Journal
of the
A.A.G.P.
American Association of Grant Professionals
Volume 3 Number 1
www.grantprofessionals.org Spring/Summer 2004
Join us at our November 2004 Conference
American Association of Grant Professionals
Sixth Annual National Conference
November 11 - 13, 2004
The Weston Copley Place
Boston, Massachusetts
For more information, please visit our Web site at:
www.grantprofessionals.org
i
Journal of the
American Association of Grant Professionals
Volume 3 Number 1
Spring/Summer 2004
JAAGP Editorial Board:
Iris A. Coffin, Chair
Gary L. Frye
Mary Hale Meyer
Randal Givens Board Liaison
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
Copyright 2002, American Association of Grant Professionals
All rights reserved.
ii
Journal of the American Association of Grant Professionals
AAGP Mission:
The American Association of Grant Professionals (AAGP), a nonprofit
membership association, builds and supports an international community of grant
professionals committed to serving the greater public good by practicing the
highest ethical and professional standards. To achieve this mission, AAGP:




Serves as a leading authority and resource for the practice of
grantsmanship in all sectors of the field.
Advances the field by promoting professional growth and development.
Enhances the public image and recognition of the profession within the
greater philanthropic, public, and private funding communities.
Promotes positive relationships between grant professionals and their
stakeholders.
AAGP values, embraces, and supports the rich diversity within the grant
profession.
About This Publication:
The Journal of the AAGP is a professional journal devoted to the improvement of
the grants professional and the profession. It is a resource for teaching and
learning within the profession and provides an outlet for sharing information
about the profession. It also provides a forum for the discussion of issues within
the grants profession and the expression of philosophical ideas.
iii
Dear Readers,
This is the fourth issue of the Journal of the American Association of Grant
Professionals. We hope you are enjoying your spring and summer activities. Take a little
time out now to get a cold drink and relax with a good Journal.
In this issue you will find:
 Suzanne Velary and Lisa Ashkins show that organizations applying for grant
funds need to realize that collaborations often change the way a strategic
mission is implemented,
 Drs. Gerabagi and Frye collaborate to discuss the ins and outs of grants and the
K-12 school district,
 Dr. Goodwin Deacon tackles the hot button issue of writing grants on
commission,
 Dr. Bernard Turner gives an effective discussion on how to obtain corporate
dollars,
 Sarah Brophy cautions us to be ready for grants before applying for them,
 Randal Givens gives us an in-depth look at the connection between social capital
and the grant world we live in,
 Phyllis Renninger takes us through the benefits and drawbacks of No Child Left
Behind, grants, and the testing involved,
 Dr. Gary Frye sets out support for creating a development office in public school
districts,
 Book reviews are from Linda Fairchild on leadership and Maryn Boess
discussing grants from the grantmaker’s view.
This publication provides a way for you to join the general conversation in the grants
world. It is only through these discussions that we can grow and improve our profession.
We as practicing professionals have an obligation to support those just entering the field.
It is our hope that these articles and this publication fulfill that obligation.
Once again I would like to thank the authors included in this issue. My thanks also go out
to the Editorial Board for their work. Please enjoy your reading experience.
Sincerely,
Iris A. Coffin, Chair
Founding Member AAGP
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Contents
JAAGP Editorial Board Members ...................................................................................i
About this Journal ........................................................................................................... ii
Welcome Letter ............................................................................................................... iii
Program Development: Which Comes First, Collaboration or Grant Writing?
By Suzanne Valery & Lisa Ashkins .....................................................................1
Grants as a Viable Strategy for Public Schools
By David Gerabagi, Ph.D., Birdville ISD
Gary Frye, Ed.D., Lubbock Cooper ISD ..............................................................9
Percentage fees: The Troll Under the Bridge
By Goodwin Deacon, Ph.D. ...............................................................................13
Strategies for Securing Corporate Support
By Bernard Turner, Ed.D....................................................................................19
Grant Readiness
By Sarah S. Brophy ............................................................................................23
Social Capital: The Currency of Grant Professionals
By Randal J. Givens, MA, MAR., MA. MTh.....................................................29
The Future of Federal Education Grants since the No Child Left Behind Act
By Phyllis Renninger..........................................................................................35
Why Every Public School Needs a Grant Writer and
AAGP Member’s Potential Role in Creating the Position
By Gary Lee Frye, Ed.D.....................................................................................47
Book Review: Leadership and the New Science
By Linda Fairchild..............................................................................................51
Book Review: Community Visions, Community Solutions: Grantmaking for
Comprehensive Impact.
By Maryn M. Boess............................................................................................55
Author Guidelines...........................................................................................................57
Program Development
1
Program Development:
Which Comes First, Collaboration or Grant Writing?
By
Suzanne Valery & Lisa Ashkins
Suzanne Valery, Ed.D., and her company, Valery & Associates, provides customized
training and consulting in collaborative program planning and grant development
services. She has been conducting community and organizational assessments, writing
grants for nonprofits and educational institutions, working on grant-funded projects, and
teaching adults in a variety of settings for over 12 years. Currently she is the grants
coordinator at Miramar College and at Cal State San Marcos, where she also teaches a
grant-writing course through extended studies. She is a Certified Grants Specialist with
the National Grant Writers’ Association and an advisor to the Institute for Collaborative
Partnerships.
Lisa Ashkins, M.A., Ashkins & Associates, a consulting service. During her 14 years
with the San Diego Housing Commission, Lisa helped develop proposals that resulted in
over one million dollars in funding and resources in support of services for children,
youth, adults, the elderly and disabled. She also designed and implemented award
winning education and workforce development programs as well as a national
demonstration program. For the last four years Lisa and her associates have helped
organizations across the country explore issues, navigate change, cultivate leadership,
develop resources, build strategic partnerships, and market their services, programs and
products.
Introduction
We’ve all experienced the situation - a grant alert goes out that coincides with a
problem or issue in the community and our organization doesn’t have the specific
program to address the problem. We feel strongly about the issue and think the grant may
provide an opportunity to address it. So, what do we do?
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
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Meet with other staff and our Board of Directors to determine if it fits with our
strategic mission?
Begin developing a new component that addresses the problem in the
community?
Have a grant writer proceed with writing the proposal?
Send an e-mail to other community organizations we’ve worked with and ask if
they want to apply for the grant with us?
Lisa and I, having faced this challenge on numerous occasions, created a workshop,
first delivered through the Institute for Collaborative Partnerships in San Diego. The
intent of the workshop is to help organizations understand that applying for grant funds
that require collaboration changes the way a strategic mission is implemented. Our
workshop offers tools to enhance an organization’s capacity to work in collaborative
environments and addresses the questions of how to decide if a new program is suitable
JAAGP Spring 2004
2
for the organization, how to collaborate in order to develop a program, and how to write
the grant proposal with collaborative partners.
How do you decide if a new program is suitable for your organization?
In the opening scenario, we presented some options we’ve seen organizations take in
response to grant announcements. Each option has its merits and its weaknesses. Taking
the grant program announcement to the staff and/or Board could have the effect of
rousing enthusiasm and garnering the support needed to get a proposal developed, but if
funds are urgently needed and the money is the prime motivator, a hastily made decision
can end up spending scarce resources inefficiently. And, if the proposal does get funded,
the organization may find itself having to spend more time managing partnerships than
delivering its services.
Another option sometimes taken is to use the grant announcement to develop a new
component that addresses the urgent problem in the community. After all, somebody’s
got to do it, and your organization has a long history and is respected in the community,
so, why not go for it? You figure you can deal with the details if it gets funded. The
problem is, if it does get funded and you haven’t taken the time to engage in strategic
decision making about what programs and services you should be engaged in, you run the
risk of having a patchwork of programs that are hard to manage. It could then happen that
staff in one part of the organization doesn’t know what the staff in another part of the
organization is working on. This happens a lot in schools, and its quite embarrassing to
learn from a community member of a program happening right under your nose!
What about the option of either assigning a staff person or hiring a grant writer to
proceed with writing the proposal? This may seem like a reasonable way to take
advantage of an opportunity while not taking up an unreasonable amount of your
organization’s time. But, its not likely that an outsider or a lone staff member can
adequately plan and develop a new program that will have to be integrated with other
activities and services in the organization. If the program components don’t already exist,
bypassing the planning stage will likely result in a mediocre proposal.
Perhaps you decide the best way to proceed is to send an e-mail to other community
organizations you’ve worked with and ask if they want to apply for the grant with you.
After all, you have a strong history, good standing in the community, and an extensive
network, and you can easily pull together an ad hoc partnership to get the proposal
written. And indeed, this just might work. But, if you don’t take the time to nurture the
new partnership between the time you submit the proposal and the time you receive the
funding, the partners may have moved on to other activities when you call them back to
the table.
There are many ways you might go about deciding if a new program is suitable for
your organization. You may or may not utilize a decision matrix. You may or may not
involve your staff or Board of Directors. And you may or may not use a grant
announcement to encourage the decision. But the need to build partnerships is not a trend
or a fad; it’s become a way of doing business.
Program Development
3
How do you collaborate in order to develop a program?
In discussing these options with workshop participants, new insight is gleaned by
asking the question, “What approach might a business or social entrepreneur take to this
challenge?” After all, businesses survive by identifying new markets and expanding
services and products based on market needs. They tap the skills and resources of other
companies to enhance their capabilities. How do they do this? One way is by identifying
and creating strategic alliances! Alliances serve as vehicles for achieving each partner’s
mission. In the non-profit sector alliances such as this are often referred to as
collaboratives.
Before addressing the how-to’s of collaboration, James Austin, author of The
Collaboration Challenge(1), suggests that organizations ask themselves five important
questions:
1. Why should we collaborate? It’s important to know what function or value
collaboration will serve in terms of its fit into the organization’s overall strategy and
accomplishment of its mission. Those who are no strangers to collaboration realize that it
can help provide a solid foundation from which to identify and further common goals and
shared vision, provide opportunities to obtain and share expertise and resources to fill
gaps in service, expose diverse and creative ideas, provide opportunities for professional
growth, open channels of communication, and build bridges among organizations to
facilitate problem solving.
2. What type of collaboration should be undertaken? Given the variety of
modalities, organizations must understand the implications of each and select the one
optimum for specific circumstances. Using the Wilder Foundation’s Continuum of
Collaboration (2) an organization could choose various types of partnerships ranging
from informal coordination to more formal cooperation to more durable and pervasive
collaboration.
3. With whom should we collaborate? To select the right partner(s), an
organization must find the right fit of missions, values, needs, and competencies. One
vehicle for partner identification is the Partnership Mapping Strategy ™ that Lisa and I
adapted from the seminal asset-mapping work of Kretzmann & McKnight (3). This
strategy helps an organization see a big picture view of potential partners that may be
found in individuals and community groups, government agencies, financial institutions,
libraries, faith-based organizations, schools and universities, and local business. Which
ones do you have a history of using and which ones have been ignored in the past? How
are they interconnected? The answers can provide organizations with creative strategies.
4. How do we go about designing and managing the collaboration? Organizations
must view the specific design and management of partnerships as an ongoing process that
evolves with the collaboration. The rules of group dynamics - forming, storming,
norming, performing and reforming - hold true for collaboration as well. “Process” means
on-going communication, consensus decision making, and coming to agreement on the
terms and conditions of the partnerships.
JAAGP Spring 2004
4
5. Finally, organizations must ask themselves, when should we collaborate? This
question points to the heart of our topic - which comes first, collaboration or grant
writing? In the opening scenario we discussed the relationship between when/how to start
a new program in response to an identified need, and when to respond to a potential
funding opportunity in relation to developing that program. While there is no one answer
to the question, when to collaborate, it is important to realize that just as developing a
new program impacts the organization’s goals and strategy implementation, so does
beginning a collaboration and later adjusting it to meet changing circumstances.
How do you write a grant proposal with collaborating partners?
We have discussed the value of staying focused on your mission and the value of
being strategic in the selection of partnerships. Now, let’s bring these together and
consider another challenging issue - writing a grant proposal with collaborating partners.
Does the following scenario sound familiar? Funding is identified by your
organization, a grant writer is hired to write the grant, the grant writer works in isolation,
no needs assessment is undertaken, and no clear process or coordinated effort exists to
work toward a common vision, resulting in a disconnected program. Many beautiful,
logical grant proposals that are funded fail when implemented because the advice,
assistance and partnership of others were not solicited ahead of time. Assuming your
organization has bought into the idea of collaboration, approaching grant writing
collaboratively can put an end to the disconnected program syndrome.
Here are some important issues to consider when writing grants across organizational
departments or with partnering organizations:
 Is there enough time to form strategic alliances and develop a program and a
resource plan, or would it be best to wait for the next funding cycle to apply for
the funds?
 If the decision is not to apply for the funds this cycle, can you proceed anyway
to develop the partnerships, a program design, and a resource plan for the next
cycle? You can still use the grant guidelines to guide your program planning and
partnership development. You will also be in a good position to prospect for
another funding source while you wait for the next cycle on the initiative that
first motivated you.
 If there is time to move forward and apply for funds in the current cycle, then
you need a plan for getting the proposal developed, written, and submitted. In
effect, you begin the collaborative process now!
Collaborative grant writing lends itself to the use of teams, which by their very
nature suggest collaboration, shared philosophy and shared vision. They have the
potential of reducing the frustration of grant writing when a clear, coordinated process is
established. Involving multiple stakeholders also allows for diverse views to be
considered. In the long run, a well-functioning grant writing team has the potential to
develop more proposals, bring in more money, and initiate more programs that wouldn’t
have been funded without the collaborative effort!
Regardless of the type of organization - private non-profit, faith-based, school, or
government agency, the following principles of teaming apply. Here we use a school
district model by way of example. In this scenario the district or a school is often the
Program Development
5
lead, but sometimes this is a team decision if it isn’t specified in the grant guidelines.
Remember, let the grant guidelines lead the formation and discussions! Here are some of
the possible teams that can be constructed:
Discipline-based: This can be a single school or a group of teachers from one or
several similar disciplines (i.e., music, art, dance, drama). They assemble a team to
develop grants in the areas of their training, education, interest, and experience.
School-based: A school develops an interdisciplinary team. This organization-wide
team writes grant proposals that address the needs of the school as a whole, often through
large federal or foundation grants. Grants of this nature may have multiple program
components (i.e., an after-school program could consist of technology-based activities,
recreation, cultural enrichment, homework assistance, transportation, and counseling
components).
School District: Selected members from the school-based grant writing teams, joined
by district personnel, may form a district team that would focus on the largest, multicomponent grants involving many schools in the district.
Interagency Team: Members from the district team (or district personnel) join with
local, private nonprofit programs, government agencies, and civic organizations to form a
collaborative partnership for the submission of grant proposals that address problems that
impact each of the organizations. Through an interagency team, one agency serves as the
lead fiscal agent on behalf of the partnership, the team develops the proposal and shares
the work, and grant funds are distributed among participating agencies according to
formally specified partnership agreements. Too often, agencies are unwilling to
collaborate or share grant monies and as a result, they miss out on many funding
opportunities. With nearly every funding source emphasizing and rewarding partnerships,
agencies that do collaborate will score higher and therefore enhance their likelihood of
success. A collaborative, interagency grant writing team sets the stage for this “win-win”
scenario.
