What is a Grant?

A grant is the award of money for a program or service to the winner of the award-winning proposal. Grants are most often awarded to support special programs or activities of an organization for a specific amount of money and for an exact time. It’s defined simply as an exchange of services for money. If I’m fortunate enough to receive a grant award for my organization then I do not have to pay it back; unless my organization does not complete the project or fails to meet the grant requirements as stated in my proposal. 

The organization that I founded two decades ago operates 100% of the time under competitive grant funding and I write all of my own proposals with my team. Once I have identified that my organization has a need for outside grant funding then my work commences. The rationale for researching and creating my proposal is to address specific needs of my agency for outside funding. 

The first question I ask myself is whether or not my organization is eligible to submit a proposal. It’s very easy to determine this by reviewing the “Eligibile Applicants” section found in all grant applications.

My next step is to thoroughly search for and review “Requests for Proposals”, referred to as RFPs. This is the request sent out by the grant maker to those seeking funds. The grant maker is the entity that will award the grant funds to the winning agency. A very important point to remember as I search for funds is that if there is no “Request for Proposals” found, then there is no need to write a grant.