Sharing my experiences as a practitioner who has worked on a federally funded program valued at $5 MIL and whose agency and co-grantees were awarded $4.75 MIL in the past 12 months from the US Department of Labor (DOL) and US Department of Justice (DOJ) respectively. After feeling the sting of federal grant rejection, I am pleased to be able to share lessons learned directly from an NRWC convening that helped us regroup and successfully reapply.
By Malia K. Salaam, Reentry Program Manager – SER Metro-Detroit, SERCO (Detroit at Work/American Jobs Center provider)
Do your Homework: Become a student of the federal grants process and learn every required element the grant. Finding the right funding opportunity that aligns with your organization’s mission, goals, and capacity is more beneficial than trying to bend your org to fulfill the requirements of the grant. Some of our research included interviewing past winners to gain insight on their application process. Review the types of projects that have recently received awards and identify any gaps that your proposal may fill in your region. Attend government hosted webinars that help prepare you for the specific funding opportunity. You don’t know what you don’t know and these forums are a great place to learn which questions to ask and potentially receive your answers on the spot (or later via email).
Build your A Team: Instead of utilizing one sole grant-writer, identify 3 or more key staff within your organization with whom you can collaboratively author a proposal. This could include an executive leader to work on the administrative components such as establishing your Just Grants (DOJ) or gov, formerly Grants.gov (DOL) accounts. Other teammates divide assignments by strengths, such as the budget, program narrative, and responding to RFP questions. Your grant writer or other designee should review the final document in its entirety to ensure your proposal has ‘one voice.’
Know your Audience: As Andre Bethea (Sr. Policy Advisor, Department of Justice), one of the experts at the 2022 NRWC Conference Federal Funding session told me, DOJ prefers short, concise responses to their application questions. We had applied for the Second Chance Act opportunity in 2022 and not been awarded. It turns out we may have been a little too flowery and long-winded in our responses. Something, the DOL may not mind as long as the verbiage is relevant, but the DOJ does. He commented that in past years, an awardee had even provided responses in bulleted form. While I wouldn’t go that far, I would advise you to structure the tone of the proposal in the language that your prospective funding agency speaks.
Get your Docs in a Row: Whether it be org charts, resumes, business and fiscal documents, MOUs and support letters from partners (especially your corrections partner), you don’t want to leave this task to the last minute. At the outset, be sure to go through the RFP or FOA with a fine-tooth comb and identify every supporting document that must be submitted with your application and determine who from your team is responsible for gathering the document(s) and assign due dates. Having the most outstanding proposal in the world won’t matter if the requisite docs do not accompany it in your submittal. Most agencies use a missing document as a weed-out tool, to narrow the pool of applications they have to review.