Once you know what kind of team you are going to assemble, there are some
important aspects to consider when actually inviting people to participate. The first is
attitude. A small core group may begin by thoughtfully and strategically identifying
others who are organized, talented, dependable people who work well with others and
have a passion for the project - in other words, “can do” people. The next thing to
consider is diversity. We all have a variety of life experiences and see the world from
different points of view. Race, gender, culture, age, employment history, experience, and
educational background all play an important role in bringing forth diverse and creative
perspectives. Keep in mind that the involvement of many stakeholders, including
members of the target population and the community, will result in a grant proposal that
is more realistic and more likely to be successful. Lastly, think about expertise. Create a
team that will bring a variety of expertise to the table, thus reducing the workload and
increasing the quality of the resulting proposal. A group size of six to eight members
results in the most efficient, compatible, and workable team.
Early in the collaborative process, roles will need to be discussed, mutually agreed
upon, and assigned to team members. Consider the following roles:
Team Leader: This is a highly organized person who organizes the proposal
development workplan, guides the team, and serves as facilitator, leader, and motivator.
Her/his primary goal is to ensure that all activities occur in a timely fashion so that the
JAAGP Spring 2004
6
grant deadline is met without stressing or harassing individual team members. S/he gently
reminds, prods, and asks about the work in progress so that all of the components of the
proposal come together as planned and on schedule.
Lead Writer: In most collaborative grant writing projects there are multiple writers
involved in the process depending on availability and areas of expertise. The lead writer
constructs the work into one cohesive “piece of art” for the reviewers. S/he must be able
to edit and format the work to yield consistent language, proper grammar, smooth flow,
clear messages, and a logical flow among components.
Reviewer(s): These are people who have not been involved in writing the proposal
who can read with a critical eye for consistency and program viability, as well as
determine if the proposal meets the requirements of the funder’s guidelines. Depending
on the size of the proposal you may have more than one reviewer.
Budget Developer: This person is skilled in creating project budgets that support the
program narrative. S/he does not have to be an accountant, just someone who is not
intimidated by numbers. This team member should receive training on how to develop
grant budgets so they can learn the many secrets to preventing budget cuts. S/he should
also be knowledgeable about allowable and unallowable costs on grants.
Researcher: This member of the team reviews the literature concerning the problems
to be addressed in the proposal. This person should be involved early on in order to make
a compelling case for your proposal. As an example, the teacher’s lack of knowledge
about computer technology is often a major barrier in helping students learn how to
effectively use computers. Based upon this need, the researcher seeks to identify
programs and activities that address this roadblock, such as professional development
programs that encourage and reward hands-on computer training for educators. Proposals
that cite research, backed by authors’ names and their documented works, increase both
the grant reviewers’ scores and the chances that the proposed program will succeed once
implemented.
Needs Assessment Coordinator: This person is responsible for gathering the data and
statistics needed to make the case. S/he may conduct surveys or interviews, and otherwise
seek information that can document or prove the need or substantiate the problem. An
analytical thinker is best and s/he should be trained on how to perform appropriate needs
assessments. Successful grant proposals usually document at least five sources stating
why a need (for the program) exists.
Experts: Involve experts who have a passion for the topic! They usually have access
to articles and books on the subject or know other professionals in the field who can
provide input in the creation of your grant proposal.
Evaluator: The evaluator brings to the process a thorough knowledge of researchbased strategies and baseline data to ensure that the program approach matches the
desired outcomes. This is necessary to avoid two very common program mistakes: 1) The
proposed activities have no impact on the problem that has been identified or 2) The
proposed outcomes cannot be measured with any certainty. Be aware of increased
emphasis on program accountability. Guidelines often ask for outside evaluators.
Clerical Support: The appearance of a grant proposal can significantly influence the
proposal’s final score and thus, its success. A proposal that is neat, printed by a high
quality printer on quality paper, uses the right fonts and formatting, and appropriate
Program Development
7
charts, tables and diagrams will be pleasing to the eye and score higher compared to a
similar proposal that is equal in content but less polished in appearance.
Gopher: This is a person who will run the errands, such as picking up letters of
support and obtaining signatures on proposal documents. Too often, one person tries to
“do it all” with a grant proposal and is running errands on the day that it is due rather than
giving it that final polish. Often, these minor activities distract the key writers and
therefore damage the grant’s chances of success!
Key Informants: It’s important to involve representatives from the community,
especially members of the target population to be served by the grant program. Only they
can tell you first hand what they think are the causes of the problem and how they think it
should be addressed. Brainstorming with and bouncing ideas off consumers ensures that
the program you are proposing matches what the potential consumers perceive they need
and want.
Summary
In this article, we addressed three issues that all organizations that write grant
proposals deal with, but not all organizations respond to these issues fully understanding
how they impact the organization’s strategic plan. To reiterate, the issues are:
 Deciding if a new program is suitable for the organization;
 Collaborating in order to develop a new program; and
 Writing a grant proposal with collaborating partners.
Understanding that a grant program can take your organization off-track as easily as
it can help you further your mission is important, especially during times of reduced
funding when there is a tendency to focus exclusively on bringing needed dollars into the
organization. A strategic approach, however, doesn’t have to pit “thrival” against
survival, and it can make the difference between surviving and making a real impact in
the community.
1.) The Collaboration Challenge; James Austin & Peter F. Drucker Foundation; Josey
Bass, San Francisco, CA; 2000
2.) Collaboration: What Makes it Work; Wilder Research Center; Amherst H. Wilder
Foundation, St. Paul, Minnesota; 2001
3.) Building Communities from the Inside Out: A Path Toward Finding and Mobilizing A
Community’s Assets; J.P. Kretzmann & J.L. McKnight; ACTA Publications,
Chicago, IL; 1993.
JAAGP Spring 2004
8
Grants as a Viable Strategy for Public Schools
9
Grants as a Viable Strategy for Public Schools
By
David Gerabagi, Ph.D., Birdville ISD
Gary Frye, Ed.D., Lubbock Cooper ISD
David Gerabagi, Ph.D. is Director of Planning and Resource Development at
Birdville Independent School District. He is responsible for the ongoing comprehensive
development program of the school. Dr. Gerabagi has over 15 years of experience. He
has been involved in administering educational and job training programs and served as
Executive Director of Grant Development at Leander and Round Rock Independent
School Districts. He is a graduate of the University of Texas at Austin and holds a
Master’s and Doctorate degrees in education.
Dr. Gary Frye is currently the Lubbock-Cooper ISD Grant Writer/Dyslexia
Coordinator. He holds a Master’s in Special Education along with 13 provisional and 5
professional certifications from Texas Education Agency and has an Educational
Doctorate in Educational Leadership from Texas Tech University. He has presented at
several state and national conferences on the subject of grant proposal writing and
served as a grant reviewer for TEA and the Department of Education on numerous
grants.
Running schools and improving them—cannot take place without the proper
resources, and many think that money is perhaps the biggest resource to consider.
School budgets and how they're financed vary from state to state and from school
district to school district. Overall, states use a combination of income taxes, corporate
taxes, sales taxes, and fees to provide about 50 percent of elementary and secondary
schools budgets. Local districts contribute around 44 percent, drawn mostly from local
property taxes, and approximately 6 percent of the budget comes from Washington.
School districts around the country started the academic year facing leaner budgets
and financial uncertainties, despite widespread efforts by state leaders to shield public
education from the full impact of the soft economy. Still, school officials in a handful of
states report being seriously squeezed by deteriorating fiscal circumstances at both the
state and local levels.
In light of shrinking budgets, public schools have employed a variety of models to
pursue alternative funding. Some have formed educational foundations and other fundraising organizations to overcome the limitations of the tax base and raise the needed
funds. Others have opted to pursue grants to augment their educational activities.
With respect to the latter, some administrators have decided to split an administrative
position having a professional staff perform administrative tasks and submit grant
applications. Some administrators encourage teachers to take on the challenge by
providing them relief time, while other teachers have pursued grants primarily after
school and on weekends. Some principals themselves have assumed the grant-writing
role. Other districts have opted to contract with professional grant writers on specific
grants. In some instances, principals are approached by private vendors marketing
educational products in helping to develop their grants. Some have hired a full-time grant
JAAGP Spring 2004
10
writer, and even some superintendents have committed the necessary resources to fund a
full-fledged grant development department that oversee the overall grant development
process for the entire district.
There is scarcity of data as to which approach has yielded the best results.
Nonetheless, the decision to pursue grants by a school administrator requires that school
official to fully understand the grant writing process in order to ensure the intended
results and to avoid potential pitfalls.
Grants can be the best friend or the worst enemy of a school district and must be
taken very seriously since they ultimately deal with money and how it is spent.
Oftentimes, the lure of free money overshadows the responsibilities associated with it.
Almost all grants have various strings attached and must be examined carefully before a
decision is made to apply. Administrators who allow their staff to seek funding, without
providing them with the appropriate support, set themselves up for a potential disaster.
Schools that are awarded grants must adhere to all of the rules and regulations of the
funding agency and must provide access to and the right to examine all records, and
documents related to the funding agency. All state and federal grants come with “always
included but seldom read,” statements of assurances, which delineate the role and
responsibilities that must be read and adhered to by the grant seekers.
Most professional grant writers would agree that winning a grant is the easiest part of
the entire process. A successfully developed grant is designed to solve a documented
need or a problem. Proposed solutions to the documented problems must be based on
reliable research and best practice. Care must be taken to hire qualified staff to manage
the funded grant. A good evaluation, preferably conducted by a reputable outside
individual or entity, should be a necessary component of the grant. And an accountable,
accurate, and sound budget and accounting system is the foundation of a solid grant.
Deviation from these ingredients would result in internal conflicts, questionable practices,
and negative publicity and would expose school boards to potential legal liabilities.
Nonetheless, carefully developed grants which are based on documented and real
needs and sound solutions which are managed by qualified staff with sound business
judgment and educational expertise are a viable vehicle and a reliable source of revenue
for the administrators who believe they should and can do more to improve student
achievement.
Practically speaking, what should all this mean for a school principal, superintendent
of school, or school board? The most practical real-world example is the amount of the
funds the writers collectively were able to secure for their respective school districts and
other community groups. Their efforts have totaled over 35 million dollars within a span
of less than five years. These funds have translated into additional technology for the
classrooms, more staff development for teachers, supplemental curriculum packages for
schools, parent involvement programs, and more resources for the community, which
ultimately have resulted in higher student achievement along with stronger community
and business involvement.
For some of the smaller school districts, the extra funds have amounted to an extra
35% to their normal operating budgets – a school district, in West Texas, with less than
400 students has received almost two million dollars. These funds have allowed the
district to renovate their older buildings, create a state-of-the-art technology
infrastructure, develop a credit recovery lab program, and provide for reading instruction
Grants as a Viable Strategy for Public Schools
11
for all of its students. These programs have assisted the school district in achieving an
exemplary rating from Texas Education Agency (TEA). Without these grant funds, none
of these items would have been possible given the state of the community’s agriculturebased economy. Similarly, at a median size school district, the extra funds have amounted
to over 5% of their normal operating budget – another school district, with less than
2,100 students has received over four million dollars. These funds have allowed the
district to create a state-of-the-art technology infrastructure, develop a credit recovery lab
program, provide for reading instruction for all of its students, develop extensive afterschool programming, provide for a home liaison program, create a police force, and
develop programs for their parents. Again, these programs allowed the school district to
achieve an exemplary rating from TEA.
JAAGP Spring 2004
12
Percentage Fees: The Troll Under the Bridge
13
Percentage Fees: The Troll Under the Bridge
By
Goodwin Deacon, Ph.D.
Goodwin Deacon, Ph.D., is the founder of the Puget Sound Grantwriters Association
in Seattle, Washington. She has worked in the fields of grantwriting and prospect
research for 23 years, and has been a consultant for the last ten years. She teaches
grantwriting in the University of Washington Fundraising Management program, and at
Discover U.
Percentage fees, commissions and contingency fees are the troll under the bridge of
the grantwriting profession. Not a week goes by without someone, somewhere asking,
 “Is it OK to write grants for a percentage of the amount raised?”
 “Can we write the grantwriter’s fee into the grant?”
 “Is it all right to charge for grantwriting on a commission basis?”
These questions come up so often on national listservs such as Charity Channel’s
GRANTS and CONSULTANTS that you can almost hear a collective groan every time a
“newbie” raises this issue on the list. Usually a kindly, more experienced member gently
suggests that this is a “hot button” topic, and the new member should check the archives.
But then someone can’t resist jumping in and saying, “No, you can’t, it’s unethical!”
Then someone else says, “Exactly why is it unethical?” and the race is on. The thread
runs on for a few days, becoming increasingly heated, until everyone gets tired of it and
the troll retreats again to its lair under the bridge, just waiting for the next time someone
innocently asks, “Is it OK to write grants on commission?”
Why is this such a controversial topic, and why won’t it go away? Part of the reason
is that freelance grantwriters are so frequently approached by nonprofits wanting them to
work on a contingency basis. This is no surprise. Grantwriting is a risky business: hours
of time are expended on developing a proposal that has no guarantee of getting funded.
The question is, who should bear the burden of risk—the organization or the grantwriter?
If the grantwriter is paid on an hourly basis or with a project fee, the organization bears
the risk of the proposal being denied. On a percentage, contingency or commission basis
(I am using these terms interchangeably), where the grantwriter is paid only if the grant is
awarded, the grantwriter bears the risk. Naturally, the contingency approach is appealing
to small, poorly funded nonprofits. Inexperienced grantwriters, unsure of the “industry
standard” or without much of a track record, are often tempted to accept a percentage or
contingency arrangement.
The major professional organizations in the fundraising field, such as the Association
of Fundraising Professionals (AFP), have taken a clear stand: percentage fees and their
kin are unethical. According to the AFP’s code of ethics in the area of compensation:
 Members shall not accept compensation that is based on a percentage of
charitable contributions; nor shall they accept finder’s fees.
 Members shall not pay finder’s fees, commissions or percentage
compensation based on charitable contributions and shall take care to
JAAGP Spring 2004
14
discourage their organizations from making such payments.
The American Association of Grant Professionals (AAGP) makes a similar statement in
its code of ethics:
 Members shall work for a salary or fee. Members may accept performancebased compensation, such as bonuses, provided that such bonuses are in
accord with the practices of their organization.
AFP justifies its standards on the following grounds:
1. Charitable giving is a voluntary action for the public benefit.
2. The seeking or acceptance of charitable gifts should not provide personal
inurement to anyone.
AFP goes on to explain that fundraising professionals should be compensated for
their expertise, while recognizing that charitable gifts are usually the result of the efforts
of many people over a long period of time. Rewarding one person for the efforts of many
is unfair. Another reason for AFP’s stance is that commissions shift the focus away from
the nonprofit organization’s charitable purpose and onto the individual fundraiser.
Commissions also undermine the relationship with the donor, who is usually not aware
that the fundraiser is being paid on commission and would probably feel betrayed if he or
she knew.
While AFP’s code covers all areas of fundraising and seems aimed primarily at
fundraising from individuals, it applies to the grants field as well. A grantwriter paid on
commission may put her own self-interest ahead of the nonprofit’s mission. She may
promise the funder more than the organization can deliver, in order to get a larger grant
and get paid more. She might inflate the budget to earn a larger commission. She may
apply for huge grants that are too large for the nonprofit to manage. She may seek grants
with a quick turn-around simply to get paid sooner, even if a longer-term grant would be
of greater benefit. While percentage payment does not necessarily cause these problems,
it certainly creates a temptation that would not exist for a grantwriter paid on an hourly or
project basis. Commission grantwriting also undermines the relationship with the funder,
because most grantmakers disapprove of it and will not fund an organization that pays its
consultants on this basis.
