Author: Jayme Sokolow

…With Great Application Instructions
Once you decide to apply for a federal grant, you should immediately develop a set of Application Instructions. While every solid grant effort begins with a great kick-off meeting, every successful kick-off meeting begins with a comprehensive set of Application Instructions.

What are Application Instructions?
When you go on a trip with a group of people, you need to study the same maps, read the same guidebooks, and develop a common itinerary.

Embarking on a proposal effort is very similar to taking a group trip. Your team needs to have a common understanding of the tasks ahead.

Good Application Instructions will provide everyone with a clear, detailed roadmap to take them, confidently, from the kick-off meeting to the delivery of the proposal.

The Contents of Application Instructions

Before the kick-off meeting, provide team members with a copy of the grant guidelines and other relevant documents along with your Application Instructions. This should be a three- to four-page document that contains the following:
• Notes and Conventions. This is a bulleted list that includes information about
  (1) the proposal’s due date and how it will be submitted;
  (2) the number of anticipated awards, the amount of money
       available, and the maximum size of a grant; and
  (3) the format and layout of the grant narrative – font style, size,
       justification, size of margins, etc.

• Application. This should be a table in three columns. The column on the
   left should list every section of the entire application from the cover
   sheet through the appendices. The narrative should be outlined according
   to the grant guidelines. The middle column should be titled “Person(s)
   Responsible” and left blank. And the third column should list the dates
   when each of these application sections are due to the Project Manager.

• Evaluation Factors. List the evaluation factors, discuss how the application
   will be scored, and explain what should be emphasized in the proposal
   narrative as a result.

• Schedule. Create a two-column table. The left column should show major
   dates starting with the kick-off meeting and ending with the delivery
   of the application. The right column should list important activities
   keyed to these dates, such as “Complete the first draft of the budget.”

Now your proposal team is ready for a productive kick-off meeting where everyone leaves with a shared understanding of how your proposal will be conceptualized, developed, and delivered.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Dr. Jayme Sokolow, founder and president of The Development Source, Inc. helps nonprofit organizations develop successful proposals to government agencies. He can be contacted at Jayme Sokolow.

Before you apply for a federal grant, you should determine whether your organization has the financial capability to use federal funds properly.

A Financial Checklist…
…to help you determine whether or not you are ready to apply for a federal grant.

□ Has the IRS classified your organization as a tax-exempt entity? To apply for many federal grants, you must be an IRS tax-exempt organization. Most NPOs are 501(c)(3) organizations under the IRS tax code, but other kinds of NPOs can apply for grants too.

□ Are your organization’s financial records audited annually by an independent outside public accountant? A federal agency may require your NPO to produce a “non-qualified” audit report to receive a grant award. This means that there were no financial issues and that all accounting standards were properly observed.

□ Can you meet the financial requirements? Before you apply, you should carefully study the grant guidelines to determine that your NPO can meet all financial requirements. For example, one typical grant requirement is the periodic submission of detailed financial reports.

□ Do you have the organizational financial policies, procedures, and practices in place to use grant funds properly? Once you receive a grant, you will be expected to (1) disperse grant funds according to your application budget; and (2) account for them according to accepted accounting procedures. For example, one important financial practice would be the ability of your NPO to identify and track all grant expenditures.

□ Is your nonprofit ready to be audited by a federal agency? As a condition of award, a government agency may decide to do a pre-award audit to determine whether your NPO can manage a grant … while adhering to accepted accounting standards.

You also may be audited at the conclusion of your grant to determine whether your organization has spent its grant funds properly – i.e., only on those items/activities that were in the budget you submitted with your application, or were approved subsequent to that submission by the granting agency.

Determine your Financial Capability Now
If you can answer all these questions positively, you are financially ready to apply for a federal grant. If any of your answers are negative, address your problems before you apply for a federal grant.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Dr. Jayme Sokolow, founder and president of The Development Source, Inc. helps nonprofit organizations develop proposals to government agencies, foundations, and corporations. He can be contacted at Jayme Sokolow.

Once you have identified a promising federal grant opportunity, and before you invest the “usual” time and energy, you should first determine if this federal opportunity is for you…or not !!

The Five Basic Questions
Once you have carefully studied the grant guidelines, you should be able to address the following:

1. Are you eligible? In the section on “Eligible Applicants” are the parameters
    for who can apply. Some federal grant programs are restricted to specific
    states or certain kinds of organizations.

2. What is the deadline? The section labelled “Deadline for Transmittal of
    Applications” will make it pretty clear if you have enough time to develop a
    great application. You will need at least a month to develop a highly
    competitive application.

3. What is the award size? Look in the section on “Estimated Average Award
    Size.” You should know your total project cost and compare that number to
    the size of the grant award. There is an economy of scale in developing
    federal proposals. Requesting a small amount of grant funds may be almost
    as time-consuming as requesting 10 times that amount.

4. What are your chances of receiving an award? This info is in the
    “Estimated Number of Awards” section. If the federal program is
    only going to award a few grants, you should consider not applying …
    because the competition is going to be very fierce. Better to focus
    on federal grant programs where the mathematical odds are more in
    your favor.

