Where Do Grant Writers Come From? Where Do Grant Writers Come From?
Who Is This Book Intended to Help?
Where Are Grant-Writing Positions Found?
No one ever grows up thinking "I want to be a grant writer." Still, countless people engaged in education, research, and the nonprofit world have advanced their careers and helped their organizations to survive and flourish as a result of writing successful grant proposals. Schools, colleges, hospitals, and nonprofit organizations count on successful grant applications as a crucial element in their strategic plans. Organizations value grants not only for the dollars they generate, but also for the prestige and respect that accompany those dollars. Grant recipients are winners in a highly competitive environment.
Grant writing is one of those vocations that people tend to either "fall into or get pushed into." Good writers in search of a way to turn that skill into a livelihood will fall into grant writing just to pay the bills and end up staying because of the personal and financial rewards they receive. People who have never thought of themselves as writers may get pushed into grant writing because their organization has a vision for expansion—or because it requires grant funding simply to survive. Sometimes the impetus comes from creative, innovative ideas that are unlikely to be funded any other way.
Grants are a fundamental part of the American story. For some, the American dream has involved becoming so rich that you can afford to give money away. For others, the reality of having accumulated great wealth has brought with it a sense of obligation to society as a whole. Fortunes created in the late nineteenth century by industrial barons such as John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie gave rise to some of America's great private philanthropic foundations. Many of our museums, parks, libraries, concert halls, colleges, universities, and hospitals exist today because of the generosity of early philanthropists. The tradition has been continued by entrepreneurs such as Bill Gates, whose Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has given more than 20 billion dollars to worthy causes across the globe over the past 15 years.
Federal grant making dates back to the Articles of Confederation, which authorized grants of land. Today, the United States government administers more than 1,800 federal grant programs. Most are competitive, and all involve an application process. These programs are administered by 26 federal agencies, which return hundreds of billions of federal tax dollars each year to state and local governments through grants and cooperative agreements. Grants provide a mechanism to fund projects for the public good carried out on a state or local level.
Grants touch everyone. Grant-funded advances in medicine save lives every day. Whether you were aware of it or not, your education was probably subsidized by grants. You have probably enjoyed grant-funded parks, zoos, and recreation centers. The most recent symphony concert or opera you attended was almost certainly supported by a grant. Your community is undoubtedly protected by a plan made possible by one or more grants from the Department of Homeland Security. The very air you breathe may be affected by grant research funded by the Environmental Protection Agency.
Successful grant writers look back on their careers with a profound sense of satisfaction because their work has made good things happen that would not have happened otherwise. Grant writers help to feed the hungry, preserve the environment, find cures for diseases, increase human knowledge, and improve educational opportunities. They make tangible contributions in all walks of life. Grant writers can see the results of their efforts manifested in the programs and institutions they have served. Of course, you have to win the competition to gain the satisfaction. If you have a competitive spirit and a desire to engage in work that can bring measurable rewards, then grant writing may be the niche for you.
High school guidance counselors are unlikely to steer youngsters in the direction of grant-writing careers, for there are no colleges or universities where you can major in grant writing. Degree programs in English, communication, technical writing, and nonprofit management all provide useful preparation for a career in grant writing. However, grant writers are just as likely to have degrees in unrelated fields. It may not be necessary to have a degree at all. If you can do the work and do it well, you can be a grant writer regardless of credentials.
People in the nonprofit world are often prompted to get into grant writing by the lure of new opportunities for support. They hear about a new pie and want a piece of it. Others turn to grant writing out of frustration with the limits their current level of funding imposes on what their organization can accomplish. They see possibilities and want to turn those possibilities into realities. Career advancement is another motivator. Successful grant writing is a prerequisite for career advancement in academe, for example. Still others in the nonprofit world are forced by their organizations' financial situation to engage in grant writing as a means to survival. For them, succeeding in the intense competition for external funding may mean the difference between continued existence and retrenchment or collapse.
Many professionals enter the field of grant writing as a lateral career move. Educators who gain appropriate experience often are able to transform themselves into full-time grant writers with positions in development offices, sponsored research offices, or other administrative units. Program officers at nonprofit organizations may assume grant-writing responsibilities in addition to their program administration roles. These professionals are able to convey this experience into full-time fundraising positions at their organization or at another nonprofit, sometimes with a promotion and a salary increase. During times of economic uncertainty, professionals with a successful grant-writing track record are able to survive because the demand for experienced grant writers is always greater than the supply.
