Navigating the Grant Writing Path for "Success Highways"

Jump to: Step #1, Step #2, Step #3, Step #4, Step #5

Step #1: Developing a "Success Highways" Program Plan
Obviously if you are ready to look for funding for "Success Highways" at your school, you are familiar with the curriculum and excited about the potential it has for ensuring that your students are successful in school and in life. But, before you start the grant-seeking process, you need to spend some time with your colleagues thinking carefully about how you will implement the curriculum at your school and the impact that it will have on your students.
It might be a good idea to bring together a group of teachers and support staff from your school to form a 'Success Highways Committee' and hold some meetings where you can brainstorm this information so that you can develop a resource document to use when you start writing grant applications.

This document should include:

		A description of your school, district, student population and community. Be sure to include demographic information here such as total number of students and ethnic and socio-economic breakdowns. If you have projections of how many students in your district have low proficiency rankings, include that as well. Think about the things that make your school and situation unique and compelling to a potential funder.
		A description of how "Success Highways" will be implemented at your school. Include any unique programs or strategies that you plan to use when teaching the "Success Highways" curriculum. You can rely on the descriptive information about the "Success Highways" curriculum and how to implement it on this Webs site as your foundation, but will likely want to customize it for your school.
		Short biographies of the "Success Highways" team. Have all of the faculty, administrators, aides, etc. who will be involved in the program write a sentence or two about their background in case you need it for an application.
		Timeline for implementing "Success Highways" in your school. Include schedule for teacher professional development, start date for implementing the curriculum, a timeline for program evaluation and any other milestones. Back to Top

Step #2: Identifying Funding Sources
Now that you know what your "Success Highways" program will look like, you are ready to begin to look for appropriate foundations and other organizations that might provide funding.

First, find out what resources are available to you from your school district. Often school districts -- particularly larger ones -- have development offices where expert help on identifying funding sources and writing a grant application is available. In some cases, your district's development office might even partner with you as you identify potential funders and prepare grant applications.

If you don't have those resources available in your school district, there are other ways to find the information and training that you need to develop a "Success Highways" program proposal that gets funded.

The Foundation Center is a top authority on philanthropy and part of its mission is to provide education and training on grantseeking. Headquartered in New York, the Foundation Center has field offices in Atlanta, Cleveland, San Francisco and Washington, D.C. If you are located near one of those metropolitan areas, it is worth it to contact the center near you and make arrangements to meet with one of their development librarians or participate in a funding workshop. If not, don't despair. The Foundation Center has cooperating collections -- free funding information centers in libraries, community foundations and other nonprofit resource centers -- around the country. There you will find a collection of publications that will help you identify funders and trained individuals who can help you to find the best possible places to look for funding for "Success Highways."

Visit http://foundationcenter.org/ to learn more about the Foundation Center and find a cooperating collection near you.
When reviewing information from potential funders, think carefully about whether or not your "Success Highways" program meets their guidelines and initiatives. Obviously you want to target an organization that is interested in funding education initiatives, but also look for key words such as:

		High school improvement
		High school interventions
		Resiliency skills
		Improving high school achievement
		Drop-out prevention
		Student retention
		At-risk students

You don't need a big list of potential grantors to get your proposal funded. You want to spend your time and energy pursuing funding from organizations that are interested in education initiatives -- particularly helping high schools ensure that at-risk students are successful in school and in life.
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Step #3: A Letter of Inquiry
Once you identify potential funding sources, you will likely need to develop a letter of inquiry to send to each of the potential grantors. Your search for grantors has helped you to identify organizations that are interested in funding the type of program your school has developed, but a letter of inquiry will help you confirm that you are a good match before you develop a full grant proposal.

Your letter of inquiry should include:

		Name and address of your school or district (whichever will be accepting and managing the grant funds);
		Contact information. Include name of lead program manager(s), phone, fax and email.
		A short description of your school or district;
		RFP (Request for Proposal): Many grantors -- particularly foundations -- have a specific narrative format that they want you to follow when you apply for a grant. Usually budget, staffing and background information about your school or district as well as the new program you are proposing are components of an RFP.
		A description of your "Success Highways" program. Of course you want to refer to the program plan that you developed in "Step #1," but you may want to tweak some details or emphasize others to be sure that it matches closely to the grantor's guidelines or initiatives.
		A list of the faculty members and administrators who will lead your "Success Highways" program
		A short timeline for your "Success Highways" program
		An estimate of the grant amount you are seeing and how you will use it.
		A brief description of funds requested and a description of how they'll be used.
		Any other information that the grantor asks for when you submit a 'Letter of Inquiry'

While that may seem like a lot of information to include, try to keep your letter short and to the point. Usually, three pages is a good length and it is a good idea to bullet information when appropriate. You want a potential funder to be able to quickly review your letter and get an idea of what you are asking for as well as the ways that your "Success Highways" program can help students in your community.

