March 10, 2016 | Read Time: 3 minutes
Seeking grants can be time consuming, but there are certainly ways to make the writing process less of a burden.
“When you have downtime, gather all of the commonly requested documents that grant makers ask for over and over again,” suggests Martha Holley-Miers, national development director at education nonprofit Higher Achievement.
Some of these common proposal elements are language about organizational history and capacity, biographies of team members who might be included in a grant proposal, your organization’s IRS tax-exempt status letter, its IRS Form 990, recent audits, and budgets.
Keep your file of those items updated, she says.
It’s also wise to stay informed about grant makers’ interests and broader trends about the kinds of projects that receive funding, so your organization is well armed to respond to proposals in those areas. “Develop some materials about how your organization aligns with trends,” says M. Holley-Miers.
For example, nonprofits working in education know that STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) has become a major focus area for many grant makers. So Higher Achievement wrote some basic language about how its work aligns with that priority. The text outlines the charity’s curriculum, the partnerships it has in place, and actions needed to advance STEM education. To develop this boilerplate language, Ms. Holley-Miers sat down with people on the program side of her organization to get their input.
Having an outline of the organization’s plans to strengthen STEM curriculum ready to go, she says, “left us well positioned to be able to apply for — and receive — funding in this area.”
See the example from Higher Achievement below.
Boilerplate Example: Higher Achievement STEM Focus
STEM Curriculum: Higher Achievement plans to create an interdisciplinary approach to improve its STEM curriculum. Our program offers STEM courses during Summer Academy and STEM based seminars in Afterschool Academy. We have lesson plans in physics, biology, environmental science, and earth sciences. Our partnerships with Constellation Energy in Baltimore and Noblis in DC have enabled us to operate project based learning initiatives such as a robotics course and kitchen sink science experiments.
In order to strengthen our STEM curriculum, Higher Achievement plans to create interdisciplinary lessons, incorporating math into science lessons and using history as an additional knowledge base for learning the natural sciences. We also intend to explore more project based learning opportunities. In addition to curriculum improvement, Higher Achievement will utilize blended learning platforms as a vehicle for enhanced individualized support, while maximizing resources, a low mentor to scholar ratio and increased use of technology.
Selecting the Right Platforms: Higher Achievement will carefully assess available platforms and select at least one system to pilot in the coming fiscal year, based on the following criteria: alignment with Common Core State Standards; age appropriate for 5th-8th graders; successful previous implementation in expanded learning models; hardware and other implementation requirements; and compatibility with Higher Achievement’s culture of rigor, high expectations, and making learning fun. As Higher Achievement strengthens its program to align with individual schools, this requires using different blending learning platforms that fit with each school’s need. A former Teach for America teacher has conducted an initial assessment of blended learning platforms on the market to date.