The legion of grant writers grows every year. There are lots of ways to get started. Young people can become grant writers through internships or assistantships. Grant writing experience gained through an unpaid position can give a recent college graduate a marketable skill that leads to employment. Graduate research assistants and new university faculty members may take their first steps in grant writing with their own fellowship applications. As their careers progress, they will take on increasingly complex grant proposal projects. Nonprofit or local government employees may turn to colleagues for advice and mentoring, or they may attend grant-writing seminars as a way to get started. Other grant writers simply learn their craft the hard way—on the job. In grant writing, both failure and success are great teachers.
Although grant writers may come to a grant-writing role from various starting points and along divergent pathways, there are two essential types of expertise they must either bring along or develop if they are to be successful. Being able to write reasonably well is one of these, of course. Second, it is essential either to possess expertise in what you write about or to have research skills that will give you the necessary working knowledge reasonably quickly. Communication skills and subject area expertise are both important; one without the other comes up short. If the task at hand is a grant proposal to support a local food bank, just being a wonderful writer will not necessarily win you a grant. Knowledge of specific local circumstances related to hunger and malnutrition and their place in the larger context are essential. By the same token, knowledge of hunger issues and the specific needs of your community will not necessarily be sufficient either. You must be able to communicate effectively with the decision makers who will review your grant proposal in order to prevail, because the needs of competing worthy causes always exceed the grant resources available to meet them.
Fortunately, both writing skills and research skills can be learned. If you are a good wordsmith but you are uneasy about doing research, you can acquire those research skills. If you are already an expert in something but the thought of writing about it sends you into a panic, there are ways to fix that too. Once you have writing and research skills in more or less equal measure, you will have a highly transferable skill set. The successful grant writer can take that combination up the career ladder from one organization to another.
Seasoned grant writers have developed an ability to acquire expert knowledge quickly and in sufficient detail to write a successful proposal on behalf of those who will actually carry out a proposal project. Grant writers who write to support others in teaching, research, or program delivery may be assisted by colleagues who are themselves experts. However, in the end, a proposal is written by a writer. It is the grant writer's craft and expertise that generate a coherent, compelling grant proposal.
It may come as no surprise that a good share of successful grant writers are liberal arts graduates. The writing demands of an American liberal arts education produce good writers in many fields. Because it involves academic study in a variety of disciplines across the arts and sciences, a liberal arts education provides familiarity with a wide range of subject matter. Also, the liberal arts model of learning requires students to write with sufficient clarity and depth to satisfy an instructor who is an expert in the discipline. In practice, the liberal arts curriculum leads naturally to the development of the writing and research skills that are the grant writer's essential equipment.
Other knowledge helpful to grant writing includes familiarity with budgetary and legal matters. Grants are money, after all, so it is necessary to be able to draft a budget and understand the relationship between resources and programs. Rudimentary knowledge of the regulations relevant to your organization and its grant income is also necessary, especially for those who write federal grants. However, a high level of expertise in these areas is not usually essential because you will rely on experts for their advice and input. You do not have to be a financial wizard or a lawyer to be a good grant writer; you do need to know when to seek advice.
Many grant writers know little about finance and budgeting when they begin writing their first proposals. However, every educational or nonprofit organization has at least one experienced finance officer. Most local government agencies will have a whole staff of finance people. By cultivating professional relationships with the financial side of the organization, a grant writer can access in-house expert assistance in the preparation of proposal budgets and financial statements. Similarly, when tax or other legal issues arise during the preparation of a grant proposal, the grant writer for a nonprofit organization will either turn to in-house counsel or request the advice of an outside attorney.
This book is a primer for anyone who wants to become acquainted with what is involved in grant writing. Whether you are interested in writing proposals to support your own work or the work of others, there is a common body of knowledge you should acquire with respect to determining your needs for support, researching, and cultivating funding prospects and proposal preparation.
