Grant Writing Training: 5 Key Steps for Success

Very seldom will an organization receive a grant for a project if it does not put forth the effort to make the grant application and the project successful. To achieve this, the organization must undertake several key steps. The main reason a grant request is denied, aside from a lack of sufficient funding, is that the project's details were poorly planned or insufficiently detailed in the grant proposal. Organizations must incorporate project planning into their grant writing process to be successful in obtaining grant funding and other forms of financing. In reality, when you delve into grant writing, you will discover that, with both project planning and grant writing, you will see they are not much different and follow very similar steps.

Planning the project's details is only one of the five key steps for Successful Grant Writing that I developed to guide myself through the grant writing process and teach others how to work through it. First, the organization would need to identify the community's needs and those of its clients, prioritizing these needs as it moves into the planning stage. After completing the planning stages and determining which program requires grant funding, the grant writer and the program staff can select a program that staff can implement within specific timeframes with achievable goals and objectives, and then search for grant funding. Once funding sources are identified, the grant writer develops, writes, and submits a successful grant application. The last step describes how to implement and manage a grant-funded program.

Eight keywords come to mind when I incorporate these strategies together, project planning and management, and grant writing: plan, budget, collaborate, research, write, submit, follow-up, and continue. While each of these evolves into eight concepts that become a significant amount of work and I explain them in more detail in my grant writing manuals and trainings, it does come down to these eight main concepts when planning a project or more extensive program and securing grant funding so that the program becomes successful and sustainable.