The most obvious reason why percentage fees are unethical in the grantwriting field is
that they usually involve falsifying the project budget in the proposal. Very few
funders—and no government agencies—allow the grantwriter’s fee to be “written into
the grant” as a line item in the project budget. So organizations that do this frequently
disguise the grantwriter’s fee as something else—a salary for the “Project Director” or
“Evaluator.” This is simple dishonesty, a practice that no code of ethics could support.
“But that’s not how we do it!” says the Society for Good Intentions. “We pay the
grantwriter out of our operating budget. We just determine how much to pay her on the
basis of how much she brings in. What’s wrong with that? And why should we pay the
grantwriter if we didn’t get the grant?”
Proposals succeed or fail for a number of reasons, most of which are out of the
grantwriter’s control. Among these are:
Percentage Fees: The Troll Under the Bridge
15
 The strength of the project: its feasibility, whether it meets a clear community
need, and whether it has a well-planned budget.
 How well the project fits the funder’s interests.
 The non-profit’s reputation, track record and financial history.
 Relationships: how well the funder knows and trusts the non-profit’s board and
staff.
 Competition: how many other requests the funder has received and from whom.
 Funds and timing: how much money the funder has available in this cycle.
 The state of the economy and the funder’s finances: whether their assets are
growing or shrinking.
Finally, a key element is the quality and persuasiveness of the proposal. This is the
part the grantwriter controls, and it is important. But even the most beautifully written
proposal will fail if other factors are not in its favor.
Grantwriters are skilled professionals who deserve to be paid for their time and
expertise. They are an important part of the fundraising team, but it takes the work of the
whole organization—as well as favorable circumstances--for a grant proposal to succeed.
That is why the grantwriter’s fee should not be tied to the success of the proposal.
“But we’re a small organization, just starting out.,” says the Grassroots Community
Association. “How are we supposed to pay a grantwriter if we don’t have any money?”
The direct answer to this objection is: “If you don’t have any money, you’re not ready to
apply for a grant.” Grants are rarely an organization’s first dollar, nor should they be.
Most funders are wary of start-ups, and many require an organization to have its
501(c)(3) for two or three years before applying. Grants are not the bread-and-butter of
nonprofit revenue; most unrestricted contributions come from individuals. The Giving
USA chart of private (non-government) giving for 2002 shows that 84% of contributions
come from individuals (including bequests), while only 11% comes from foundations and
5% from corporations. New nonprofits don’t need a grantwriter who works on
contingency; they need to develop a long-range organizational plan, including a plan for
building their membership and raising funds from individuals. For their first dollar, they
need to get support from their board.
According to Susan Howlett, a highly respected fundraising consultant from Seattle,
funders want nonprofits to write the cost of fundraising into their overall organizational
budgets. It’s a cost of doing business, and organizations need to plan for it, raise
operating money for it, and account for it. Grantmakers view themselves as funders of
stand-alone projects or programs: initiators, not sustainers. Operating budgets, including
the cost of raising money, need to be generated from individual donors, who can be
appealed to year after year.
Still, the issue of start-up funding strikes at the root of some of the best arguments in
favor of percentage fees. After all, contingency fees have been called by the legal
profession “the poor man’s key to the courthouse door.” They are used primarily in
personal injury cases, and lawyers argue that many clients would never be able to get
justice if they had to pay attorney’s fees of $250 an hour and up. Why doesn’t the same
logic apply to small, young grassroots nonprofits that don’t have any money in the bank
yet, but could do a lot of good for their community if they could just get a grant to get
them started?
JAAGP Spring 2004
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Penny Goforth, one of the staunchest advocates for percentage fees on the listservs,
argues this point persuasively. She is the Senior Associate of the Grantwriting Specialists
collaborative in La Mesa, CA, a team of 32 grantwriters and researchers. The
collaborative charges most clients an hourly rate, but reserves five slots for carefully
chosen contingency fee clients, who pay the grantwriters 15% for grants up to $100,000
and 10% for anything over that amount. Clients are required to pay the fee out of
operating income, not out of the grant. Along with grantwriting, the collaborative offers
them extensive education and counseling in organizational development, book- and
record-keeping, developing relationships with funders, and reporting on grants received.
Penny says her team has been able to win grants for nearly all their contingency clients,
and last year they actually earned more from contingencies than from their hourly clients,
who make up the bulk of their business.
Penny argues that working on percentage is her group’s way of contributing to the
nonprofit community. From her description it certainly sounds as though they are doing
an excellent job. Understandably, she bristles when she is attacked on the listservs for
supporting percentage fees.
But Grantwriting Specialists are not simply writing grants on contingency—they are
providing extensive services to worthy start-up nonprofits. They are incubating the
organizations so they will eventually become stable enough to pay for grantwriting by the
hour or the project, as most of the collaborative’s clients do. One could argue that
Grantwriting Specialists could provide the same service to the community by charging
new nonprofits a flat fee based on their budget. Still, the term “unethical” does not seem
fairly applied to Penny’s approach.
More often, however, one hears different stories about percentage fees. A
correspondent in Idaho writes:
. . . there are some in the community who are very good at niche grants,
then a vast empty space with persons who don't really know what they are
doing trying to sell themselves as grant writers for a piece of the grant.
I have been teaching grant writing classes here at the local college
Community Education center. The first class I taught had three people in it
who had no previous experience writing grants, but had surfed “grants”
on the internet, seen all the ads for “free money/grants” and decided they
wanted to write grants for organizations as a business, taking their cut
from the grant.
I met a college English Instructor this spring who has already gotten her
business license to be a grant writer, and expects to charge 20% of each
grant she writes. She has never written a grant or been involved with one,
just surfed the Internet and decided it was better than a real estate license.
A more shocking story comes from an executive director of a nonprofit in another
rural area (names and details have been deleted to protect both the innocent and the
guilty):
About five years ago I met with a person new to our region. She
claimed to be an 'expert' grant writer and was interested in
Percentage Fees: The Troll Under the Bridge
17
working on a substantial (over $4 million) grant to benefit our
agency. [For this funder] the huge amount is somewhat
standard.
The meeting went well until after about two hours I asked her
what she wanted for all this work she was proposing to do. Her
response, without hesitation, was: "Any grant writer is entitled
to keep 25% of whatever they get, so payment is automatic."
Having written about 40 successful grants and being intimately
familiar with the process, this was an instant red flag. She then
insisted this was standard practice nationwide! Meeting over.
Further background investigation revealed that she had been
trying this same trick for several years, including reportedly
once running a 'technical assistance website.' As it turns out, she
has no grant history, no formal training background and speaks
with tremendous authority to those who will listen and are
generally not knowledgeable. They, in turn, repeat the
misleading information freely and . . .
Now, five years later, most of the [nonprofits] in our region
have little trouble finding 'grant writers' because they have all
been told that paying 25% commission is standard practice.
Never mind what the funder's regulations say or any ethical
considerations might be. She has convinced them otherwise and
sane voices are seldom heard. This has become the next great
"Get Rich Quick" scheme.
It seems that, in these situations, both nonprofits and grantwriters are treating the
grants process as a kind of lottery. “What the heck—we have nothing to lose and we
might win big!” The nonprofits are not investing any of their own money or resources in
the process. The grantwriters are investing time, but since they have little experience and
think there might be a big payoff, they are willing to gamble. Clearly, this attitude is
dangerous to the reputation of the nonprofits and to the grantwriting field as a whole. If
some “grantwriters” behave like carpetbaggers, then legitimate, experienced grantwriters
will be tarred by the same brush.
On the other hand, the listservs are full of sad stories from percentage-fee
grantwriters whose proposals were not funded through no fault of their own.
“The organization missed the deadline.”
“After I’d done all the work, the Executive Director refused to submit the grant
because he didn’t think the organization could meet the reporting requirements.”
“The government agency approved the grant, but then Congress didn’t fund the
program after all.”
Naturally, these grantwriters feel abused because they were not paid for their work.
But that’s the deal with contingency fees—the grantwriter only gets paid if and when the
money comes in.
JAAGP Spring 2004
18
Percentage fees, commissions and contingency fees may not be unethical in and of
themselves, but they open the door to a host of abuses. They encourage predatory, selfdealing behavior in a field that is, by law, supposed to be dedicated to serving the public.
They create a situation in which a grantwriter works for nothing if the proposal is not
funded, and an organization may pay an excessive fee if it does receive the grant. These
practices encourage deception of funders. It is hard to see what their advantages are,
except for grantwriters who are willing to work primarily as volunteers and organizations
that hope to get something for nothing.
“But what if . . .?” someone will always ask. “What if both the nonprofit and the
grantwriter freely agree to it? What if no one involved is a member of an organization that
prohibits percentage fees? What if the funder knows about it and approves? What if
everybody is behaving responsibly? Isn’t it OK then?”
If the world were populated by saints, it probably would be. There are no laws
against these practices. But in the world we actually live in, the prohibition by AFP,
AAGP and others against percentage fees, commissions and contingencies is sound. And
we all wish the troll would get back under the bridge and stay there.
Strategies for Securing Corporate Support
19
Strategies for Securing Corporate Support
By
Bernard Turner, Ed.D.
Dr. Bernard Turner recently became the first African American male to graduate
from Trevecca Nazarene University with a doctorate degree. He is currently the Vice
President – Fund Development for Priority Hospice Care, Inc./The New Hope
Foundation, Inc., a community-based nonprofit organization in Nashville, Tennessee. At
the November 2003 AAGP Conference, he was elected to a three-year board term. He
has over 15 years of development experience and conducts numerous grant writing
workshops annually. At Meharry, he spearheaded a five-year $10 million alliance with
State Farm Insurance Companies, the largest private gift in the college’s history.
Having just completed a three-year action research project to fulfill the requirements
for my doctorate of education degree, I want to share some of my findings with you.
Through an Archives Research Fellows Fund grant from the Indiana University Center on
Philanthropy, I was able to conduct an extensive review of the literature. I also had the
opportunity to conduct research at The Foundation Center’s Washington, DC Library.
The review of the literature revealed various strategies for securing corporate support
commensurate with corporate giving trends. Sheldon (1) noted seven steps in the process
for creating an effective corporate fundraising strategy: 1) set achievable goals; 2) create
and implement strategy; 3) monitor and review progress; 4) redirect resources as needed;
5) monitor and review progress; 6) completion; and 7) evaluate and plan for new fiscal
year. Resources, both financial and human, and a commitment to the corporate
fundraising function determine the success of these strategies.
Corporate partnerships have increased in popularity. The Independent Sector, a
national coalition of leading nonprofits, foundations, and corporations strengthening nonfor-profit initiative, philanthropy, and citizen action, notes numerous types of
partnerships between corporations and nonprofits. These partnerships, valued at more
than $2 billion, take the form of cause-related marketing, licensing, sponsorships,
message promotion, and operational partnerships. Partnerships also evolved around
workplace volunteer programs, and board involvement or executive development
programs, advocacy alliances, and short-term promotions. Long-term multifaceted
alliances are at the core of these partnerships.
The Independent Sector (2) website notes that substantial benefits can occur for the
nonprofit and the corporation engaged in such partnerships. The nonprofit benefits from
increased revenue, enhanced visibility, access and connections to new audiences, and
access to the corporation’s expertise in marketing and strategy development. The
corporation benefits include brand differentiation, enhanced employee recruitment and
retention, broader community networks, fostering talent and teaching new skills,
improved relations with policy makers, enhanced credibility, and access to research and
development.
Partnerships take many forms, as the following suggests. One of the most notable
forms of partnerships is grantmaking, resulting in a contribution of cash or non-cash to a
nonprofit organization. Another increasingly popular form of partnerhsip is cause-related
JAAGP Spring 2004
20
marketing. In this instance, a company and its product are linked to an issue or cause of a
nonprofit enhancing the image of both organizations. Another avenue is that of corporate
sponsorships, consisting of either financial or non-financial operational support.
Sponsorships may include: support of a project, an issue, a conference or seminar, or an
event. Another partnership can consist of the certifications of a certain product or service
and licensing agreements for the use of information or knowledge. Another – and popular
– partnership is the promotion of a public interest message. Corporate employee
involvement, which results in workplace giving campaigns, volunteer programs,
matching gifts programs, or board training is another form of partnerships. A formal or
informal partnership promoted mutual interests on one or more topics. Finally, according
to the Independent Sector, is the strategic alliance, usually a long-term, strategic
partnership enhancing the business or mission of both organizations.
Pollack (3) highlighted seven partnership profiles of how educational institutions
structured their corporate relationships. Some of the successful strategies used by the
educational institutions profiled included: a) segmenting company partnerships or
potential partnerships into four tiers by priority level; b) offering partnerships that
involved schools or departments that had a strategic importance to the university;
c) connecting students and alumni to corporate partners for potential career opportunities
and possibly increasing the likelihood of increased corporate giving; d) and placing
corporate partnerships into seven categories such as research, executive participation on
campus, continuing education, philanthropy, recruiting, vending, and internships or coops. Other successful partnerships included: a) working closely with the vice chancellor
for research or other departments with each alliance having a steering committee to
oversee interactions between the partners, corporate and university; and b) a threepronged approach that created multidisciplinary clusters representative of faculty
expertise in defined areas, developing strong internal advocates of alumni and friends at
corporations, and marketing the program aggressively.
Some colleges and universities separate the functions of corporate relations and
foundation relations to allow greater success in securing support from both sectors. Each
function had its own dedicated staff for achieving its targeted fundraising goal on an
annual basis. The partnerships had an average corporate and foundations relations staff of
four and one-half persons.
Another strategy in corporate relations is in the area of matching gifts. Some colleges
and universities formalize their programs developing the position of matching gift
specialist to monitor and expand its programs. Matching gifts are an untapped source of
expanding corporate contributions and the base of support from alumni, friends, and
retirees of corporations. Each college or university should have readily available a list of
all matching gifts companies and provide this information to donors, current and
potential. Universities are still reaping the benefits of such a program as introduced by
General Electric in 1954. The program, Corporate Alumnus Fund, goal was to support the
colleges and universities where GE’s 23,000 employees received degrees. With more
than 500 colleges and universities represented by GE employees, the program helped GE
to work out an equitable pattern of distribution for providing support.
Michael Seltzer, well known in the field of nonprofit management and philanthropy,
served as a program officer with the Ford Foundation, where he was responsible for the
Foundation’s efforts to strengthen the nonprofit sector and to advance organized
Strategies for Securing Corporate Support
21
philanthropy worldwide. Seltzer’s (4) criteria for securing corporate support include
compatibility with mission; acknowledged expertise; achievability; topicality;
documentation; rationale for corporate support; potential dividends to the corporate
supporter; and a strong case for your organization.
A final strategy involves the development of coalitions with other nonprofits.
Coalitions are developed to increase the value of services to the community and never
just to obtain funding. Initially, experts suggested that the coalition of agencies needed to
work on a small pilot project (5). Linda Zukowski, a former corporate executive who
owns a consulting firm based in Los Angeles, authored a book on corporate charitable
giving. She asserts that this strategy is attractive to corporate funders, because of the
ability of the coalition to leverage funding and offer a more comprehensive solution than
a single non-profit agency could do on its own. As such, the dollars invested by the
corporation have greater impact. For the coalition, the ability to combine resources and
reduce administrative functions leads to a reduction in overhead. Moreover, strength in
numbers was beneficial when approaching corporate funders. Of course, we all know
such efforts are considered collaboration.
However, the concerns of funding coalitions involve accountability issues with the
distribution of dollars and monitoring functions. Contradictory to other reasons for
coalitions, funding a coalition may not allow corporations to develop a relationship with
one specific member of the coalition. Imposing conditions of funding and reporting
requirements to the coalition minimized these concerns.
