Grant Writing Training

This course is designed to teach participants how to write a winning grant proposal. Seminar attendees will learn firsthand about grant writing from an experienced grant writer. Complex grant writing issues will be addressed by offering participants practical, real-world solutions to their grant writing challenges.

Participants will benefit from this course in the following ways:

  • Gain increased confidence in their ability to produce a winning grant proposal
  • Learn how an individual or small team can write a grant proposal that wins funding over those submitted by large organizations with many staff members
  • Understand how funding evaluation teams analyze grant proposals

Topics include:

  • Using the favored styles of winning grant proposals
  • Including the content that must be contained in all proposals
  • Discovering how to write two of the most important documents in all grant proposals, the Cover Letter and Executive Summary
  • Learning how to write the Problem Statement and Needs Assessment to prove your need for funding
  • Clarifying the objectives of your funding requests
  • Stressing the benefits to the funding organization
  • Illustrating the qualifications of your staff and volunteers
  • Clarifying the methods you will use to implement your program
  • Presenting your budget and persuading the evaluation team of the financial merits of your funding request
  • Demonstrating how your success will be evaluated by the funding organization
  • Finishing your proposal with a strong conclusion and including the necessary attachments

Seminar Tips:

  • Propose a project that is compatible with the mission of the funding organization
  • Create clear road maps for the reader by highlighting key elements with bullets, italics, headings, subheadings, boldface type, color, borders, and charts
  • Clearly establish a compelling problem or need in your proposal
  • Demonstrate how all of your objectives can be measured by the grantors
  • Prove that other options were considered before selecting your proposed methodology to address the problem or need

Additional Modules Available for Grant Writing Training

Grant Writing for Faith-Based Projects and Programs

Federal grants provide many new opportunities for faith-based organizations. We have developed a training program that will teach your organization how to win government and foundation faith-based grants.

This workshop is your opportunity to learn how to win government and foundation funding for your faith-based social programs and projects. This course will help you develop government and foundation grants based on your vision and the needs of your religious organization. Learn the latest information on federal faith-based initiatives.

Participants will benefit from this course in the following ways:

  • Gain increased confidence in grant writing for faith-based projects and programs
  • Learn how to access government and foundation grant resources
  • Understand the current relationship between government and faith-based organizations

Topics include:

  • Attaining a grant writing frame-of-mind
  • Learning grant writing shortcuts
  • Accessing resources on the Internet
  • Highlighting key components of a proposal
  • Analyzing examples of successful faith-based projects and programs

Seminar Tips:

Use the following resources to expand your knowledge of grant writing:

www.Idealist.org
Idealist is the richest community of nonprofit and volunteering resources on the Web, with information provided by 33,000 organizations in 165 countries. Resources include a consultant directory, career center, and resources for teachers to use in the classroom.

Foundation Center
The Foundation Center is the nonprofit organization sponsored by the foundation community. This Web site contains a searchable database of foundation information, links to the Foundation Center local libraries across the country, and useful proposal writing information geared to novice grant writers.

American Philanthropy Review
This site offers a wide range of useful newsgroups of interest to the nonprofit community. Like most newsgroups, it is best to subscribe to the digest versions. This site also has extensive archives covering most nonprofit issues. Involved and experienced nonprofit professionals moderate the newsgroups. The "Grants" newsgroup will benefit novice and intermediate level grant writers.

www.grants.gov
This new federal government-sponsored Web site pulls together the different federal government grant programs and attempts to provide a common application process.

www.jointogether.org
Join Together This free daily e-mail newsletter from the Boston University Public Health Research contains well-written summaries of the latest research into numerous social fields with links to sources.

Abe's E-mail Report
There are many fee services that provide grant leads and most are overpriced. The best bargain is Abe's E-mail Report. For $50 per year, Abe's will send you a daily e-mail that contains the latest info on federal, foundation, and corporate grants in an format you can quickly review. Abe's has a free trial offer to allow you to sample the service before you pay.

Leader to Leader Institute
This Web site contains an extensive archive of interesting and well-written program abstracts and descriptions from the most innovative social programs from across the United States. You can also sign up for Nonprofit Innovation of the Week, a weekly e-mail that highlights an innovative social program.

Grant Writing Advice Article
This article is written by our grant writing trainer, Jack Smith. Communicating Well: Lessons in Writing Good Grant Proposals is based on his experience as a member of a grant proposal review team for a state library commission’s grant program.

To Schedule this Training

For groups of three or more participants

Cypress Media Group presents this seminar as an on-site offering at your work location or at an off-site location of your choice. We can customize this training program to suit your precise training needs.

For economic reasons, this seminar is only offered to groups of roughly three or more people with the same training needs. If you have a group with similar training needs, please e-mail Jack@cypressmedia.net to discuss your interest.

For fewer than three participants

We do not offer this course as an open enrollment public offering for individuals. If you have fewer than three participants who are interested in this course, the cost will be the same as for a larger group. Please e-mail Jack@cypressmedia.net to discuss your interest.

Writing Software Available

We recommend that writers use the StyleWriter editing software. StyleWriter will show you how to edit your writing like a pro. You can order a 30-day trial of this remarkable program on the Software for Writers CD. You'll also get four free programs for writers, including a great Dictionary and Thesaurus and six free writing guides on the CD. Click for more information.