Local municipalities face shrinking budgets and are being forced to diversify their funding sources, often turning to grants to accomplish important projects. A significant portion of local government funds are consumed by day-to-day city services, such as waste removal, police and fire and infrastructure repairs. These expenses leave little money left over for the wish lists of mayors hoping to propel their city toward expanded services and higher standards of living.
Doing More With Less
For cities struggling to win public approval of local property tax increases, the ability to invest in infrastructure, technology, green energy initiatives, sports, arts and cultural programs, and safety improvements is often not possible without the assistance of federal and state grants.
Why hire an expert?
To those not familiar with grants, grant-seeking can be confusing and complex. Novices in the field fail to understand the process and procedure to obtain them or maintain them. Each grant is complex and different from the others.
Change is occurring rapidly in all sectors—including the grant industry. The climate for grants changes constantly and is a chameleon of the annual economy. In a down economy, just when local governments and agencies need grants the most, funding often slows to a trickle and match dollars are lost from the applicant’s budget. As the economy rebounds, grant programs grow more robust and local match dollars reappear in the budget.
The electronic age has revamped the entire grant environment—from researching new funds to making applications. Grant applications are often electronic submissions varying between the streamlined submission and the finicky process that fails to submit due to an ill-defined error.
A grant program guided by an expert helps your organization continue to do what it does best as a service provider.
How do we do it?
We meet with staff to make a Determination of Funding Needs. We meet with every department of the local government or every program director of the nonprofit in order to determine the Client’s most critical needs. We research local, state and federal funding sources through, active research, publications, and Internet sources. We gather as much information as possible in order to develop a grant strategy that identifies current funding programs available to match to funding needs.
Our staff completes Regular Grant Monitoring and Research to determine the open funding cycles. We inform our Clients of newly published funding programs and upcoming grant cycles and review those funding programs to determine application to Client programs. When, in our professional opinion, it is a good match we encourage a proposed application.
Writing a grant application takes a team effort between our Client’s staff and our team. We inform the Client on methods and means to strengthen a program or improve a grant application. We identify information needed for grant applications. We review the guidelines once, then again, then several times again as we clarify written grantor guidelines and confer with the grantor on unresolved questions. We coordinate the collection of data and documents for grant applications. Finally, we are ready to draft, revise, polish and file grant applications in coordination with Client’s staff. The finished product is a well-prepared, well-crafted, unique, reader-friendly and complete grant application submitted in a timely manner.