To obtain a thorough historical perspective on the first 50 years of corporate giving, I
recommend the book noted below by Sophia A. Muirhead (6), senior research associate,
with The Conference Board’s Global Corporate Citizenship Center.
References:
1. Sheldon, K. S. (2000) Successful corporate fundraising: Effective strategies for
today’s nonprofits. New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
2. The Independent Sector (2002). Mission & market: The resource center for effective
nonprofit partners. www.independent sector.org/mission market/about.htm
3. Pollack R. H. (1998, February). Give & take. Currents, 24, 16, 18-22.
4. Seltzer, M. (2001). Securing your organization’s future: A complete guide to
fundraising strategies. New York: The Foundation Center.
5. Zukowski, L. (1998, February). Connecting with corporate funders. Grassroots
Fundraising Journal, 17, 6-10.
6. Muirhead, S. A. (1999). Corporate Contributions: The view from 50 years. New York,
NY: The Conference Center Board, Inc.
JAAGP Spring 2004
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Grant Readiness
23
Grant Readiness
By
Sarah S. Brophy
Sarah Brophy writes about the cultural community, and develops grant plans and
proposals for cultural agencies. She specializes in helping smaller organizations come to
grips with grant readiness and in trying to create historic preservation miracles. She and
her family live in Massachusetts.
It's a threshold moment: your organization crosses the line from being a good
organization to a fundable one. It may happen when you aren't looking, or you may feel it
one day as a number of successes coincide. Finally, finally, you move from only asking
friends and family for gifts to approaching other institutions – foundations. You are now
Grant Ready.
Organizations that win grants have predictable traits that make them grant ready.
Unfortunately this readiness is something too few institutions thoughtfully consider
before they begin the grants game. A good idea and a real need used to be enough to win
grants, but for a good while now the demand for funds has far outstripped the money
available. Your organization probably has many of the components it needs to convince
the foundation donors of its readiness, but does it have enough? As competition tightens,
so will the definition of grant readiness. Your job is to learn what readiness looks like;
educate your board and staff; then work together to achieve that readiness and maintain
it.
What is Grant Ready?
The professional world has trained you to evaluate your institution based on the
standards of the field you work in and applied to core areas: mission, management, staff,
ethics, and programs, to name a few. To attract support from funders, though it's also
important to evaluate your institution by the standards your funders value:
 Do you do something important?
 Do you do it well? For anyone in particular?
 Can you do it again, or help anyone else to do it?
 Is your organization a safe investment? A good investment?
 Are you a good partner?
 Do you have an edge – charitable, professional or innovative?
Let's examine these questions to sort out how best you can answer them.
How do you explain that you're doing something important?
If you're doing something that matters, somewhere someone is expressing a need for
it – your project or your organization. Does the inquiry or registration log at the front
desk, or by the phone, reflect this need? Does attendance or participation? Did the prison
outreach program request that skills workshop? Have you asked school teachers and
camp directors what would help them most? Do teacher requests or the inquiry log
demonstrate a need or interest area? Do your evaluations demonstrate the need?
JAAGP Spring 2004
24
Is anyone else solving the problem? If no, that would help make your point. If yes,
then be able to explain why you are necessary. Do you do your work so well that no one
else competes, or that others try to replicate your work? In either case your work will
address a problem or help others to address it well.
So you have a need, or a reasonably anticipated one; how can the foundation tell that
you fulfill that need and fulfill it well? The foundation staff will use internal evaluation
tools and external comments to decide.
Do your current evaluation tools indicate quality and performance? If you don't
conduct program evaluations, get started before you begin a grant program. Evaluation,
or performance measurement – a better term, should be used to “increase effectiveness
and communicate value”. Conducting evaluations shows that you are committed to doing
your job well, not just getting it done.
Soon there will be so many evaluation tools available that the cry will not be “how
do I do it?”, but “how do I know which one to use?” It’s the same for choosing a planning
or organizational model: take time to learn about the varieties, understand the language,
decide what is important to achieve, and then choose which one best helps you do that. If
you need help, talk to others in your field, check your association websites for training
tools and links, or ask a potential funder for guidance to get you started.
Here’s a quick lesson in language from The Arts Council of England (1):
“Evaluation is concerned with making judgments, based on evidence, about the value and
quality of a project against agreed adjectives. Documentation is about keeping a record of
what happens throughout a project. Monitoring is a way of checking that all parts of the
project are going to plan.” i
How about external "evaluation?" Do you have third-party evidence that supports
your claims to quality? When you win an award, save the quote from the presentation
ceremony. Make a copy of the Mayor's mention of you on TV. Do you have positive
examples of awards, articles, endorsements, editorials or news clips about your projects
and your organization? Keep copies of those and any thank you letters, positive e-mail
messages and other unsolicited endorsements you have permission to use.
Do you do this good work for anyone in particular, or just whoever graces your
door?
Organizations must fulfill a demonstrable third-party need, not merely their own
interpretations of need. Of course there are particular folks who benefit from what you do
– but you must tell the foundation who they are so its managers will know that their
money is reaching the people they want to help.
Consider what categories make the most sense for your work, but imagine as widely
as possible the types of information your funders will want to see. The Department of
Education statistics on the students in the target schools are a big help. When the
“collecting family histories” course fills up through the local Council on Aging, the
Council staff can give you demographic information and teach you about your audience.
Identify your current users by tracking demographics at the cash register; asking for
zip code information; using sign-in sheets indicating origin by town, program, or state; or
by taking periodic user surveys. Perhaps you have zipcode information in your ticketsales software. If you sell bus tours, the tour company should have demographic
Grant Readiness
25
information. The on-line census information can provide generic income, education and
residential information for an area.
You can also let your audience describe itself. If you are with a group and you hope
to determine specific ages or ethnicity, at the next meeting send around a sheet where
participants can put themselves in categories if they wish. Trap as much information as
possible without burdening your users. If you do take up their time, be sure to explain
that this information helps you make your case to funders who finance your excellent
programs and facilities.
Can you do this "good thing" again, or help someone else replicate it?
By repeating, replicating or extending a program (basically doing it again without
reinventing it), you increase the foundation's ROI – return on investment. ROI matters for
foundations. The more bang for its limited bucks, the better the foundation's performance.
In the Center for Effective Philanthropy's 2002 report "Understanding Foundation
Performance Assessment Today," on self-evaluation, 67 percent of foundation CEOs
anticipate increased scrutiny on foundations in the next ten years. One way to improve
their accountability is to maximize their performance.
Money must do more than one thing. Many foundations, corporations and
government agencies already encourage extension of a grant when they ask recipients to
explain how their discoveries will be disseminated or the project will be replicated. That
is maximizing impact. Can you extend the value of your program by repeating or
replicating the project, or helping others to do so? It is less expensive to reuse a program
than to develop it, so either offer the program again, minus the planning costs, or help
another institution offer it by delivering it at their site.
Extending a program is as simple as distributing newsletters for free to the local
schools; having the special speaker fit in a staff training program before the public
presentation in the evening; or repeating a program at a different time and location as a
way to reach a wider audience. Share your discoveries with similar organizations in a
presentation, report, or on-line newsletter.
Continuing on the investment theme..Is your organization a safe investment? A good
investment?
Since assessing internal operations and administrative procedures is what directors
and boards are most likely to do, you may get high marks here, but there's more to it. The
foundation staff will want to see dependability and conscientiousness in your
organization and financial planning, and in your personnel choice and management. Can
you provide evidence that you use planning effectively (long range, strategic, and
business plans)? For museums this means interpretive and collections plans. Cultural and
open space protection agencies will have master plans and preservation plans. Each field
will have its particulars. Do you use your field's planning tools to your best advantage?
Be able to explain the rationale for your choice of tools and how you use them.
Can you demonstrate fiscal responsibility, transparency and vigilance? Is your
money management and fund development approach appropriate for the institution and
the current financial environment? What is the rationale for your investment policies,
fundraising plan, and budget management?
JAAGP Spring 2004
26
Are your staff, board, and other volunteers the right ones for you? Do they have the
training, talent and resources appropriate for this institution and where it is headed? Are
their roles and positions clearly defined and appropriate for your goals? Are they aware
of, and committed to, appropriate professional practices and ethical standards? You know
all the answers to these questions, but the funders don't until you demonstrate it.
Does your board have a coherent, usable structure with clearly defined roles and
responsibilities? Is it clear by its behavior that it functions as a healthy board by
recruiting and training its members, involving each one according to his or her strengths
in fulfillment of the organization’s mission? Is your board a true help in developing your
resources – cash, capital assets, and personnel?
If you answer “no” to any of these questions, or come up short in any of the areas
discussed in the article, remedy it or be able to explain what you are doing to improve the
situation. The foundations don't expect perfection, but they do expect you to know your
game and be improving it all the time.
Are you a good partner?
This means externally and internally. Externally, do you exhibit behaviors and values
the organization wants to be associated with? Internally – are you good to work with?
A good partner on the "inside", from the foundation's point of view, says "thank
you," manages the program honestly and in communication with the funder, and reports
honestly and promptly. A good partner on the "outside", is credible, applies its mission
internally and externally, provides good public associations and positioning, and will
strengthen the donor's reputation.
The foundation officers ask themselves: does this charitable organization do
something we believe in, in a way we can endorse, that makes effective use of resources
for significant, needed change? And does it behave in a way that encourages us to be
associated with it? For example, if you're a green organization, are you green inside and
out? That means internally recycling paper and employing solar heating while teaching
conservation. If you are a child-protection agency, does your employee policy empower
families? Basically they are asking themselves if you behave well.
Do you have an edge?
In some of your work you probably have some quality that sets you apart from
others, your edge. There are three distinct kinds: a professional edge, a charitable edge
and an innovative edge. The professional edge means that what you do is of such quality
that it adds value and new knowledge to the field. Charitable edge is paying it forward or
sharing the wealth. Innovative edge speaks for itself.
Is your work innovative?
How do you differentiate yourself from related organizations? Have you chosen an
unusual focus for some of your work? Have you tested a joint admission ticket, joint
marketing or joint grant applications for the first time? These changes in traditional
behavior are personal innovations. Others innovations will be local, regional, national or
perhaps even global. Provide some perspective so your donor will understand your
innovation. For many donors, an outward-thinking, confident organization is an asset as a
partner.
Grant Readiness
27
A professional edge is an excellent, innovative, program, process or product that
advances the field while serving needs in the best way possible. If your food bank
maximizes distribution by solving restaurants' excess food problems and while feeding
increasing numbers of clients, you have a two-way program and an edge over the oneway food bank with only "please give canned goods" approach. The science discovery
museum that has a teach-the-teachers tool demonstrably improving student retention has
a professional edge over straight program-delivery museums.
When the conservation lab promises to offer its newly-funded textile-cleaning lab to
local historical agencies with once-a-month access and supervision, the charitable edge
is obvious – the grant award serves multiple audiences. Sharing your talents and
resources enables others to do their job well and extends the donor's impact. The
charitable action must serve your mission and the donor's. If the local government
funding agency helps you bring arts groups to your area, are some of the tickets priced
(or free) so that underserved audiences can attend? What about setting aside a row of
seats for Big Brothers/Big Sisters, the women's shelter or the juvenile program at City
Court? You can alternate among them for each performance.
Invite Social Services to identify two children to benefit from camperships this
summer; twice yearly you can share with other nonprofits those grant-funded cases you
had installed at town hall for your exhibits. Invite other nonprofits to use your newly
finished second-floor meeting room at given times during the month. When the annual
barbecue fundraiser has outgrown the front field, share the event and its proceeds with
the community parks program if you can fulfill the same goals for your institution and
support the parks’ goals. You can provide management and name recognition while the
parks program supplies the site and staff to help with the work.
Yes, you could argue that the recipient institution is giving away some of its gift, but
sharing your talents and resources enables you and others to do their job well and extends
the donor’s impact. Yes, the charitable action must serve the donor’s mission, yours and
the second party’s; and creating a management nightmare or waiving crucial or major
income opportunities would be irresponsible, but if the benefit to other organizations
outweighs the time it takes you to arrange and supervise the gift, you will extend the
donor’s gift, create alliances within your community, and improve services for more than
just your little world.
It is hard to survive in the non-profit world and have time to innovate, be charitable
and make a professional contribution – but others are doing it. You should where you are
able. You may make the first cut, and the second, but when the review committee sits
around the table for final decisions, and many components are equal among the surviving
proposals, those with an edge have a better chance. Foundations don't have to fund
anything less than the best or what they think will be the best.
Why the Board and Staff Should Assess Readiness
So much to do; so little time! It is a great deal of work to monitor, manage and
improve all these areas of your work, but it is all part of your performance management.
Assessing readiness protects resources and reputations. The inevitable “no’s” are the
most basic reason for assessing grant readiness. Someone unfamiliar with the process and
the requirements is sure to think that the application was a mistake in the first place, or
that someone did something "wrong."
JAAGP Spring 2004
28
We all know that proposals are turned down for a myriad of reasons you cannot
control – a change in donor interest; a torrent of crisis-based proposals appealing to the
funder at the time; or perhaps too many similar proposals came in from better known
organizations during that cycle. You cannot anticipate those barriers to your success, but
you can identify your own barriers and remove them. That’s the grant readiness process
and the reason why the board and staff must assess the institutional readiness to apply for
grants. If you do this assessment together, both the staff and board will share an
understanding of funders’ expectations, performance requirements for the institution, and
reasonable hopes for success.
By involving the board in the grant process, you'll be giving them field experience
that will reinforce what you tell them about the grant process. Be sure the board members
are helping to identify possible organizational donors, supporting the cultivation process
by participating in site visits or funder office interviews, using connections to further
relationships, and writing thank you notes and updates, and by exercising patience during
the proposal writing and waiting process. Their help informing new board members of
the nature of grant fund raising and their role in that institutional process wouldn’t go
amiss, either.
Conclusion
Becoming grant-ready is an important achievement for an institution. It requires the
hard work, sureness of purpose, and quality of performance and behavior that is expected
of a charitable purpose institution. Unfortunately the money still won't come easily once
you reach this place, and you will have to fight to stay grant ready, but at least you now
have an environment that encourages grants and you are truly prepared to be a partner
with foundation donors.
1. “Culture and Learning: Creating Arts and Heritage Education Projects” , Sheila
McGregor and Felicity Woolf. The Arts Council of England, London. 2002. p. 12
Social Capital: The Currency of Grant Professionals
29
Social Capital: The Currency of Grant Professionals
By
Randal J. Givens, MA, MAR., MA. MTh.
Randal J. Givens is a founding member of AAGP and served as our first President.
He currently serves as a board member and the Chair of the Research and Authority
Committee. He also serves on the Credentialing Committee and the Chaptering
Committee. Randy is the Director of Grants and Program Development at York College
in York Nebraska.
The term “social capital” may be as familiar as sliced bread is to some grant
professionals; for others about as familiar as the Shinto religion. Is there a reason to be
conversant with the term social capital? Two very simplistic reasons spring to mind: first,
we are interested in our employers obtaining “capital,” and second, we are all aware that
the social aspect of grantsmanship is far more involved than a funders’ directory and an
impersonal proposal dropped in the mail – there is a social perspective. These truths are
only peripherally and superficially related to the far more profound nature and impact of
“real” social capital within the grants world and the philanthropic universe. Hence we
propose an educational excursion.
