Those of you who have sat on proposal review committees have learned to detect the hired hand grant writer, right? Using just the slightly wrong terms, a certain awkwardness in how facts are strung up and a somewhat wooden project design? Lots of standard propoleese words?
Several rants exist on the internet about the disservice done to whatever good cause or whatever cozy researcher position by hiring the under-qualified “grant mercenary” to write your R01. But these are not my clients, nor my causes, and somehow I can’t drum up all that much compassion for the PhD tenure professor who can’t get it together to justify their own research project, especially given four cycles a year, and RFPs that haven’t changed in years.
Our clients are those that run small (budget between 30K- less than 5 million) social and health service providing organizations and local government entities in rural New Mexico. They make between nothing and 60K/year, and they work an average of 60 hrs/week. Their battle is an uphill one, all the time, and they are truly mission-driven. Their budgets never have enough room to hire that “development person” on a permanent basis, and so they call me. 3-5 week before deadline. Frantic.
I think we do a pretty good service to these clients. Many of them I have worked with for years. I know their mission, their services, why they are needed and who they benefit. I know the budget gaps, the organizational capacity and the organization’s needs. I don’t have to make stuff up. Or, let’s say, not very much stuff. There’s no way you can convince me that one of the large national grant writing firms can do the same kind of tailored and detail-oriented service for these local clients.
In the past I saw some of the projects funded by my grants morph into something completely new and unintended, or, fail miserably. As a consequence, I have tried to improve my ability to be realistic about what we promise in the proposal. So after the client gets funded, they don’t hate me for the whole duration of the project, struggling to live up to an impossible plan. Knowing your clients well helps with that reality check too.
Sometimes we work for statewide associations, larger nonprofits, or state government. The picture there isn’t much different at the individual level, although you wonder why improvements couldn’t be made at the institutional level, building the agencies’ capacity to write their own proposals. It doesn’t happen though, so they call me too. 5-3 weeks before deadline. Frantic.
With these projects it’s much more challenging to avoid hired-hand syndrome. Their scopes are larger, the budget bigger, the partnerships more complex, the issues not necessarily close to my expertise. And the politics are usually a nightmare.
Many times during the 3-5 weeks, as I am frantically trying to educate myself on whatever the issue is, I am asking myself, why don’t they write their own $#@! grant? Why don’t they have all this info stored somewhere other than their heads? What do you mean you don’t have last year’s proposal anymore?
And then I send the first draft, and very few edits come back from client staff, the very people who should straighten out all the obvious hired hand phrases and the output projections that are completely fictional. Too few edits, and I think….these people put way too much trust in me. And who are they going to blame if this doesn’t get awarded? Not themselves.
What it boils down to is effective communication, asking the right questions of the right people, in the communication style appropriate to the person. Making it very clear what you don’t know, and what you won’t do. And hoping that your client has the ability to follow up, meet internal deadlines, and focus on at least one good editing session. Tony Poderis has some good pointers on how to work with a grant writer effectively.
As challenging as all this is, it’s what makes me tick. Every new project is initially a confusing unorganized mess of information, facts, and knowledge. Once complete, and the submit button is pushed, it’s a well-organized case for a worthy project. And, if funded, it changes lives.
Once a New Mexico House Representative, upon hearing that I am a grant writer, sighed and said, that there are so many good grant writers who write grants for bad projects or organizations, and they get funded. I told her that I have turned jobs down, because I felt that the organization was too dysfunctional, or had unethical practices. The hired hand does discriminate.
I read all my reviewer comments on unfunded proposal, and I try to learn from them. I haven’t found hired hand complaints in written comments (which doesn’t mean reviewers haven’t thought or said it). But I don’t feel bad about being the hired hand. I provide a service by doing work that that would otherwise not get done. I help decrease the rural resource gap. And sometimes I make stuff up to get my client the award. Get over it.
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