The next round of DRS is right around the corner, with grants competitions forecasted for September 2021. If your program plans to compete for funding through DRS, you may be determining roles and responsibilities for grant writing and submission of your agency’s proposal.
For agencies that don’t have a clear grant writing process, you might need an external grant writer to facilitate the grant writing process from drafting to application submission. Foundations for Families offers this service, comprehensive grant writing.
If your program has the interest to learn how to plan for, draft, and submit a grant application, you might consider strategies to build internal capacity. One way to achieve this is through grant coaching. Grant coaching is an investment in growing a program’s ability to manage the grant writing and application process from start to finish, drafting its own proposal with tools and support provided by Foundations for Families.
Whether participating in a formal grant coaching program or working to build internal capacity on your own, we recommend focusing on the following areas.
- Defining roles and responsibilities – determining team members and the role that each will play;
- Timeline management – defining steps of the grant writing process to ensure timely submission of your proposal;
- Content development – creating processes for how the program design and project budget will be created and approved;
- Writing and review – determining steps for gathering information to inform application development, how to format and write the proposal, and internal review and approval processes; and
- Application submission – understanding application submission requirements and how to navigate grants.gov processes.
When participating in grant coaching with Foundations for Families, there is a critical feedback loop. As a program completes each narrative section of its proposal, Foundations for Families team members provide an in-depth review and feedback on content, format, competitiveness, and alignment with grant requirements and evaluation criteria.
One of the measures of success in grant coaching is that, by the end of the process, programs are confident in their ability and equipped with the skills to respond to future grant opportunities. Building organizational capacity through grant coaching is a short-term investment that has long-term benefits extending far beyond the immediacy of DRS.
Foundations for Families offers a variety of Grant Writing Solutions for programs in DRS, designed to meet the varied needs of Head Start/Early Head Start programs. Please contact us to learn more.
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