The investigation and analysis of reality is the core of the educational process. The
conceptual frameworks for these investigations come in great varieties. Sometimes they
are discipline specific, but other times they are used by more than one discipline–
overlapping and interacting between multiple disciplines. One such multi-disciplinary
concept is that of “social capital.” Social capital is used in such widely diverse disciplines
as political science, sociology, organizational behavior, business, philanthropy, and
others. While the same symbol–social capital–is used to express a perceived reality, the
intangible referent is amorphous and understood somewhat differently depending upon
the respective discipline’s point of view. While a basic, general notion is adaptable across
disciplines, the various disciplinary perspectives currently render a universal definition
impossible. In the absence of a single universal theory or definition of social capital, but
in light of the utility of the concept, it is advisable to briefly survey the spectrums of
usage to obtain an overall sense of the contexts in which the notion is used. This will
assist in establishing the framework most useful for our current professional context.
Breadth and Depth of the Concept
In his discussion of the wide usage of the term, Adler notes that, “Social capital–
understood roughly as the goodwill that is engendered by the fabric of social relations
and that can be modelized to facilitate action–has informed the study of families, youth
behavior problems, schooling and education, public health, community life, democracy
and governance, economic development, and general problems of collective action” (1).
Fukuyama comments on this same diversity of broad usages by saying social capital is
seen “...as shared norms or values that promote social cooperation. For some people,
though, social capital is coterminous with civil society or the non-governmental (NGO)
sector; for others, it is a matter of networks. Some observers consider either the family or
the state to be sources of social capital, while others do not” (2). Coleman further notes “.
. . the breadth of the social capital concept reflects a primordial feature of social life--
JAAGP Spring/Summer 2004
30
namely, that social ties of one kind (e.g., friendship) often can be used for different
purposes (e.g., moral and material support, work and nonwork advice).” Coleman calls
this the ‘appropriate ability’ (3).
All of this diversity of perspective does not eliminate the value of the resources
involved in relationships--perhaps the key common denominator--familiar to the projects
of a multitude of grant professionals attempting to promote collaboration. Variation
should engender further research, not avoidance or abandonment of a usable (albeit
currently imprecisely defined) notion. Fukuyama acknowledges that “. . . we need to
better understand the relationship between social capital and cultural change. . . . We
need greater clarity concerning the intersection of social capital, democracy, and
economic reform” (2). Perhaps we as grantseekers relinquish such “concern” and such
“responsibility” to the “grantmakers.” After all, they are the ones with the money to
“change the world.” Implicit, though, in our very existence as ‘boundary spanners’
between the “haves and the have-nots” is a shared responsibility to promote those areas
of social change that may more advantageously stimulate systems to facilitate change as a
building block to our civil society.
Historical Considerations
While discussing the philosophical development of the notions of capital and society
within Plato and beyond would be an interesting excursis, for the purposes of this study
we are primarily concerned with the modern notion of “social capital,” a fairly recent
invention, at least used within the definitional bounds of this article.
Far beyond our own American context, Putnam, Salomon and others point to a global
development of social capital. For 20 years, Putnam and his colleagues investigated the
performance of the various regional Italian governments. They discovered that some of
the governments were more effective and efficient than others. Putnam discovered that
“. . . this pattern of civic connectedness was a crucial ingredient, not only in explaining
why some institutions work better than others, but, at least partly, in explaining levels of
economic well-being” (4).
Putnam has found a steady 30-year decline of trust in the U.S. He uses the decline of
American bowling leagues as an example of the loss of opportunities for sustained
conversation with other people we know well about shared interests and community
affairs. Thus, this decline in social capital means a decline in formal connectedness. He
says, “I just mean having conversations with your neighbors about how things are going.
I mean taking responsibility for your views. This is what this decline in social capital
means....It is a decline in informational connections” (Ibid). Putnam, summarizes by
saying that “. . . technological and economic and social change over the last thirty years
has led to a slow but cumulatively dramatic change in the way we connect, or do not
connect, with one another. Much of our social capital has vanished as a result of
technological, economic and social change” (Ibid). Could there be a causal or
coincidental parallel to be found in philanthropy--the way it is sought, selected, and
applied? It is easy to blame the government or the “philanthropists,” be they individual or
institutional. However, do we as fund seekers have any responsibility to be sensitive to
the threads of networks, which connect the web of the third sector. Those which hold
together as an independent “safety-net” for our socio-cultural needs--perhaps towards an
enhanced civil society of greater connectedness within interwoven links of diversity?
Surely, historical, comparative perspectives would respond affirmatively.
Social Capital: The Currency of Grant Professionals
31
Putnam’s historical overview is naturally oriented to and rooted in his
understanding/interpretation of the nature of social capital. Huntington provides a
generally similar international perspective. His focus, however, is on the even broader
area of “civil society.” (5). From their position as political scientists, their concern for
civil society is comparative. Let us continue to notice the level of diversity of the
concept, how it has developed, and how different scholars have defined it.
Definitions
Adler (1) has perhaps the most concise overview of definitions of social capital in his
presentation. (See his book for a greatly expanded list). He names three generic areas:
Internal, External, and Both. (Ibid).
Type
Authors Definitions of Social Capital
External Knoke “. . . the process by which social actors create & mobilize their
network connections within and between organizations to gain access to
other social actors’ resources” (7).
Internal
Putnam “. . . features of social organization such as networks, norms, and
social trust that facilitate coordination and cooperation for mutual benefit” (6).
Both
Schiff “. . . the set of elements of the social structure that affects relations
among people and are inputs or arguments of the production and/or utility
function” (8).
The resources of various forms of capital can be differentiated from those of social
capital by the specific dimension of social structure within which they lie. Adler notes
that social capital is “. . . the resource available to actors as a function of their location in
the structure of their social relations” (1). Adler (Ibid.) suggests three dimensions of
social structure: market relations, hierarchcal relations, and social relations. The third
dimension of social structure is the one underlying social capital.
Adler has specifically identified two prime categories of variation among the
definitions (1). The definitions vary depending on whether they focus on the substance,
the sources, or the effects of social capital. Further, they vary depending on whether their
focus is primarily on the relations an actor maintains with other actors, the structure of
relations among actors within a collectivity-social capital or both types of linkages. Thus,
the tool of social capital continues to be utilized as a conceptual framework within
varying perspectives. One hopes that time and continued research, thinking, and practice
will move things further toward a more unified definition and theory of social capital.
The effort herein is not to identify the preferable perspective for social capital research,
but to acknowledge the value of multiple approaches and their pragmatic usages for grant
professionals seeking funding.
What, then, tends to be typically more pragmatic in terms of the facilitation of
coordination and cooperation for mutual benefit within the domain of American
philanthropy, particularly in its institutional manifestations? The development of
foundations has historically overlapped and intermingled with notions of social capital.
Philanthropy at large and organizational philanthropy in specific assumes that
foundations can cause or affect change within groups they fund. This idea emphasizes the
JAAGP Spring/Summer 2004
32
“internal” point of view--the bonding approach of social capital. Indeed, foundations
have historically sought to enable nonprofits to facilitate coordination and cooperation for
mutual benefit. Since this type of bonding activity is at the heart of this investigation,
Robert Putnam’s definition of social capital naturally fits best for the purposes of this
discussion. From Putnam’s point of view, the “bonding” within nonprofits facilitated by
foundations is typically what foundations have by nature sought to do. Putnam defines
social capital as “. . . features of social organization such as networks, norms, and social
trust that facilitate coordination and cooperation for mutual benefit” (6). In addition,
Putnam, perhaps more than anyone else, has provided us with an extensive base of data to
examine.
Putnam’s View of Social Capital
Robert Putnam has been involved in several longitudinal studies dealing with political
science, civil society, and social capital. His early work involved an evaluation of several
regional Italian governments. Over a 20-year period, he and his colleagues sought to
determine why some of the governments worked better than others. The answer was
choral societies--that is, social capital. Putnam identified the best predictors of
government success as being not the wealth of the region nor a great voter turnout, but
the number of choral societies, sports teams, reading groups, etc. “Some of these
communities had dense networks of civic engagement. People were connected with one
another and with their government….They were connected horizontally with one another
in a dense fabric of civic life” (9). These regions had developed a kind of norm of
reciprocity which tends to facilitate the positive working of the community and its
government. “These regions had this dense civic fabric, this tradition, this habit of
connecting with one’s neighbors and with community institutions” (Ibid.).
Putnam and other social scientists in several fields have recently suggested a common
framework for understanding some of these phenomena--a framework that rests on the
concept of social capital. Putnam explained his conception, stating:
‘Social capital’ refers to features of social organization such as networks,
norms, and special trust that facilitate coordination and cooperation for mutual
benefit....Networks of civic engagement foster sturdy norms of generalized
reciprocity and encourage the emergence of social trust. Such networks
facilitate coordination and communication, amplify reputations, and thus
allow dilemmas of collective action to be resolved. When economic and
political negotiation is embedded in dense networks of social interaction,
incentives for opportunism are reduced. At the same time, networks of civic
engagement embody past success at collaboration, which can serve as a
cultural template for future collaboration. Finally, dense networks of
interaction probably broaden the participants’ sense of self, developing the “I”
into the “we,” or (in the language of rational-choice theorists) enhancing the
participants’ ‘taste’ for collective benefits (6).
Putnam further establishes the ties of civil engagement with political stability in his
examination of the work (in comparative politics and international relation) of
Huntington, when he says: “Political development of the sort forecast in the professional
literature was much less common than political decay, civil violence, and instability.
Social Capital: The Currency of Grant Professionals
33
Political stability was a function of the ratio between political participation (or
mobilization) and political institutionalization” (10)Putnam, 1986, p. 841missing. This
clearly positions Putnam’s perspective--a sociological concern about a civil society.
Succinctly put, he declares that “Social capital, in short, refers to social connections and
the attendant norms and trust” (6). In particular, he is concerned with “. . . forms of social
capital that, generally speaking, serve civic ends” (Ibid.). He is quick to point out that this
multifaceted social capital to which he refers is relative “. . . to our relations with one
another” (Ibid.). Here he emphasizes the element of social trust which is the part of social
capital that tends to be produced through increased contact with people. Thus, “Social
trust and civic engagement are strongly correlated....People who join are people who
trust” (Ibid.). He simply concludes that social trust and civic connections run together.
As suggested by his article title, “America’s Declining Social Capital” (6), Putnam
believes that the traditional/conventional civic organizations in the U.S. have declined
along with our level of social capital. However, he does cite at least three counter-trends-tertiary organizations, nonprofit organizations, and support groups--which, he says, need
somehow to be weighed against the erosion of conventional civic organizations (4). The
American Association of Grant Professionals is one excellent example of this countertrend! The next question is: Which types of organizations and networks most effectively
include or produce social capital in the sense of mutual reciprocity, the resolution of
dilemmas of collective action, and the broadening of social identities? Putnam
emphasizes “. . . the density of associational life,...stresses the structure of networks,
arguing that ‘horizontal’ ties represented more productive social capital than vertical ties”
(Ibid). Here too, the new initiative of A.A.G.P. for regional, state, and local chapters
inherently tends to provide greater density to civil society.
The involvement of the nonprofit sector as a “counter-trend” generator of social
capital has been under-researched. The third sector in the U.S. plainly represents and
expresses the social concerns of citizens by means other than those of the government or
profit-making institutions. What, then, stands as the philosophical reason for selecting
Putnam’s definition of social capital over others? It is selected because of the fact that the
third sector stands as an “aid” to government, and the nonprofit sector stands as a
reasonable co-producer of social capital. This is particularly likely within the context of
institutional philanthropy. Within American philanthropic foundations, the norms and
networks of public, private, and community engagement can powerfully affect the
performance of social interaction and the maintenance and creation of social capital.
These collaborative ventures between grantees and their funding partners naturally stand
as horizontal frameworks for the development of social capital as they implicitly enhance
civil society. While not “traditionally” perceived as standard civic engagement and social
capital producers, foundations may offer one additional response to the cultural decline in
social interaction and social capital. “High on America’s agenda should be the question
of how to reverse these adverse trends in social connectedness, thus restoring civic
engagement and civic trust” (11). The huge amount of data Putnam and others have
collected on the topic of civil society measurement within his definition provides an
excellent opportunity to test the point. Hopefully, future articles can address that point.
We as grant professionals have an untapped and perhaps unrealized potential to “oil the
machinery” of civil society by more directly facilitating and encouraging social capital
enhancing projects. The whole matter of civil society and its underlying philanthropic
assumptions has, through the millennia, given rise to an organizational expression of
JAAGP Spring/Summer 2004
34
“community-ness.” The purposeful attempt is to “. . . find better ways to identify and
nurture the forces that can bring us together so that they will always be stronger than the
forces at work that would drive us apart. . .” (12). Grant professionals fall into that
category of people who would so nurture, but we must catch the spirit of the real capital
after which we truly seek.
REFERENCES
1. Adler, P. S., & Kwon, S. (2002). Social capital: Prospect for a new concept. Academy
of Management Review, 27(1), 17-40.
2. Fukuyama, F. (2002). Social capital and development: The coming agenda.
SAIS Review, 22, 23-37.
3. Coleman, J. S. (1988). Social capital in the creation of human capital. American
Journal of Sociology, 94, 95-121.
4. Putnam, R. D. (1990). “Bowling alone: America’s declining social capital. Journal of
Democracy, 6(1). Washington, DC: National Endowment for Democracy.
5. Huntington, Samuel P. (1996). The Clash of Civilizations. New York, NY: Simon &
Schuster.
6. Putnam, R. D. (1995a, January). America’s declining social capital. Journal of
Democracy, 1, 65-76.
7. Knoke, D. (1999). Organizational networks and corporate social capital. In R. T. A. J.
Leenders & S. M. Gabbay (Eds.), Corporate social capital and liability (pp. 17-42).
Boston, MA: Kluwer.
8. Schiff, A. (1992). Special capital, labor mobility, and welfare: The impact of uniting
states. Rationality and Society, 4, 157-175.
9. Putnam, R. D. (1996, February 22). The decline of civil society: How come? So what?
The John L. Manion Lecture, Canadian Centre for Management Development,
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, pp. 1-21.
10. Putnum, R. D. (1986, Fall). Samuel P. Huntington: An appreciation,
Putnam. PS, 19(4), 837-844.
11. Putnam, R. D. (1995b, September). Tuning in, turning out: The strange
disappearance of social capital in America. The 1995 Itheiel de Sola Pool Lecture,
American Political Science Association.
12. McCaleb G. D. (2001). The Gift of Community. Abilene, TX: Hill Crest Publishers,
(P.3).
The Future of Federal Education Grants since the No Child Left Behind Act
35
The Future of Federal Education Grants since
the No Child Left Behind Act
By
Phyllis Renninger
Phyl Renninger is a founding member of AAGP and the current AAGP President.
She is the Duval County Public School (Florida) Supervisor of External Funding.
In order to understand the future, we need to understand why the No Child Left
Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) was developed. Since the Elementary and Secondary
Education Act first passed Congress in 1965, the federal government has spent more than
$321 billion (in 2002 dollars) to help educate disadvantaged children. Yet nearly 40 years
later, only 32 percent of fourth-graders can read skillfully at grade level. Sadly, most of
the 68 percent who can't read well are minority children and those who live in poverty.
Those in education have all seen the legislation: the No Child Left Behind Act of
2001. We’ve all seen the memos, the directives, the translations, and the interpretations.
This new law contains the most sweeping changes to the Elementary and Secondary
Education Act since it was enacted in 1965. The act contains four basic education reform
principles:
 Stronger accountability for results,
 Increased flexibility and local control,
 Expanded options for parents, and
 An emphasis on teaching methods that have been proven to work.