5. Is my project directly related to the grant guidelines? Look at the
    description of the grant program. Does your organization have the same
    mission as the grant program? Will your grant application directly address
    the goals and objectives of the grant program? If the answer to both
    questions is yes, than this grant program may be for you.

Just Say No
If you do your homework, you will uncover many potential federal grant opportunities. You should not, however, even think about applying to all of them. After a while, when you’ve developed a good process for reviewing
those federal grant opportunities, you will find yourself deciding not to
bid on most of them.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Dr. Jayme Sokolow, founder and president of The Development Source, Inc. helps nonprofit organizations develop proposals to government agencies, foundations, and corporations. He can be contacted at Jayme Sokolow.

Tracking

Once you begin tracking federal grant opportunities through the Federal Register (www.gpoaccess.gov/fr)) and Grants.Gov (www.grants.gov), you will begin finding grant announcements. To take advantage of these opportunities, you first must understand what you are reading.

Doing a Basic Search

Doing a basic search for grant announcements is straightforward. At both sites, you can use the “Basic Search” option to search by keyword, funding opportunity number, Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance (CFDA) number, agency, or grant category. Browsing by category may result in hundreds of listings, which will help you understand the kinds of programs and agencies involved in a particular category of grants, such as energy or elementary education.

Deciphering Information about Federal Grants

Familiarize yourself with the language and format of federal grant listings. Here are the key components of a typical grant listing:
•  Posted date.
•  Closing date for applications. This tells you when the application is due.
•  Expected number of awards. This tells you how many awards will be
made through this grant program.
•  Estimated total program funding. This tells you how much money
is available through this grant competition.
•  Award ceiling and floor. This tells you the lowest and highest grant
budgets you can submit.
•  Cost sharing or matching. This tells you whether or not you must
contribute a certain percentage of cash or in-kind resources to your
federally funded project.
•  Description. This is a short summary of the grant program.
•  Link to the full announcement. The URL will link you to the entire
grant application package.

Taking Your Grant Pulse

Now that you have this information, you can match up your nonprofit’s program needs to a specific federal grant competition. But before you apply, you must candidly assess your nonprofit’s readiness to apply and your chances of winning a grant.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Dr. Jayme Sokolow, the founder and president of The Development Source, Inc. helps nonprofit organizations develop proposals to government agencies, foundations, and corporations. He can be contacted at Jayme Sokolow.

The Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance …

That describes over 500 grant programs (awarding hundreds of billions of dollars), is a great place to get an overview of every grant program administered by the federal government.

The CFDA provides a full listing of 2,110 federal programs available to state and local governments, Indian tribal governments, territories and possessions of the United States, nonprofit organizations, and individuals.

The top five grant programs by Department are:
• Health and Human Services (417).
• Agriculture (229).
• Interior (217).
• Education (170).
• Justice (125).

On the CFDA Web site, you can use the search engine to identify grant programs by agency or by general topic; and, grant programs on that site are classified as either:

A formula grant… which is federal money distributed by a state agency
— based on some kind of formula.

A project grant… that comes directly from a federal agency.

The Federal Register

(www.gpoaccess.gov/fr) is a major resource for specific information about available grants. Published by the National Archives and Records Administration, this is a daily publication of the rules, proposed rules, and notices about grant programs of federal agencies that is searchable by date of announcement or by topic.

Although the Federal Register is very wordy, there is a very good reason to use it. The advance notices you can receive about federal grant opportunities will enable you to begin preparing your grant application before the official notice appears.

Grants.Gov

Perhaps the handiest way to find grant opportunities is through this website (www.grants.gov), which lists all current and upcoming grant opportunities by agency, number, and by topic. Clicking on a listing leads you to the grant guidelines, deadlines, eligible applicants, the amount of money available, and the estimated number of grants to be awarded.

For example, under “family planning” there are over 100 federal grant and contract opportunities in the area of contraception, family planning services, HIV/AIDS, and STIs.

Become a Tracker!

Once you have identified federal grant programs of interest, you should begin monitoring them (on a daily basis) in the Federal Register or Grants.Gov. That’s the only way you will know when grant funds become available. A successful application often depends on how ready you are to pounce on a grant opportunity.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Dr. Jayme Sokolow, the founder and president of The Development Source, Inc. helps nonprofit organizations develop proposals to government agencies, foundations, and corporations. He can be contacted at Jayme Sokolow.

Every year, government agencies around the country provide over $200 billion in grants … for specific services to local communities. Today, there are approximately 2,000 federal grant programs and over 40,000 state grant programs.

But before you get all excited about all that government money, you must really understand what government grants are and who is eligible to apply for them.

What Is A Government Grant ??

A (federal, state, local) government grant is the money awarded to a nonprofit organization (NPO) consistent with a contract between the government and the NPO – where the latter provides the service for which the former pays. (Grants, of course, do not have to be repaid.)

There is an application process for all government grants, and not all applicants qualify. Then, when you receive a grant, you are agreeing to carry out the activities described in your grant application and to adhere to all the conditions of the award. All such grants include various conditions, one of which is always that the grantee must provide periodic financial and program reports on their “contractual” activities.

There Are Two Kinds of Federal Grants. Continue reading “Introduction To Government Grants”