It is a good idea to send your letters of inquiry (and pretty much anything else you send to a potential grantor) using overnight mail so that you can track the delivery and know when and who at the organization received it.
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Step #4: Waiting…Waiting…Waiting…
Once you send off your letter of inquiry to an organization, the hardest part begins. Waiting! You can make this process a little less painful by checking the grantor's guidelines to see if they tell you how long the review process might be. If it says four weeks, don't panic or start making phone calls to the organization until nearly four weeks. After that time, if you have the name of the program officer who is responsible for the funding you are inquiring about, you may wish to place a call to ask about the status of your inquiry or to see if you can provide any additional information. If the organization's guidelines say that you should not call to follow-up on your letter, don't! One of the most important things about applying for grant funding is to follow the rules.
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Step #5: Developing your grant proposal
If you have positive response to your letter of inquiry, you will, in most cases, be asked to develop a full grant proposal. Most grantors provide specific guidelines for developing this proposal. Follow them down to the letter! Remember that you have done a lot of the information gathering already when you developed your "Success Highways" Program Plan and can use that information as a foundation for developing a full grant proposal.

While organizations ask for different information in their proposal, the following tips will serve you well when developing any grant proposal:

		Start immediately. As soon as you receive the green light to develop a full grant proposal, get started. The deadline could be as far as three months in the future, but you will develop the best possible proposal if you don't procrastinate and start the process immediately.
		Develop a timeline and stick to it. If the grantor says the deadline is April 1, it means April 1. The full proposal needs to be on the program officer's desk that day.
		Delegate. Go through the elements of the proposal and determine who the best people on your team are to work on them. Your school's business manager is likely the best person to work with you on the budget; while the school library media specialist might collaborate with you on a section describing the resources that your school already has to support "Success Highways."
		Designate a Writer. After you delegate the various portions of the proposal, identify a strong writer on your team who will be responsible for pulling the document together with one voice and editing each section.
		Ask for advice. Call your assigned program officer or contact person at the grantor if you have questions about the proposal guidelines. Don't make a nuisance of yourself, but do clarify things early on so that you are on track from the start.
		Follow the grant guidelines. Don't think you have a better way of doing things. If the grantor says the proposal should be double-spaced, make it so. Use the designated section-headings. The grantor knows what it wants to see.
		Use compelling writing. When describing your “Success Highways” program, tell the grantor about the special needs of students at your school. Tell a compelling story about how you can put ALL of your students on the path to success if you can implement this curriculum.
		Watch the education jargon. While the grantors you are targeting have an interest in education, be sure to stay away from vague educational jargon that the reviewers might not understand.
		Have an expert review your proposal before you submit it. Contact a development officer at a local company and see if they would spend a few hours reviewing your proposal and giving you feedback before you submit it. Or maybe your school district has a development officer who could do this for you. Listen carefully to the feedback and integrate changes into your proposal.
		Proofread, proofread, proofread. Get three different set of eyes to proofread the proposal. Maybe the head of your school's English department can contribute some time by proofreading your proposal. Or perhaps your school's administrative assistant has eagle eyes for typos and grammatical errors.
		Present a professional proposal. Don't spend a lot of money on expensive binders for your proposal -- unless the grantor requests it. Make the number of copies that are required, check to be sure that all of the pages are in order and bind them in according to the proposal directions.
		Meet the deadline. Be sure that your proposal is at the grantor's office on or before the deadline. That means ensuring that you get a draft to your principal or superintendent of schools or whoever has to sign off on the grant so that there is a time for review. Be sure to build that into your timeline. Once you send the proposal, if you have a program officer that you are working with, do place a call to be sure the proposal was received -- unless the directions say not to do so.
		Respond quickly to requests for additional information. Once the review process starts, a grantor will often ask for more information about specific sections of your proposal. Respond quickly and professionally to those requests.
		Ask for feedback. Not all grant proposals are successful. However, what you learn from unsuccessful proposals can help ensure your future success. Many grantors will send you a letter detailing why your proposal was not accepted. Take that information to heart when developing your next proposal. If you don't receive a detailed letter, call the program officer to see if any information can be shared with you.

Back to: Step #1, Step #2, Step #3, Step #4, Step #5

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