On the day the act was signed, January 8, 2002, Across the country, we began to
speak in the same new terms:








Adequate Yearly progress,
subgroups,
academic achievement standards,
high-quality education,
high-quality teachers,
high-quality principals,
highly effective and efficient strategies, and
scientifically-based research. References to scientifically based research
appear more than 100 times in the statute, addressing everything from
professional development to reading programs. Congress included the
concept with the intention that education practitioners would use it when
evaluating the effectiveness of activities and services.
So what does this all mean – and how does it affect the grant professional or our
education dollars. All these requirements and opportunities for federal funding come with
major changes in federal education programs as well as entitlement and competitive grant
programs. How does this all translate to funding for our schools or districts?
In this article, I will break the discussion down to four sections:
 Understand the implications of the No Child Left Behind Act
JAAGP Spring/Summer 2004
36
 Ensure your school is poised to meet the necessary criteria
 Capitalize on states’ and school districts’ increased local control and flexibility
 Develop compliant and effective standards
But even before I begin, why are you reading this article? I think the reason can best
be illustrated in the words of Ezra Pound, one of the most ambitious, influential, and
innovative poets; translator, editor, and essayist: Real education must ultimately be
limited to men who insist on knowing. That is why you are reading this – because we
want to know, we want to provide “real education,” and (just like stated by the army) we
want to be all that we can be.
Topic One:
 Understand the implications of the No Child Left Behind Act
We know that the main purpose of the act is to ensure that all children have a fair,
equal, and significant opportunity to obtain a high-quality education and reach
proficiency on challenging State academic achievement standards and state academic
assessments. So we need to figure out how we can best ensure that high-quality education
through grants.
I’m going to cite a few bullets found on the US DOE website at www.Ed.gov, then
how that translates to our grants.
No Child Left Behind is designed to change the culture of America's schools by
 Closing the achievement gap,
 Offering more flexibility,
 Giving parents more options, and
 Teaching students based on what works.
Under the act's accountability provisions, states must


Describe how they will close the achievement gap and make sure all students,
including those who are disadvantaged, achieve academic proficiency.
Produce annual state and school district report cards that inform parents and
communities about state and school progress.
Schools that do not make progress must provide supplemental services, such as free
tutoring or after-school assistance; take corrective actions; and, if still not making
adequate yearly progress after five years, make dramatic changes to the way the school is
run.
How does this translate to grant professionals?



NCLB provides the focus to set goals and objectives for our grant programs
(close the achievement gap)
NCLB identifies our target audience for our grants (disadvantaged students,
lower quartile)
NCLB supplies key words for our grant searches if we are looking for funding
outside NCLB or key word for developing our proposals (reform, academic
proficiency),
The Future of Federal Education Grants since the No Child Left Behind Act



37
NCLB gives us the activities for our grant applications (inform parents and
community, base reading achievement on data, use scientifically-based
programs, provide tutoring and after school programs)
NCLB lists the legislative phrases or focus areas that become our phrases in our
grant applications (individual student progress towards annual learning targets to
reach proficiency or a return on investment measure that links dollars spent to
student achievement), and
NCLB helps us clarify valid evaluation measurements and how to use that data
to drive our activities. (Annual state and school report cards, adequate progress
measures, benchmarks for progress)
NCLB appears to be a grant writer’s best source of direction, it provides everything
we need to develop a full proposal, and it is focused education. Look at our list; these are
the basic components of our grant proposals:






Goals and objectives
target audience
key words
activities
phrases or focus areas
evaluation
Topic Two:
 Ensure your school is posed to meet the necessary criteria
The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) holds states, districts and schools
accountable for student achievement. NCLB requires regular assessments to mark
progress and highlight weaknesses in core academic subjects. These assessment results
must be reported in the aggregate as well as disaggregated (separated) by individual
subgroups of students (low-income or disability status, race or ethnicity).
 Districts can use information provided from state and local assessments to
determine needs and target resources.
 Schools can use information from state and local assessments to provide
appropriate professional development for teachers and help to meet the needs
of all subgroups of students.
 Teachers can use information from assessments required under NCLB to
inform classroom decisions and provide the best possible instruction for
student learning so that all students succeed.
 Parents have access to regular school, district and state report cards, so they
may monitor progress and make informed decisions.
Are these key players (District, schools, teachers, and parents) not exactly the
individuals that we need to talk about in our grants proposal? Are these not the
members of the team who can best affect our student’s success? NCLB gives the grant
writer the partnership team for a good proposal.
JAAGP Spring/Summer 2004
38
To the grant professional, these are the components that we need to identify in order
to develop thorough proposals and to ensure that our schools are not only posed to meet
the necessary criteria, but that we design plans and applications that include the necessary
criteria.
To strengthen our proposals, NCLB directs us to use the data to support our
proposals. We know, from NCLB and our own experiences, that effective teachers use
data daily to inform their decisions. One of the most important aspects of good teaching,
as many teachers know, is the ability to discern which students are learning and which are
not, and then to tailor instruction to meet individual learning needs. Isn’t this exactly
what we are tasked to do in our proposals – document and demonstrate need, design
activities to enhance learning, and then assess to see if we are successful?
When we cite research, we might say in our proposals that “Research shows that
teachers who use student test performance to guide and improve their teaching are more
effective than teachers who do not use such information,”
then we cite the research
(Fuchs, L. S., Fuchs, D., Hamlett, C. L., Phillips, N. B., and Bentz, J.,
1994. Classwide curriculum-based measurement: Helping general
educators meet the challenge of student diversity. Exceptional Children,
60, 518-537.)
We now take that information, the statements, the research -- and build our proposals
“talking the talk” that ensures our district will “walk the walk.” “Talking the talk” to
show that the statements in our proposals are documented, not just opinions. For
everyone that has ever served as a reader for grant applications, we know that there is
probably nothing that turns us off faster than someone giving us opinions – especially if
we do not agree with them. If we are reading statements that are documented or based on
“Scientifically-based research” – the application has validity.
Another essential component of our application that we must address is testing or
assessment. While testing is an important part of measuring progress, how teachers use
the resulting data from test results to drive instruction is critical – and we must emphasize
this fine line in our proposals. Too often, with the focus on accountability, the directive is
misinterpreted to have a hyper-focus on testing as a goal, but the testing is the measure
used to identify the skill needs. Mastering the skills is the goal. Teachers have the
opportunity to use data from assessments to make good decisions when adapting
instruction, evaluating progress, highlighting successes and improving weaknesses. In our
applications, it is our responsibility to make sure that we define that distinction and set
our activities to ensure we are using the result of the data to drive instruction.
Under the main purpose to ensure that all children have a fair, equal, and significant
opportunity to obtain a high-quality education and reach proficiency on challenging State
academic achievement standards and state academic assessments, No Child Left Behind
established Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP), which measures the progress of all public
schools, and school districts toward enabling all students to meet the State’s academic
achievement standards. If schools do not make AYP, parents may have options for their
children or their children may receive extra help. The main purpose of the act is to ensure
that all children have a fair, equal, and significant opportunity to obtain a high-quality
education and reach proficiency on challenging State academic achievement standards
The Future of Federal Education Grants since the No Child Left Behind Act
39
and assessments. In our proposals, we set our baseline of “where our students are today”
and set our benchmarks with the focus on AYP. NCLB has once again helped us as grant
developers to identify very concrete goals and benchmarks in our proposals.
NCLB also provides us with potential for good evaluation plan in a grant. In our
grant applications, and even some of our education programs, the evaluation component
is sometimes a weak link.
With all the unified mandates across the county, NCLB could be providing us with
an opportunity for a great quasi-experimental evaluation plan (I don’t know if you have
seen this phrase popping up, but ever since the Teaching American History grant, the
words quasi-experimental evaluation plan has been popping up in other grants and
conversations.) Quasi-experimental designs are commonly employed in the evaluation of
educational programs when random assignment is not possible or practical. The word
"quasi" means as if or almost, so a quasi-experiment means almost a true experiment.
There are many varieties of quasi-experimental research designs. One type called
matching instead of randomization can be used. For example, someone studying the
effects of a new teaching strategy in a school would try to find a similar school
somewhere in the same geographic region, perhaps in a 5-state area. That other school
would have student demographics that are very similar to the experimental school. That
other school is not technically a control group, but a comparison group, and this matching
strategy is sometimes called nonequivalent group design.
So, because of NCLB, we have school districts in our nation using the same
scientific researched programs, applying the same type of teaching strategies, doing
similar activities – and in the long run, we have a great research program – Why did this
work well here and not there? The reverse would be that we are using a strategy and you
are not, yet your school demographics are similar. If it is successful here, will it be
successful there? Also, is this program equally successful in urban and rural settings for
the lowest quartile? Is this appropriate for disadvantaged students in particular grade
levels? The list of questions goes on and on. NCLB cannot only be an
evaluator/researchers dream, but also great for our grant programs. Since we have a lot of
the same directives (with a slight state twist) we could partner with each other for great
evaluation components. Instead of everyone in education and grant development being
competitors, we could be collaborators. So, perhaps an additional task we have as grant
writers is to network and find potential partners for some of our programs. (Now for a
commercial break – the American Association of Grant Professionals 2004 National
Conference in BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS on November 10-13, 2004 would be a great
networking opportunity for all grant professionals!)
Topic three:
 Capitalize on states’ and school districts’ increased local control and
flexibility
Under No Child Left Behind, states and school districts have unprecedented
flexibility in how they use federal education funds, in exchange for greater accountability
for results.
It is possible for most school districts to transfer up to 50 percent of the federal
formula grant funds they receive under the Improving Teacher Quality State Grants,
Educational Technology, Innovative Programs, and Safe and Drug-Free Schools
JAAGP Spring/Summer 2004
40
programs to any one of these programs, or to their Title I program, without separate
approval. This allows districts to use funds for their particular needs, such as hiring new
teachers, increasing teacher pay, and improving teacher training and professional
development. Similarly, the law's consolidation of bilingual education programs gives
states and districts more control in planning programs to benefit all limited English
proficient students.
In October, our Florida Education Commissioner announced that Florida is the first
state approved by the U.S. Department of Education under the No Child Left Behind
Act’s State Flexibility Authority Program (State-Flex). State-Flex allows states flexibility
to use certain federal funds as appropriate for state-level priorities in exchange for
increased accountability for student academic progress.
So in essence, if you are a state like Illinois, District of Columbia or Florida, and are
experiencing a teacher shortage – you can use more of your funds for recruiting,
professional development, and designing alternate certification plans. If you are in a state
like Idaho or Arizona and have a surplus of teachers, but need funds to support innovative
teaching strategies, you can move more of your funds there.
A new demonstration program allows selected states and school districts to
consolidate funds received under a variety of federal education programs so that they can
be used for any educational purpose authorized under the Elementary and Secondary
Education Act, as amended by the NCLB Act in order to assist them in making adequate
yearly progress and narrowing achievement gaps. Some states, such as Virginia, North
Dakota and California are submitting consolidated applications. For grant offices like my
office, a consolidated application will allow us to apply for district entitlement funds
under one application. Currently, we have to complete multiple applications, stating a lot
of the same information. Now we will be able to apply for those funds under one
application. It streamlines the processing. Internally, we may keep our management fairly
similar to what we have (Title I department, Special Education department – but one
application) BUT (it will be complicated at first) it will force us to focus on the district
plan, it will force us within a school system to knock down the silos and collaborate more
efficiently, and it will reduce any duplication of efforts through joint planning. It will be
like putting together a jigsaw puzzle for our district. Each piece will come together to
create a total picture in which we “ensure that all children have a fair, equal, and
significant opportunity to obtain a high-quality education and reach proficiency on
challenging State academic achievement standards and state academic assessments.”
In addition, the new Improving Teacher Quality State Grants program gives states
and districts greater flexibility to choose the teacher professional development strategies
that best meet their needs to help raise student achievement. In our state we have
developed a plan composed of all the options to become certified from university courses
to state exams to on-line certification. We can then not only offer a custom designed and
appropriate menu of choices to potential or new teachers, but we have a plan that is
appropriate to almost any grant that calls for certification, professional development, and
high quality teachers. NCLB is a grant writers dream. It is backed by federal legislation,
it is focused, and it allows us to develop a solid plan that is appropriate to a variety of
funding sources. Not only that, but we have so many components to our plan (high
quality teachers, disadvantaged students, during school and after school programs, etc.)
that hardly a grant comes out that could not help meet a portion of our overall plan.
NCLB is great for the grant professional and for the educator!
The Future of Federal Education Grants since the No Child Left Behind Act
41
Topic Four:
 Develop compliant and effective standards
According to US DOE, No Child Left Behind puts special emphasis on determining
what educational programs and practices have been proven effective through rigorous
scientific research. Federal funding is targeted to support these programs and teaching
methods that work to improve student learning and achievement.
Reading programs are a good example. No Child Left Behind supports scientificallybased reading instruction programs in the early grades under the new Reading First
program and in preschool under the new Early Reading First program. Funds are
available to help teachers strengthen current skills and gain new ones in effective reading
instructional techniques. For examples, Florida received $52 million federal Reading
First funds, which will total over $300 million in six years, to help reach Governor
Bush’s goal that every child read at or above grade level by 2012. In Florida, we have the
Just Read, Florida! Office offering:
 Reading First grants
 Reading Coaches grant
 Secondary Reading Coaches grants
 Mathematics Coaches grant
 Reading –Research grants
Then, for grants that are not out of the Just Read, Florida! Office, we have every
other grant from the Advanced Placement grants to the Carl Perkins Workforce grants
asking us to explain how our program supports the Reading First Initiative. And inbetween, we have other grants such as the “Reading Comprehension And Reading ScaleUp Research Grants.” Why are they doing this? “…Because Reading is the most
powerful common denominator in education and is vital to an individual's success.”
Does all this emphasis and grant support make a difference? In a recent press release,
it was announced that Florida is the only state to show significant improvement in fourth
grade reading and has posted improvement in both reading and math for nearly all student
groups. Florida surpassed the national average in fourth grade reading and is at the
national average in fourth grade math for the first time. While eighth grade achievement
is consistent with national trends, Florida’s mathematics scores improved more than the
national average. (2003 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) Reading
and Mathematics, http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard.states).
So, perhaps the Just Read, Florida! Office has the right idea. Perhaps NCLB can get
us focused in the right direction. I can say for sure that the heightened awareness and
emphasis on reading has dramatically affected every grant that I write and manage. AND,
with the type of results that I just cited, it must be effective.
As we try to become better educated in understanding our directives, such as NCLB,
we discover that there is a lot we do not know. We recognize that the legislation is
complicated and that it is complex in its mandates. We do have to struggle to understand
more and more. I am reminded of a quote from Macbeth, “Tho this be madness, there is
method in it.” Everything is spelled out in the Act, each directive has federal funds that
JAAGP Spring/Summer 2004
42
flow to the state, the state funds flow to the LEA or school system – and across the
county, we are all singing from the same page of music.
“So What does it all mean?!”
As grant writers and developers – what is our charge? We have a mandate, not a
choice – NCLB is not going away.
 Data Driven Teaching – NCLB has drawn our attention to the using data to
determine the direction and focus of instruction in our classrooms.
 Effective teaching strategies in which teachers identify the concepts on which
the students scored the lowest.
 Research-based instruction, cited 100 times in the legislation, gives us the
backbone for our direction.
 Standardized Assessment Strategies that are used daily to help students
internalize how to do well on standardized measurements
 Bottom Quartile – our targeted audience
 Identifying resources – a strength in every application.
