Writing Grants by the Numbers: Budgets Are Our Friends

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 undergraduate.  So, I didn’t.

Like many grant writers, I wound my way through life experiences until I realized I could use my writing to secure funding to make good things happen. For years, though, I dreaded the budget portion of grant proposals. Chasing down program directors for details, fighting to keep my eyes from glazing over as I attempted to understand accounting speak around indirect costs. Words were what mattered, I told myself.

Clear, concise, compelling writing IS crucial to winning grants. But what if the numbers and line items in the project budget don’t match all those beautifully precise words? Then, you don’t have a complete and compelling grant—you have a nice essay. That’s not what gets the grant awards and helps to change the world for the better.

Nothing brings a new program together or shows its potential flaws more than discussing what or who is needed to make it happen, and how much it will cost. To create compelling, competitive grant proposals, budgeting should never be a solo sport.

In fact, I’ve found that a team approach to creating budgets can be the best way to start a grant proposal development process. Using a standard budget format to guide a discussion on the overall program or project, versus starting with the relative blank slate of a program description, which could easily intimidate people who do not like to write, or doubt their abilities.

Instead, it requires a program/subject-matter expert, a CFO, a staff accountant, or a treasurer (depending on the size of your agency’s staff), and you, as the project manager/master of ceremonies, to guide the process.  Working together bridges information or data gaps and strengthens the entire proposal.

Involving a team early in grant development also helps dispel the notion that the responsibility for the entire grant process, from conception to management, rests solely on the grant professional’s shoulders.

It may seem strange to read these words from a confirmed introvert, but “playing” well with others is essential to winning grants.

Full disclosure.

I may have exaggerated my math aversion in the interests of a good story.  I actually loved reducing fractions, distilling them to their essence. And that’s what I’ve come to love about budgets. They are the essence of how a program or project works.  And grant professionals are the lucky few who weave words with numbers to help transform our communities.