establish Funding Priorities Whenever a new employee or consultant shows up with the word “grant” in their title, they tend to become everyone’s new...

With a military dad, my family moved about every 3 years from my birth until I graduated from college. It’s all I knew – packing up, starting over, and making the best of every new location. I often wonder if I would have been more introverted if not forced to figure...

I cannot remember a time when I wasn’t reading or being read to.  As I grew, writing felt so familiar and right. But math? Not so much. Something warm and wonderful in the universe had helped me test out of even having to take a single math course as an...

It is unethical for a grant professional to charge a percentage of the grant award. FULL STOP. And I get it; so many people do not understand the world of grants. Clients ask all the time – can I just pay you a percentage of the grant? Many industries work that way –...

Both the Grant Professionals Association and Association of Fundraising Professionals dedicate an entire month to ethics. Not because we need a designated month to remind us to behave well, but because it gives us a moment to quasi-officially pause, reflect, and gird...

It’s been over a decade since I was employed as an organization’s in-house grant professional, and there are some aspects of that particular brand of work life that I really do miss. It should come as no surprise to our long-time subscribers that I LOVED interacting...

Just like eating a whole bag of salt & vinegar potato chips, I know good and well that doomscrolling for hours is not in my ultimate best interest. I’ve wrestled with this tendency off and on ever since the pandemic. Lately, I started back on a downswing of...

In the swirling, scary chaos of world and national events, I can’t be the only person who feels overwhelmed and off-balance. That’s probably the point of the chaos-sowers. Over the past year, grant writers are experiencing a new-fear-unlocked moment: navigating...

Earlier this month I read my very first Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) delivered by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS). Mind you, I’ve been reading and responding to federal grant guidance since 2001, and I’ve decided to put IMLS in charge of...

My senior year of high school I served as a senior class officer, because of course I did, and one of our jobs was to pick our senior class quote. Not really sure why we needed one. It was printed in our graduation announcements, but other than that, we never really...