We know that our grants are not shopping lists, but clear, focused, plans to improve
education. I have been extremely fortunate to work for two very smart guys – Dr. Charles
Cline, recently retired Associate Superintendent of Curriculum and Instruction and my
current superintendent, John C. Fryer, Jr. Both insist that in Duval County we “DO NOT
CHASE MONEY.” Dr. Cline always told me that if we believed in the project, we were
going to do it anyway. Mr. Fryer always asks us to prove that what we are doing is
working and effective. Mr. Fryer also insists that all efforts be aligned with the district
plan. There is a fine line there – if you are going to really do the project, then you are
aligning it with your district focus and planning well – and you are committed to the
project for the right reasons.
U.S. Secretary of Education, Rod Paige, emphasized the same point in his article
entitled “It's Not About the Money.” The article appeared in the Wall Street Journal:
“A new semantic game is being played out in the corridors of the
Capitol…Typical of Washington's Beltway-speak, a cry has gone up, saying
that the No Child Left Behind education reform bill is "under-funded."
Nothing could be further from the truth.
President Bush has increased K-12 education spending by 40% since he
took office. That's more in two years than it increased during the eight
previous years under President Clinton. In raw terms, this president has
increased education spending by $11 billion. As a nation, we now spend
$470 billion dollars a year on K-12 education locally and federally—more
than on national defense.”
That doesn’t sound like “under-funded”! But the argument given is that in the law it
is under-funded because it was appropriated at a level below what was "authorized." This
translates as:
An authorization is usually a "limiting" number—the legal maximum level of funding.
The Future of Federal Education Grants since the No Child Left Behind Act
43
Rod Paige used a highway metaphor to better explain the difference: “it is a guardrail
that keeps wildly spending appropriators from driving the federal budget over the cliff.
Only those reckless enough to grind against the guardrail would want to reach those
levels. The appropriation is usually a number that is closer to the median of the road, the
realistic figure needed to do the job. Appropriations are rarely anywhere close to
authorization levels, and that is true across the entire federal government.”
Education, and grant procurement, should not be about throwing money into the
educational system—quite often a misunderstanding with grants. A recent report from the
Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development shows that the U.S. is one of
the top spenders in the world in education, yet our 15-year-olds rate merely average
versus their peers on tests of reading, math and science.
If money spent were the main indicator of a good education, we would see areas with
the highest per-pupil expenditures record the highest test scores. The Jersey City school
district (which overspends the U.S. average by $5,000 and the New Jersey state average
by $2,000) participated in a “Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study”
benchmarking study recently that compared eighth-graders across the world in a number
of subjects. Jersey City students' scores in science, for example, are close to the bottom—
comparable to students in Iran, Indonesia, Jordan, Turkey and Tunisia. Jersey City kids
also have double the dropout rate compared to kids in the rest of New Jersey.
Looking to another comparison, the District of Columbia, which spends near the top
on its K-12 students, has the lowest scores in the nation—including U.S. territories like
Guam and Puerto Rico—in reading and math. Thus, if money were the answer to getting
a solid education, most students in Jersey City and D.C. would all be at the top of the
achievement scale. We spend more than virtually all other nations, and still get poor
results. The point is that spending is not tied to success and our grants are not written to
get money. They are written to implement a solid education plan. That is the fine line.
That is the line that my two very smart bosses in Duval County Public Schools will not
cross – we do not chase money.
Do you ever find yourself talking about a grant and explaining to your team or
teachers that a grant is not about adding on more responsibilities – it’s funding to help
meet identifiable needs of your children. It’s funding for what you need to deliver. This
has been an educational issue that I have been trying to get across for years. I have heard
teachers say, “I don’t have time to do a grant.” And I have responded, did you, in your
classroom ever figure out something that you needed to teach your children, then went by
Wal-Mart and picked up the supplies, implemented the activity, made sure they
understood it, and then went on to another cycle of teaching another concept? Those are
all your grants. It’s not additional activities; it is the activity that you are doing based on
the needs of your children. The same with NCLB, it’s not an add-on, its not in addition to
doing what you’ve always done – it’s a change, a refocus. So if that’s the case, is there
enough funding to support the mandates? Yes-- REPLACE, do not ADD ON, and the
funding will be more than adequate.
The last remark I will make about money is our responsibility in grant development
and then management. We know in grants that we pay very close attention to compliance.
We know that our grants are our contract with the funder – and hence we act responsibly
and make sure we are following our “contract.” NCLB mandates are funded by
taxpayer’s dollars – so we are accountable for the results. The money comes with strings
attached – and so it should. So of all educators, we who work with grants, find that
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NCLB is once again just like every good grant application that we have ever written and
managed: it has directives, it is a contract, it has strings attached, and we have to be
accountable. And now every state, every school, and every student is to be held to high
standards. NCLB speaks the same language that I speak as a grant professional.
Is NCLB perfect? Far from it—
Joseph Heller was an American writer, who gained world fame with his satirical,
anti-war novel CATCH-22 (1961). The novel is set in World War II Italy. The book was
partly based on Heller's own experiences and influenced Robert Altman's comedy
M*A*S*H, and the subsequent long-running TV series. The protagonist in the book is
Captain John Yossarian, stationed at an airstrip on the fictitious island off the coast of
Italy during WW II. The story centers on the USAF regulation which suggests that to fly
dangerous combat missions must be considered insane, but if the airmen seek to be
relieved on grounds of mental reasons, the request proves their sanity. The phrase "catch22" has entered the English language to signify an individual's entrapment in a no-win
situation, particularly one created by an institutional regulation. We have a few Catch-22
clauses that need to be worked out in NCLB.





One of the NCLB Catch 22s is the state assessment. Every state has its own state
test for assessment. So the measurement is not consistent to evaluate the
mandates. Even if two states had the same test, they could have different
proficiency levels or standards. Would the standard be okay across the country if
all the NFL teams played on different sized fields for different amounts of times?
If NCLB is going to have directives for us across the nations, we need to have the
same measurements of success – we need to all be using the same yardstick!
Quite a few of the concerns occur with the Annual Yearly Progress (AYP). In
AYP – one of the subgroups is English Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL). If a
student is successful, he moves out of ESOL. Who are left behind in that subgroup
but students who are not successful in mastering the English language? So will
that subgroup ever meet AYP? It may also affect the DOE’s lowest achieving
group safe harbor since these children may count more than one time in other
subgroups i.e. Black, Hispanic. This is a major problem. ESOL will NEVER have
a successful program due to this Catch 22. This really needs to be changed.
Along with that same problem is the size of the subgroup. Significant group sizes
vary from 5 in Maryland to 100 in California and 200 in Texas. In Florida, a group
of 30 would make up a subgroup and have to show AYP. In Texas, that small of a
group would not even count as a subgroup. This year, Florida didn’t have any
subgroups pass AYP. Georgia had about 1/3 of their school districts achieve AYP.
We are all measuring AYP differently and cannot compare the results.
Many districts are having problems with the 95% tested requirement. This
requires that 95% of the students (overall and in each disaggregated category) take
statewide assessments. Now, you know, there are exceptions to the 95% rule and
that would be if a group is smaller than the state minimum number for statistical
reliability. But since there is a lot of variation between states on the adopted
numbers, we find ourselves in a Catch 22 again.
Other problems with AYP:
The Future of Federal Education Grants since the No Child Left Behind Act
45
 In California the state law allows parents to exempt students from any test they
do not wish them to take
 By statute the LEA makes the decision of AYP or NAYP but in most cases
states have intervened and usurped that decision
 New York, Wisconsin, Kentucky and California have sanctions for non-Title I
schools that do not make AYP
 Kentucky has yet to receive their AYP data from their SEA
 There isn’t a national rule on schools that fail to make adequate yearly
progress for two consecutive years, but in different subjects. So states have
been left to adopt their own policies as part of their accountability systems.
If NCLB is going to be around until 2014, then the playing field needs to be the same
for all states. So, we have identified some glitches – instead of using them as an example
of what is wrong with NCLB, let’s get our states and legislators to understand the Catch22 and get it resolved. We can tweak the system until it is a good system rather then
throwing the baby out with the bathwater. For the grant professional and educational
leader – we have to know all about the strengths as well as the weaknesses of the
program. We have to make sure we are part of the solution to a high quality education for
all children.
Our task is to find out all we can about our directives under NCLB. Our task is to
understand how to align our grant applications with the mandates.
So much is happening in the world and the challenges continue for the grant
professionals and educational leaders. I have not touched on all the components of NCLB
– it is complex and comprehensive. But, we hear about NCLB everywhere. We come
together to discuss the NCLB act and the funds associated with the mandates. We decide
on our own opinion about the Act. We know NCLB is here to stay. And are you ready?
The success of America’s schools depends on capable, motivated, and dedicated
professionals who believe in the potential of every child. You should be applauded for
lending your talents and your hearts to ensuring that no child is left behind.
As grant professionals and leaders in the education field, now is the time to cultivate
your partnerships. Now is the time to make sure our districts understand the mandates.
Now is the time for our grant application to address the required components of NCLB.
Now is the time to be enthusiastic and aggressive about engaging and involving
supporters. Now is the time to seek funding to support tight budgets. Now is the time for
the grant professional and the educational leaders.
JAAGP Spring/Summer 2004
46
Why Every Public School Needs a Grant Writer
47
Why Every Public School Needs a Grant Writer
and AAGP Member’s Potential Role in Creating the Position
By
Gary Lee Frye, Ed.D.
Dr. Gary Frye is currently the Lubbock-Cooper ISD Grant Writer/Dyslexia
Coordinator. He holds a Master’s in Special Education along with 13 provisional and 5
professional certifications from Texas Education Agency and has an Educational
Doctorate in Educational Leadership from Texas Tech University. He has presented at
several state and national conferences on the subject of grant proposal writing and
served as a grant reviewer for TEA and the Department of Education on numerous
grants.
Introduction
Since the 1980 people have been talking about the fact that tightening of the
financial belt and declining enrollments and dwindling budgets have led public school
systems to increasingly look to non-traditional sources of raising money. With the budget
shortfalls of the pass year, many school systems are making the decision of what
educational programs must go, rather than what new program to support. This while
attempting to raise test scores to meet the goals of "No Child Left Behind" which many
times necessitate having new programs for the students who are not performing at
acceptable levels. In other words, what I am seeing in most schools is a classic “Catch
22” which two sets of reality just do not match. The only solution that I can see is to
create a development office in public schools or at the very least schools need to contract
with grant proposal developers for these services. I am basing this statement on my study
concerning the creation of the development office at several public schools in Texas. The
reason for this article is to give our AAGP members a rationale that they can take to their
local public schools showing the administration that they need to set aside funds to at
least contract with our members because we have the skills to develop the proposals and
fill this need to provide the needed extra programs.
Basic Rationale of Writing Grant Proposals for Public Schools
When community and other school district stakeholders discuss public school
finance, all agree that acquiring extra funds from non-tax based sources is a positive
event. These additional funds translate into supplemental programs that are designed to
meet students’ educational needs, which in turn contribute to the creation of a climate
where educational performance is enhanced. This can lead to higher standardized test
scores that show community stakeholders that the school district is effectively performing
its duty of educating the youth.
The most obvious source for these non-tax based additional funds would flow from
grants. The major problem with tapping into this flow of funding is developing and
writing the grant proposal. This problem exists because the current structure of staff
duties in most school districts does not provide free time for staff to write grants.
Therefore, if a school district or campus within a school district wants a grant written,
staff members must usually do it at night and on weekends.
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48
One reason that these staff members may be willing to relinquish their free time is
their conviction that their students need the program that a grant would provide. If the
grant should be funded, their first thought is establishing the program to benefit their
students. Staff members may not consider writing another grant unless their students have
continuing educational needs that are not being met by the first grant. Thus, the school
district has not created a process for tapping into grants as a funding source on a
continuing basis. There is not a school district wide program for grant writing. Thus, the
public schools are going to need a development office or contract grant proposal
development services.
Why Create a Development Office
Stanley Levenson in his book, How to Get Grants and Gifts for the Public Schools,
and at seminars where we have both been presenters, has made the case that there is a
critical need for increasing funding for public schools. The tax base of most schools is no
longer enough to provide a "world-class" education for all children. Thus many schools
are forming Local Education Foundation and/or Development Offices to access nontraditional funding streams so that the needs of all students can be met. Further, Stan has
made the point that within the next twenty to thirty years more wealth is going to transfer
than has occurred in the history of mankind and public schools must develop a method to
tap into this transfer if the high goals of "No Child Left Behind" are to have any chance
of being met.
Denise Schnitzer and Roy Nichols did one of the first books focused on public
schools having a Development Office entitled New Ways to Fund New Projects: A
Practical Guide to Winning Grants to Support Education. It was the story of Norfolk
Public Schools creating a grant writing program and how it evolved into a Development
Office. The office became a liaison to other community agencies, helping to write grants
for the community. This cooperation has brought greater benefit to the students because
of the increased services that the grants have provided.
In summarizing what they had learned in the development of the grant office they
stated that all of these functions can be performed by personnel assigned other duties, our
experience in the Norfolk Public Schools has been that if the grant functions are not
assigned to someone specific, they somehow receive inadequate attention or “fall through
the cracks” altogether. Therefore, our school district found that it was economically
feasible and advantageous to have one professional devoted exclusively to the
competitive grants arena. Such positions will more than pay for themselves as an
organized effort is made to seek and win competitive grant funds.
I can echo these statements because of my role in creating the Lubbock-Cooper
Independent School District (LCISD) Development Office. I have found almost the exact
same results. Over the seven years that LCISD has had a system for developing grant
proposals we have been able to fund programs that were beyond the normal scope of a
public education. These additional programs have allowed LCISD to achieve the highest
rating that the Texas Education Agency gives but more importantly given us the means to
meet our student's individual educational needs. This meeting of each student’s needs has
allowed LCISD to achieve its vision of “Building the future…One student at a time!”
Further, if my position would have had other duties besides developing new funding
sources, I would not have been able to network, review grants at the state and federal
level, and develop consortiums with other school districts. All of these activities have
Why Every Public School Needs a Grant Writer
49
increased the funds available to our students and increased the programs that we can offer
to them because they have made me a better “grant writer.” These extra funds have
translated into increased standardized test performance for our sub-group students who
have been the target of many of the grant programs. Lastly, because of the consortium
activities, I have seen the effects of having access to a development office on several
other rural school districts in terms of increased student performance because they have
contracted with me to perform these services for their school districts.
How Do I Start the Process of Creating a Development Office
The first step in creating the development office is for the school district to have a
clear vision of what the school district or campus is to become. Without this clear vision
as a road map to direct the grant proposal development, the RFA/RFP (Request For
Application/Request For Proposal) becomes the driving force and increasing the flow of
money becomes the goal instead of funding programs that will have a positive effect on
student outcomes. By talking to the public school district administration, our members
can help them realize that grants can be an integral part of funding the needed special
programs that will meet the needs of all students.
The second step in creating the development office is finding the person that enjoys
and has the temperament to be successful at creating grant proposals that will receive
funding. The AAGP member can just flat tell the administration that, “You’ve found
them!” In her book Grant Writing for Dummies and at meetings where I have been in her
presentations, Bev Browning makes the point that most of the current ‘grant writers’ did
not start out to make grant proposal development their career. They many times backed
into the position because they saw a need in their organization that could not be filled
using normal methods and found a grant that might fund this need. This was what
happened to me and I would say to most of our AAGP members.
