Advanced Grant Writing: Understanding What A Funder Wants

This highly focused  course will give an understanding some of advanced grant writing approaches and concepts that you can use in order to increase your chances of successfully securing funding.

Most importantly, it will teach you exactly what principles and features the funding panel is looking for in a successful grant, and how you can incorporate these into your own proposal.

A unique aspect of this course is you will learn about how to write a effective grant from an instructor (Professor James Smith) who actually Chairs a number of funding panels and who is actually responsible for making grant funding decisions

This course is ideal for you if;

• You want to learn how to write grant proposals using advanced techniques to enhance success

• You are an academic or Lecturer or Assistant/Associate/Full Professor who wants to secure grant funding

• You are professionally grant writing for a 501.C3, a non-profit or a small/medium sized enterprise

• You want a detailed understanding of how a grant funder makes decisions so you can align your grant to this for greater success

• You are undertaking fundraising and want to target your efforts effectively

This course is targeted towards those who want to learn advanced grant writing techniques and approaches. In this course you will develop an advanced understanding of what funders look for in successful grant applications, and how you can use knowledge to write a successful grant application. You will taught about the aspects of a grant application that are heavily scrutinised by the reviewers and by the funding panel, and what exactly they want to see in each part.

This course covers how the decisions on grant applications are made, and teaches you about the factors that a funding panel bases its decisions on. You will be taught how to effectively ensure your funding application is reviewed positively, and how to turn criticism into success. You will learn advanced techniques for how to construct a grant application that is appropriately evidenced, that presents a robust and effective case for support, and has a strong financial basis for funding. Perhaps most importantly you will learn about how funders view value for money, and you will learn how to ensure your grant demonstrates this.

How will we do this? This course is split into three modules.

Module 1

The first module is called the grant panel reviewing and decision process, and this is really designed to ensure that you have a full appreciation of how grants are triaged, scored and reviewed so that you can target your funding application appropriately. In this module we talk in detail about nominating appropriate reviewers, and excluding inappropriate reviewers, and we talk about how to get feedback from the funder that you can use to make your funding applications absolutely outstanding.

We also talk about tangible aspects of the submission and reviewing process, including your responsibilities in this, such as how best to respond to reviewer questions and criticism, to ensure that you are well prepared to address this when the time comes.This module also covers failure and rejection and how to get the most value our of having gone through the application process, so that you are able to turn this failure around into success in your next application.

Module 2

The second module in this course is called Developing a Robust Rationale for Funding, and is  centered around how you can use external evidence to justify and support the claims or facts that you are stating in your grant, in order that the funding panel is able to see the evidence base and understand the need for your proposal. We cover how to use preliminary data or findings to support your application, as well as establishing appropriate and reputable sources of information to use.

We specifically cover how to write the justification or rationale section, and you will be given an effective framework which you can use to underpin this. Finally in this module we cover how best to obtain pre-submission feedback on your application, how to use it, and you are given a downloadable resource to use in order to achieve a detailed and useful critical evaluation of your grant.

Module 3

In the final module of this course, which is called Financials and Approach, we really focus on resources and financials, with specific content that establishes how best to pull together a budget section. We cover how you can best evidence value for money, one of the most critical parts of a grant application, and how to present effective project management techniques and approaches in your application.

This module will ensure that your case for support represents good value for the funder, and that that funding panel will be reassured and confident that you will be able to effectively manage a successful grant award.

Who this course is for:

• You want to learn how to write successful grants using advanced techniques to enhance success
• You are an academic or Lecturer or Assistant/Associate/Full Professor who wants to secure grant funding
• You are grant writing for a 501.C3, a non-profit or a small/medium sized enterprise
• You want a detailed understanding of how a grant funder makes decisions so you can align your grant to this for greater success
• You are undertaking fundraising and want to target your efforts effectively