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Opinion
Getting the Grants: Boost Your Chances!
7/3/2006
Organizations that award grants like to get progress reports from recipients. Lora Phillips, manager of Community Relations and Corporate Philanthropy at Symantec, says she thinks grant seekers should mention in their applications how they intend to keep the funding organization informed. Mechanisms range from a quarterly newsletter to an occasional e-mail update, she notes. The Symantec Foundation funds education initiatives that emphasize math, science, technology and engineering. To find out more, head to the Symantec Foundation Web site.
Clark, at the NEC Foundation, cites ongoing communication as a formal requirement of that foundation’s grant program. Recipients are required to submit a status report to the foundation every six months until the project is complete.
Grant seekers should keep in mind that a research proposal focused on a single discipline may fail to get the same attention as an initiative linking contributors from various fields. A project in the medical area, for example, may call for the expertise of an MD, a computer scientist, and an engineer, Sanchez at Sun points out.
“Now, we are much more interested in looking at some of these integrated groups,” he explains. Applicants, he adds, “might have a better chance of getting a grant if they are working with someone else.” Sanchez says he sees partnering among institutions as a growing grants trend.
Partnering can also help an institution broaden its project’s impact. Clark points to the example of the University of Minnesota, which is working on an online project to create an accessible Web portal for self-advocacy groups across the country. The school partners with People First Minnesota, a local self-advocacy organization, to test site design and feature preferences.
Put simply, grant providers prefer applications and proposals that get to the point. Symantec’s Phillips says some institutions preface their applications with a discussion of who they are, what they are doing, and why their work is important. While those details are useful, applicants should clearly state what they are hoping to obtain in the very first paragraph. In fact, if Phillips had to choose the one thing that would help a grant application, “Be very succinct and very clear about what is actually being asked of us,” she asserts. You don’t ask [clearly]; you don’t get.
John Moore has been writing about information technology in education, government, and healthcare for 20 years.
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