When I was a migrant teacher at a small rural school district I was told about a grant
that I felt would greatly help my students. This was the first grant I ever wrote; it was
funded, and had an impact on my students that greatly affected their lives. When I moved
to LCISD as a 7th grade math teacher, I saw a need for a pre-Algebra program and found
a grant to fund the creation of this program. I thought I would be the pre-Algebra teacher,
but since my superintendent had developed a total school-wide vision that was bigger
than the current level of funding, he thought it would be better if I became the school
district’s grant writer since I had proven I could get grants.
Over the years the position evolved into one where all I do is development for the
district and the success has translated into a system by which the district now looks to
grants as an ongoing method of funding special need programs and as a way to research
the effectiveness of new programs for our students. The AAGP member who approaches
the public school system can state that they already like developing proposals so why
should the school attempt to “grow their own.” The fear of the public school
administration should be lowered if the AAGP member’s track record shows that they
can already obtain funds through grants. This is because this person will not need to go
through the learning process that I described above.
The third step is to budget for the position from “hard money.” In other words, I feel
that if a school district is serious about using grants as an ongoing source of funding they
must make a commitment to giving the person in the position enough time to become
effective. From my dissertation where I studied the creation of the development office in
JAAGP Spring/Summer 2004
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Texas public schools, I found a consensus from the development officers that I
interviewed that a new grant writer needed 18 to 24 months to determine success of the
program. This was because of several factors. First, depending on when the office is
created, the grant cycle, which normally runs on a yearly basis, may be one year out of
sink. Second, there is a steep learning curve that a new ‘grant writer’ under goes learning
the culture of the school and the basic system of proposal development if they are not
experienced in proposal development. Third, since developing the grant proposal is a preaward activity, the grants will not pay for the development of the proposal. The AAGP
member can provide the school administration with a person who has a track record of
obtaining grants so the fear of budgeting money on a “new program” can be greatly
lowered.
Final Thoughts Based on My Seven Years of Heading the Development Office
I have seen the positive effects having a development office has had on several
school districts in the extra programs that these schools can offer their students. The
special needs of target sub-groups of students can be met in a manner that would be
impossible in the normal funding situations because literally thousands of extra dollars
per student are funded through the grant programs. I have seen the effect having an
ongoing development program has on the regular instructional staff’s thinking in that the
‘sense of lack’ that is common in most schools is replaced by one of abundance. In other
words, teachers in the schools with an effective development office think in terms of
what is possible when money is not a consideration. The instruction staff looks at each
student or sub-group of students in terms of what programs that they would like to see
included in future grants, what benefits that these programs would have for the students,
and how, when program is shown effective, it can be integrated into the ongoing campus
improvement planning process. In schools without a development office, the
overwhelming ‘sense of lack’ keeps the staff from ever thinking in these terms because
they are focused on what programs must be cut in response to budget cuts.
With the changes that “No Child Left Behind” is bringing to public education, I feel
that schools must change the way they look at funding education to include nontraditional funding streams because current budgets will not meet current needs. Grants
then become a method by which schools can meet all students’ needs because grants
allow for smaller groups to be targeted for specific remediations and accelerations in a
manner that would be impossible using only normal funding streams. Thus, the unstated
goal of “No Child Left Behind” of providing a world class education for all students can
be met. Our AAGP members can provide a key resource to public schools by being the
person who shows them the value that grants can bring and by being the person that
writes them.
Book Review
51
Leadership and the New Science
By Margaret J. Wheatley
Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Pub; 1999
ISBM 1-57675-119-8
Paperback, $13.97 (Amazon.com)
In-depth review by Linda Fairchild
Linda Fairchild is a not-for-profit consultant and grant writer for The Write
Direction providing specific interest development and expertise in programmatic and
organizational design and development. The company also provides grant writing for
state, federal, and private awards. [email protected]
When you ask a group of people to define leadership you may hear as many
definitions as there are people providing them. The 21st century brings us into a new age
where many of our traditional definitions for the concept of family, success, wealth, and
leadership are questioned. We are asked to redefine and expand our definitions in order to
develop a wide range of capacity building, or better-stated, inclusionary responses.
Last semester in my Organizational Theory class, I read many books that defined,
and elucidated the concepts of Leadership. All of which were excellent books, however,
my favorite was and is Leadership and the New Science, by Margaret J. Wheatley.
Leadership is a difficult concept and task, and all too often, we are challenged by the
taxing day-to-day demands this role can place on us. I believe Wheatley’s book offers a
new and fresh perspective. Perhaps not all of her suggestions can be implemented in our
real worlds, but her ideas are excellent fodder for dreaming and planning new approaches
to everyday problems. It provides the reader with a path to take the quantum leap into
21st century leadership.
Wheatley’s book, Leadership and the New Science, provides the modern
administrator with a non-mechanistic model for organizational design and behavior. She
provides the reader with a viable opportunity to explore living examples of life’s order
and chaos through the disciplines of physics, biology, and chemistry. She pens the newer
concepts of organizational design and behavior using these very subjects to portray the
concept referred to as open organization, and embeds this in the world called life.
She challenges the reader to understand and first accept life as life. She divulges the
complexities of her theories in a simplistic fashion before she reverts these concepts back
to their complexities. Simultaneously, she weaves a pattern between the whole and its
parts explaining the necessity to understand each of these, but reminds us the importance
and focus should be the “big picture “ (the whole), which she evolves from the Gaia
theory, Lovelock 1988.
I found some fundamental common sense suggestions that if followed can only
improve the dynamics of management and the structure of an individual’s life and their
interconnectedness with the world, in particular their relationships. This statement too, is
an example of Wheatley’s theory, the parts and the whole.
I do not believe Wheatley’s intentions are to lead the administrator into a
reconstruction phase of the organization, but it is a challenge to develop and recreate a
new attitude about how business should be conducted. Her insights, metaphors, and
oxymorons clearly define the chaos that is considered order.
JAAGP Spring/Summer 2004
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Wheatley challenges the traditional worldview at multiple levels. However, as I read
this book, a time-honored quote of F.D.R. came to mind that I believe encapsulates some
of the basic premises of Wheatley’s book: specifically those that define the importance
of relationships and interconnectedness, freedom and order, or chaos and order.
They (who) seek to establish systems of government based on the regimentation
of all human beings, by a handful of individual rulers… call this a new order it
is not new and it is not order.” Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
As Wheatley leads us down the path to discover the process and structure of
orderliness and chaos, she introduces the reader to many new concepts, the first of which
is entropy. Entropy is the fear factor that closed organizations produce, whereby an
excessive amount of energy is expelled to fight its’ own death. A closed organization
lacks resiliency and adaptability. They expend more energy than they garner, therefore
they are unable to produce life or sustainability, I find this similar to the adage spinning
your wheels.
The converse of this is a dissipative structure, Wheatley’s second concept. The
dissipative structure, also known as disequilibrium, is a characteristic of an open or
preferably called a living organization. The dissipative structure will allow the
organization to self-organize and find a new order amidst the chaos. This concept
delineates the constructs of the “order out of chaos” theory or “order through fluctuation”
(Prigogine and Stengers, 1984; in Wheatley, M. Leadership and the New Science, 1999).
A layman’s understanding of the dissipative structure that is congruent to the theory
of thermodynamics, which explains the process that all systems lose energy, profiles the
progression and decline experienced in alcoholism. This malady plunges the organism
into a chaotic state (if the final stages of alcoholism could be plotted on a computer it
may simulate the same pattern as a strange attractor) and then plunges into the bifurcation
point. In particular, the individual will go through a personal death and then rebirth or as
Wheatley names this process self-organization or autopoiesis.
After analyzing these concepts, one must ask; how can we restructure our attitudes
and approach to management and leadership? The concepts presented in this book should
elevate the awareness of those who are adventurous and secure in their positions.
Undoubtedly, the introduction of quantum theory and the discussion of quantum leaps
enforce the reliability of relationship building as a successful strategy of an organization.
I think one can expand this to include the concepts of Chester R. Barnard’s article
Informal Organizations and Their Relation to Formal Organization.
Some readers may think Wheatley has taken a feminine approach to organizational
leadership. She has eradicated the “good old boys” concept of networking into a more
honorable tactic called relationship building. She develops this further in her
discussion/metaphor of the butterfly effect. Again, she takes her own quantum leap in her
discussions of management’s accountability to the employee. She believes viewing an
employee in a humanistic fashion that allows one to learn something about the “person”
who is hired to work will produce a greater return. This would allow for a mentoring
relationship versus the machine and its operator method of management. Once more, this
is a relational approach typically upheld by females. She obviously deplores the notion
that employees need to be controlled through policy, procedures, bylaws, concepts,
withholding of information and whatever else management deems as a necessity of an
orderly (and closed) way to do business. A supplementary theme of Wheatley’s book is
Book Review
53
the necessity of integrity, which is exemplified through her discussions that implore
management to walk the talk.
Wheatley commands us to take a harmonious journey into the world of management.
To be steadfast in our organizational design to uphold and sanctify the importance of
relationships, to take time to develop and nourish these relationships. Wheatley’s
approach is not a band-aid approach. She hopes the reader will acquire the ability to
discern the differences between the real and the counterfeit through a new awareness of
science and leadership.
Often times grants managers and proposal writers must become leaders and in that
way influence administration. A study of Wheatley’s book can aid us in this effort.
JAAGP Spring/Summer 2004
54
Book Review
55
Community Visions, Community Solutions: Grantmaking for Comprehensive Impact.
By Joseph A. Connor and Stephanie Kadel-Taras
Published January 2003 by the Amherst Wilder Foundation
ISBN 0-940069-30-X. $41.95.
Reviewed by Maryn M. Boess
Maryn M. Boess is the founding director of GrantsUSA, LLC (www.GrantsUSA.net.) She
has been an active grantwriter from 1986 through 1996. She is the founding publisher
and editor of the Arizona Guide to GRANTS & GIVING, the print and on-line directory
of corporate and foundation resources for Arizona grantseekers, and of the JUST
GRANTS! Arizona resource website (www.azgrants.com). A highly-regarded workshop
and seminar leader, Maryn’s skill-building sessions on grantsmanship, collaboration,
organizational effectiveness, and other topics attract many hundreds of participants
statewide every year. An AAGP board member since November 2002, Maryn currently
serves as vice president and chairs the Membership Services committee.
For anyone who seeks funding from private grantmakers, spending time with
Community Visions, Community Solutions will leave you feeling a bit like an
eavesdropper – and that’s a very good thing. This book is the second in a series of
funders’ guides developed by the Wilder Foundation in collaboration with GEO –
Grantmakers for Effective Organizations. The series is “aimed at strengthening nonprofit
organizations, the communities they serve, and the nonprofit sector through effective
grantmaking.” Elwood Hopkins, director of Los Angeles (CA) Urban Funders, calls the
book “a must-read for grantmakers, individual donors, or any philanthropic professionals
who hope to see community change in their lifetime.” And I would venture to say
anything that’s a must-read for grantmakers should be a must-read for grantseekers as
well.
The authors waste no time laying out their agenda: “Funders don’t want to simply
serve as the cash machine for the status quo,” they contend. This book, they promise, is
“about how communities can solve problems . . . Programs, agencies, initiatives and
collaborations are the building blocks of solutions – not ends in themselves. They should
exist only to lead to solutions. This book is about uncovering the community’s highest
aspirations for itself and its residents, and supporting and sustaining the systemic,
strategic efforts to get to desired solutions” [emphasis added].
High-minded language indeed – and in this case, it’s backed by solid real-life
experience and practical application. For those who entertain the notion that grantmakers
have it easy, this book is a jarring eye-opener. Chapter One, “Funder Frustration: Having
an Impact,” shows how, through the practice of “piecemeal grantmaking,” even good
intentions and hard work can end in disappointing results, frustration, disillusionment and
burnout. Among the culprits: Fractured problems, disjointed resources, no clear
definition of success, lack of collaboration among the funders, a tendency to focus on the
“parts” rather than the whole. Nonprofits share responsibility with funders, the authors
say, in a chicken-and-egg argument: “While funding availability often dictates nonprofit
actions, nonprofit specialization and requests for funding can help define how funders
establish their priorities.” Another culprit: Lack of feedback loops for assessing actual
community-level impact of funding. Patricia Stonesifer of the Bill and Melinda Gates
JAAGP Spring/Summer 2004
56
Foundation is quoted as saying, with stunning candor: “It would be possible [for a
grantmaker] to blow $100 billion” – and have no impact at all.
True to their own solution-oriented values, the authors do not linger long on the
problem. Chapter 2 issues a clear call to funders to “approach their grantmaking in
fundamentally different ways” if they want to foster successful community problemsolving. The rest of the book looks more closely at proposed strategies for attaining a
higher vision, organized into three broad categories, each with its own chapter:



Fund communities, not programs and services, to help neighborhoods, towns,
cities and regions reach their highest aspirations. Funders are charged with
taking on new, catalytic roles in the community as convener, challenger,
participant, and community servant.
Fund systems and strategies at the multi-organizational level. Strategies
proposed in this section include making cross-organizational grants, supporting
collaborative governance, and measuring system-wide outcomes. These
prescriptions will be especially appreciated by any grant professional who has
struggled with funding guidelines that tout partnership and an application
process that renders true collaborative design all but impossible.
Be the change you wish to see. Mahatma Gandhi is credited with urging us to
“Be the change you wish to see in the world.” In this section, the authors call on
grantmakers to hold themselves to the same standards internally that they want
to create in the community. Examples: By preparing foundation board members
to be change agents, by collaborating with other funders, and by creating and
supporting the infrastructure to sustain the work.
The book quickly gets down to nitty-gritty how-to’s, relying on such resources as doand-don’t checklists, extensive case examples, self-assessment tools, and step-by-step
process charts to guide readers from theory into action. My favorite: A series of “what
if?” questions that challenge us to dance outside the current box, get beyond what my
mother used to call “the yeah-buts” and the “we’ve always done it this way” mentality,
and engage deeply in the magic of true possibility thinking.
The structure of Community Visions, Community Solutions is logical, the writing
clear, crisp, and heartfelt. The authors maintain a delicate balance between big-picture
vision and just-do-it detail. At fewer than 100 actual text pages, this slender book packs a
powerful punch. Community Visions, Community Solutions stands as an unprepossessing,
inspiring, and practical manifesto for grantmakers and grantseekers, philanthropists and
service providers, corporations and foundations – all those who yearn to live their highest
sense of mission and serve as catalysts for real, meaningful change in the world we share.
Author Guidelines
57
Author Guidelines
Articles or article proposals may be submitted at anytime to the Chair of the JAAGP
Editorial Board.
All submissions accepted for publication (with a few exceptions, such as reprints of
articles) will remain the property of the author with the American Association of Grant
Professionals exercising its right to publish submissions in print as well as any other
medium according to generally accepted copyright policies.
All submissions being considered for publication are read by the JAAGP Editorial Board,
which makes suggestions for revisions. Submissions are then returned to the author for
actual revisions. The completed submission is then forwarded to the Editor for the final
publication decision. The final decision is always made by the JAAGP Editorial Board,
which often has to balance several factors in deciding when (and if) an article will be
published.
Articles should be submitted as e-mail attachments or on computer disks. Hardcopy
versions will be accepted, however, processing will be delayed. Electronic versions
should be saved as Word documents in IBM format or as RTF files. Average length
expected is 3-6 single-spaced printed pages. Any graphics must be compatible with Word
or Microsoft software. Accepted articles will be published in the next available issue
and/or at the discretion of the JAAGP Editorial Board.