Find a grant for your organization. Write a proposal. Repeat.

There's something missing from this formula: Prepare. Getting yourself, and your organization, ready to write grant proposals will facilitate the application process, save you time, and help prevent disaster.

Here are five steps you can take to prepare for greater grant-writing success:

1. Assemble the Basics

Confirm your organization's mission and seek grants that align with it; otherwise, "mission creep" may sabotage your efforts.

Assemble boilerplate information on your organization, such as services and programs, staff resumés, and program results. Confirm organizational procedures: Do you need permission to apply for grants? From whom? For each grant, or just for those over a certain amount?

2. Research the Funding Source

When you identify a grant opportunity, ask three key questions:

1. What are the funder's goals for the grant program?
2. Do they match yours?
3. Has the funder awarded grants for projects similar to yours, or supported organizations like yours?

For basic info, check the funder's website, the Foundation Directory Online, and federal program websites. If you have questions about the match between you and the funder, call a program officer.

3. Identify the Need

You seek funding to fulfill need, and agencies award funding to address need.

What are the needs of your organization, your community, or your target population? What are the stated goals of the grant program? The latter speaks to the societal needs that funding agencies wish to address.

An organizational needs assessment can identify areas of need that you cannot tackle with your existing resources ---- prime areas for grant funding. Online templates for conducting needs assessments include the Missouri Association for Community Action's toolkit.

4. Feed the Need

A needs assessment can also help you prioritize needs, matching programs and projects to grants. How would you spend a grant for $5,000? $500,000?

Brainstorming how to spend money is not just an indulgence. When you involve other staff in this step, it can build ownership and uncover unexpected or hidden areas of need.

Need is also key to building a logic model, the blueprint for your project required by many funding agencies. Download the companion guide to this article, Preparing to Write Proposals, for tips on incorporating need into your logic model; download our guide Logic Model Resources for online resources on understanding and developing logic models.

5. Gather Your Building Blocks

Identify resources that help design and implement a successful grant program:

• Organizational assets: Staff and their training, your success serving the target population, innovative programming, etc.
• Partners and their assets: Collaborating partnerships amplify grant projects and stretch grant dollars. Every community has organizations ----  colleges, government agencies, nonprofits ----  that can enhance your efforts.
• Facts and figures: Data that document needs and results. Most proposals require an evaluation plan. Newbies to evaluation can download our guide Getting SMART: Writing Measurable Objectives and Outcomes, with links to online resources.

The Proof is in the Prep

A little preparation gives you three big advantages in securing future grants:

• It helps you apply for the right grants.
• It saves you time later, when you're up against a deadline.
• It gives you an edge over others who haven't done their homework.

For more tips and information on this topic, download our guide Preparing to Write Proposals, and visit our Resources page for our other guides on grant writing and seeking.

New Grant-Writing Guide

GrantProse has a new grant-writing guide! Preparing to Write Proposals (the subject of this issue's feature article) offers tips on what to do before you start applying for grants, strategic steps that will save you time and energy down the road. Visit the GrantProse Resources page for all our guides on grant writing and seeking. 

Assessing College Readiness

A new tool from REL (Regional Educational Laboratory) Northeast & Islands helps states and educational districts examine existing data sets for college readiness indicators, and identify gaps that might hinder future analysis. The College Readiness Data Catalog Tool is a flexible Excel workbook that provides a framework for organizing and tracking student data relevant to measuring college readiness. 

Rural Health Care

Two new papers shed light on rural health care, helping grant seekers and policy makers understand context and need. Access to Rural Health Care: A Literature Review and New Synthesis examines factors that affect access to rural health care, which in turn can affect policy making. Rural Hospital Mergers and Acquisitions examines implications of recent rural hospital mergers on communities, services, and the hospitals themselves.