January 30, 2003 | Read Time: 2 minutes
Q: I’d like to learn how to write grant proposals, with an eye toward doing it on a freelance basis. What’s the best and quickest way for me to learn this craft, and can you recommend any resources?
A: The Grantsmanship Center, in Los Angeles, has trained many freelancers in grant-proposal writing. However, cautions Marc Green, editor of The Grantsmanship Center Magazine, the group tends to discourage people from looking upon grant-proposal writing as a freelance endeavor. “Grantsmanship is not about proposal writing but about understanding and planning the programs, which is usually done best from the inside,” says Mr. Green. “A freelancer may well serve a small grass-roots organization that does not have the capacity to plan its own programs and have its own grants people on staff. The Catch-22 is that those are precisely the organizations that can least afford to hire a $75- or $100-per-hour consultant.”
Nonetheless, grant-proposal writing is becoming an established profession, both for in-house personnel and consultants, according to Phyllis Renninger of the American Association of Grant Professionals, an online network. Ms. Renninger finds that most people have entered the field through on-the-job training, although there are more and more universities and colleges that offer training courses and degrees. Additionally, both Ms. Renninger and Mr. Green note that many state associations of nonprofit groups and local nonprofit management-support organizations now offer grant-proposal writing workshops to their members or clients.
The American Association of Grant Professionals also runs an electronic mailing list that professionals can use to swap advice about any aspect of the job. “In general, there’s a lot of help out there these days,” she says. The association doesn’t advocate any particular type of training, Ms. Renninger says, although it does offer some how-to and best-practices courses at its annual conference, which will next be held in November in Kansas City, Mo. The group has also developed a code of ethics and discourages such questionable freelance practices as constructing fees as a percentage of the grant money won.
More advice is also available online. For example, Polaris, a grant-proposal writing service in Inman, S.C., that has worked for nonprofit clients for 19 years, offers free answers, via e-mail, to specific questions about writing proposals. And Philanthropy Careers’ Hotline has in the past taken up such as issues as how much freelance grant-proposal writers can expect to be paid and whether it’s practical to do such work from a home office.
In addition, plenty of how-to books show how to write grant proposals, including Writing Grant Proposals That Win, Second Edition, by Phale D. Hale, Jr. (Aspen Publishers, 1999, $105); Winning Grants: Step by Step, Second Edition, by Mim Carlson (Jossey-Bass Publishers, 2002, $29); and Proposal Planning and Writing, Third Edition, by Lynn E. Miner and Jeremy T. Miner (Greenwood Press, 2003, $39.95)
Got a question about job hunting, managing, or recruiting in the nonprofit world? Send it to us a hotline@philanthropy.com