It also aims to introduce the aspiring grant writer to the work that must be done before a proposal is submitted. The chapters that follow include nuts-and-bolts suggestions for outlining and drafting a proposal, and provide examples of various types of proposals. They also provide an introduction to the work involved in tracking proposals submitted for decision and ways to approach grant reporting. The grant writing process is a cycle that ideally begins with a winning proposal and ends with a final report to the donor that documents a successful program. Grant writers usually participate in all stages of the cycle.
Some aspiring grant writers served by this book have a broad career design for learning about grant writing as a profession. Already excellent writers, their aim is to secure a full-time position at an educational institution, nonprofit organization, or government entity where they will write proposals for projects or programs to be implemented by others. There is demand for people who can transform good ideas into coherent proposals for support. Once such an individual establishes a track record of successful grant proposals, it is relatively easy to transfer those skills to other organizations, even if they share little in terms of mission, size, or scope. A record of success in securing support for a local environmental nonprofit might very well serve as the springboard to a position in a national social service organization. Once the requisite skills and processes are firmly in hand, they can be transferred to new situations.
Over the course of a career, it is possible for a good grant writer to work in undergraduate and graduate education, public policy, and social services. Likewise, it is possible for a grant writer to spend an entire career in K-12 education or federal research grants. In fact, the possibilities and opportunities are great and varied for an accomplished writer interested in a grant-writing career.
This book is also intended for good writers who might want to volunteer their skills for an organization that cannot afford grant-writing expertise. Often small, community-based nonprofit organizations do not have staff with grant-writing experience and cannot afford to contract proposals out to independent writers. Even though they might be eligible to compete for grant support, these organizations simply lack the internal capacity to produce proposals and therefore cannot compete. A volunteer with writing skills who is willing to tackle a grant project can make a critical difference.
It is likely that many of the aspiring grant writers this book aims to serve are already employed but have jobs that are not dedicated to grant writing. Instead, they have jobs that may for one reason or another intersect with the grant-writing world. They are engaged in activities that require funding from an outside source. These people already possess a specialized expertise and need only to develop their writing skills in order to be successful grant seekers. They may be teachers, professors, or administrators at educational institutions. They may be program administrators in nonprofit organizations or local government agencies who want to be able to write proposals to support or enhance the programs or projects they intend to direct.
It is often the case that teachers or program delivery experts must write their own grant proposals, even when their organization employs dedicated fundraising staff. Development offices at educational institutions and nonprofit organizations respond to the priorities of the organization's board of directors. Priorities set by a board will generally focus a development operation's activities, leaving few resources for the external fundraising interests of other professional staff. So long as you have the moral support of your executive officer, and any relevant financial or legal support that may be necessary, you should be able to add writing to your professional toolkit and garner the external funding you need to carry out the work you want to do.
Grant-writing skills can be a helpful means to career advancement for an ambitious educator. Grant writing is sometimes embedded within a job description. For example, public school administrators may be expected to secure outside funding to support special projects. They may be called upon to develop proposals in response to a Request for Proposal (RFP) published by a public or private funding source. In higher education, a chief academic officer may be required to secure external funding for curriculum redesign or faculty development. Very often, these responsibilities are delegated to administrators who report to the chief academic officer. Staff in such positions need to develop grant writing expertise to advance their careers. There is no better way to get positive attention than by bringing in large sums of money.
On an individual level, every professor, teacher, or teaching assistant can enhance his or her career prospects through successful grant writing. At some research and comprehensive universities, faculty are evaluated for promotion, tenure, salary, and other perks on the basis of external funding received via grant proposals or contracts. There are strong incentives at these institutions for becoming a successful grant writer.
This book also aims to serve artists, scholars, and creative writers who are interested in grant opportunities that directly support individuals. Most aspiring grant writers will be writing proposals submitted through a college, university, nonprofit organization, or a government entity. The grant application will include appropriate IRS letters or other documentation proving that the organization is eligible to receive funds, and any grant funds received will go directly to the organization. Most corporate, foundation, and federal grants are made to organizations and not to individuals.
However, people in the arts and academe do have some grant opportunities for direct grant and fellowship support. This means that when a grant or fellowship is awarded, the grant payment checks will be made out to the individual grant applicant rather than to an educational institution or other nonprofit organization. Artists, scholars, and creative writers who qualify for grants to individuals have a highly focused and specialized reason for acquiring grant-writing skills.
