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As Christians who write, we meet together to promote unity and fellowship, to encourage one another and to develop our skills as writers. We are a chapter of American Christian Writers, a national organization.

We meet at Grove Avenue Baptist Church, 1 block south of Patterson Avenue at 8701 Ridge Road, Richmond, VA 23229 in Room 211.

We typically meet on the third Sunday of each month from 2:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. Join us!


Click HERE for directions.


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Friday, March 24, 2006

Grant Writing ~ by Brandy Brow

I've written only one grant proposal, but I won the grant and received excellent feedback on my application, so I'll share a few tips based on the grant committee's comments and my experience.

1. Make sure your proposed project you seek funding for matches the kinds of projects the grant supplier supports. (e.g. I wanted to attend a writer's conference which qualified under the artist development portion of the organization's program.)

2. State your project's objectives succinctly

3. Set clear, obtainable goals, and provide ways you plan to measure goal achievements. In my case I had to write a report after I attended the conference so this last part was especially important.

4. Account for every possible expense and income in your budgeting section.

5. Do your homework to obtain realistic prices before submitting your proposed budget. Because I did, (and also because of God) my actual expenses were miraculously $1 off what I projected. While yours may not be quite as close, the point is that you don't want your actual budget to be hundreds of dollars off which may require you to resubmit a new budget or lose funding.

6. Ask questions of the grant program's coordinators if you don't understand certain application rules, instructions, or sections.

7. Follow the rules. This one is a biggie. Just like with submitting manuscripts to publishers, it is important to follow grant application guidelines because if you don't, they will be forced to disqualify your application and all your hard work will be wasted.

8. Expect to put in hours--yes, hours--preparing and your application. It's a lot of work, but well worth it.

9. Categorize in your mind grant opportunities correctly--as contests. Usually many people apply and funding can go to only so many. Present your best application, realize that like manuscript submissions your excellent application may not garner you the grant for a myriad of reasons, and send it off with prayer.

Brandy Brow
shemaiah@localnet.com

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hi Tom,

Would you do me a favor and replace my e-mail address in this post with my blog's URL? Much thanks.

Brandy Brow
The Building Brows
http://thebuildingbrows.blogspot.com