Openings for full-time positions that require grant writing appear every week in newspapers, professional publications, and job websites. Part-time and contract positions are also plentiful. They are found in areas as diverse as education, public policy, social services, child welfare, religion, medical research, animal rights, and environmental preservation. Anyone with a successful track record in grant writing can count on new and frequent job opportunities. Applicants with other types of significant writing experience can often break into a grant-writing job by providing writing samples that are similar to the grant-writing job at hand. Organizations in need of funding are typically well-staffed with people who can't write, hate to write, or don't have time to write. If you can demonstrate that your presence will lift that burden off their shoulders, you will find a position.
Tough economic times can actually increase job prospects for good grant writers because of the heightened competition for philanthropic or government resources. The supply of good grant writers rarely exceeds the demand.
College and university development offices offer a huge number of opportunities for grant writers every year. You will frequently find this office called the advancement office, a name that captures the concept of moving the institution forward by generating resources. Fundraising positions are typically housed in a development or advancement office, which may also house a broad range of related activities including public relations, special events, and alumni and parent relations. The core fundraising functions found in a typical development or advancement office include annual fund, corporate relations, foundation relations, major gifts, and capital gifts. Writing skills can be a requirement for positions in any of these areas.
In the average development office, the primary grant-writing positions are in corporate and foundation relations, but in some cases professionals working in annual fund, major gifts, and capital gift fundraising may be called upon to produce grant proposals. Research universities typically have the largest number of fundraising professionals dedicated to grant writing. It is typical for a large research university to have several dozen people in various positions dedicated to producing successful grant proposals.
The several hundred top research institutions in the United States garner hundreds of millions of dollars a year in external grant support. To accomplish this, the advancement office may contain separate offices dedicated to foundation relations and corporate relations, each with its own director and several associate and assistant directors (as shown in Figure 1.1), all of whom have grant-writing responsibilities. Directors and assistant directors are also likely to have support staff and assistants to help them in the search for grant opportunities and the preparation of proposals. There are opportunities for employment at all levels in these offices. Turnover tends to be frequent because of the opportunities for promotion. One successful grant proposal can be the stepping stone to higher pay and more responsibility.
Comprehensive universities are not in the same class in terms of dollars generated, but they likewise engage in multimillion-dollar efforts to support research and programs with external grants. Comprehensive universities comprise a large share of new job openings in grant writing and are well worth looking at if you want a grant-writing position.
Figure 1.1 Sample reporting structure in a research university.
While professionals in a university's central development office serve the university as a whole, you will often find additional development officers serving as grant writers for specific administrators within the management structure. Academic deans in charge of schools or colleges of law, medicine, engineering, communications, or liberal arts may have their own staff dedicated to developing new grant proposals for research and educational projects unique to their administrative unit.
It is not uncommon for the position announcement for an academic dean to list "grant production" or "increasing external funding" as one of the expectations (as shown in Figure 1.2). Deans charged with the responsibility of raising funds require significant grant-writing assistance to be successful. You can be sure that an academic dean who has proposal production and external funding as measurable goals for her performance will want grant writers on her staff with a reporting channel that goes directly up to her desk. Given their other responsibilities, few deans have much time to spend on grants research and writing—as important as it is to them. They must rely on staff to carry out their ideas. Theoretically, development professionals working for a constituent school will work cooperatively with the central development office to bring about successful outcomes.
Any institution engaged in a capital campaign—a highly structured effort to achieve major fundraising goals within a specified period of time—is likely to need grant writers. At most institutions, the advent of a capital campaign will mean increased hiring in the development office. Constituent colleges, institutes, and programs may well have the need and resources to hire grant writers as well in order to achieve their capital campaign goals. In some large universities, there is significant cooperation between a central development office and constituent colleges, while at others there is intense competition.
Figure 1.2 Sample position announcement: Dean of Engineering.
Smaller institutions such as liberal arts colleges or community colleges typically have all of these grant-writing needs on a smaller scale. For example, a small college might have just one grant writer. If you enjoy variety, that might be the perfect setting for you. At liberal arts colleges, the chief grant writer is typically the director of corporate and foundation relations (as shown in Figure 1.3). In small institutions, development functions may be combined with additional responsibilities for federal and state grants. In this type of setting it is possible to gain a wide range of grant-writing experience in a relatively short period of time.
Figure 1.3 Sample context and reporting structure for director of corporate and foundation relations.
All major medical facilities, and many small ones, have development or advancement offices that engage in many of the same types of fundraising activities found in colleges and universities. They solicit funding for such things as program development, new construction, medical research, acquisition of new equipment, and community outreach. Often they will partner with other organizations with which they share common objectives.
Prospective sources of support for medical facilities include corporations, foundations, government agencies, local philanthropic organizations, and grateful patients. Grant writers are needed for all of these types of solicitations. If you enjoy working in a medical setting, you can have a very rewarding grant-writing career in a hospital or clinic.
Sponsored research offices at universities, research hospitals, and research institutes comprise another area where grant-writing positions exist. Sometimes these offices are called "sponsored programs," but the function is identical. Whereas a development office is typically involved in securing private sector support, a sponsored research office will be engaged in securing public sector support. Federal grants are normally prepared in a sponsored research office.
In a university, sponsored research offices usually fall under the chief academic officer. All faculty-initiated grant proposals begin at this office. At most research institutions, sponsored research offices have staff dedicated to helping faculty seek potential grant support and prepare proposals for submission. Some institutions even promote sponsored research offices as a place where faculty can get assistance in marketing their ideas for external support. These jobs can result in close professional collaboration and can be rewarding for a competent grant writer.
Other sponsored research grant writers will be engaged in applying for institutional grants that are driven not by a single individual's research interests but by the institution's leadership. At any research hospital or university, the largest grants as well as the largest number of research grants will be federal grants, which entail a substantially more complex application and reporting procedure than private grants. Grant writers in sponsored research offices are also likely to have more complex reporting responsibilities than their counterparts in development offices. If you are a detail-oriented person, sponsored research grant writing is likely to appeal to you. See Figure 1.4 for a sample reporting structure of grant-writing positions in a university sponsored research office.
Figure 1.4 Sample reporting structure for grant-writing positions in sponsored research offices.
According to the National Center for Charitable Statistics (NCCS), there were 1,515,679 registered nonprofit organizations in the United States in 2008. In terms of sheer numbers, nonprofits offer the novice grant writer the best possible hunting ground for employment. These organizations, large and small, need writers who can persuade potential funders to support their causes. If you are willing to start out with the relatively modest salary a small nonprofit organization can provide, you will gain valuable on-the-job experience that can be transferred to higher-paid positions.
The very largest nonprofits in the United States have fully staffed development and sponsored programs operations that function much as sponsored research offices do in universities. The country's largest nonprofits tend to be national in scope and to focus on social welfare or disaster relief. These large organizations will have multiple staff positions dedicated to writing proposals for both private and public support.
Countless other grant-writing opportunities can be found in smaller nonprofits, and there is no limit to the causes they support. A genuine, documented passion for the cause can give you great credibility in a small nonprofit organization. If you are interested in turning your convictions into a career, you will find writing grants for a cause you believe in very satisfying. Volunteering is an excellent starting point for the aspiring nonprofit grant writer.
It may seem surprising, but local government and tribal entities are the recipients of millions of federal grant dollars each year. Much of the funding dispensed to local government agencies is passed down through state government agencies and is therefore popularly referred to as "passthrough" funding. Such grants are often called "entitlement" grants, which may give the impression that you don't have to apply for them. Nothing could be further from the truth. The grant application process involved in applying for "entitlement" funds is extensive and employs a lot of people.
Federal grant dollars are also awarded on a competitive basis. The federal government offers more than 1,800 grant programs administered by federal departments and agencies. All of these are published in the Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance (CFDA). Grant writers who acquire the specialized expertise needed to prepare competitive federal grant proposals have a very marketable skill set.
Due to their special status, tribal governments are eligible for special federal programs in addition to those open to state and local government agencies. These grant programs serve 1.9 million American Indians and Alaska Natives from 562 federally recognized tribes. Anyone who is a member of one of these tribes or an advocate on their behalf can play an important role as a grant writer.
