News from the Grant Professionals Foundations

Helping a Beginner Get Off to a Good Start!

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By Jana Gowan – 2017 Nora Stombaugh Memorial Scholarship

Thanks to a scholarship from the Grant Professionals Foundation, I was able to attend the annual Grant Professionals Association Conference in San Diego this year (November 2017).

I accepted a position as a full-time grant writer at a public university in December 2016 with a beginner’s awareness of grants. I had years of experience in development, fundraising, and education, mostly at a small nonprofit with a mission very close to my heart and only about a dozen colleagues. Transitioning to a larger institution with over 600 employees and thousands of students while navigating federal grant applications for the first time has stretched me. Thankfully, my predecessor was a member of the GPA, so I was able to plug into this invaluable resource from the beginning.

The GPF scholarship made it possible for me to attend the annual conference. From the first event, I appreciated the sense of community encouraged by the association. Working as the only grants professional at my organization can be isolating, so one of my favorite parts of the conference was simply getting to meet fellow grants professionals and ask questions. I learned the most from these casual conversations during meals or mixers.

Of course, the conference sessions were beneficial too. In fact, there were so many offerings relevant to my work, that I am very grateful for the shared handouts on the Google Drive folder. From the sessions I was able to attend, I learned how to offer more effective training for my non-grants colleagues, build better relationships with the development team, and craft a stronger evaluation plan as just a few examples.

Thank you to the Grant Professionals Foundation for the scholarship and the opportunity to attend this conference. It was the perfect ending to my first year as a grants professional as it will help me start the second year on the right foot with sharper focus and a network of support.

International Grant Professionals Day 2018

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PRESS RELEASE

International Grant Professionals Day – March 9, 2018

Overland Park, KS: The Grant Professionals Association (GPA) announces the fourth annual International Grant Professionals Day to be held on March 9, 2018. International Grant Professionals Day increases awareness internationally of the work grant professionals perform as well as celebrates the work of grant professionals, who serve as administrators, consultants, managers, grant-makers, and writers.

Every day, grant professionals work diligently, usually behind the scenes, to seek grant opportunities, administer projects and implement important programs for the benefit of society’s disadvantaged and underserved people. These talented professionals are dedicated to providing the highest standard of ethics, quality program development, thoughtful project implementation and wise financial stewardship. Often, those standards extend beyond the mere financial and include capacity support, long-term solutions to challenges, fundraising assistance, expert project management, sustainable programming and so much more.

“Please join me in celebrating International Grant Professionals Day. Grant professionals are actively involved in making things happen in our society, from public works to helping the less fortunate. All of us are impacted by the hard work that grant professionals accomplish to make our communities better. Please take some time to thank a grant professional today.” stated Jo Miller, GPC-President of GPA.

Events planned for March 9, 2018 encourage grant professionals and their organizations to celebrate themselves, the profession and highlight important issues faced by grant professionals.

GPA is a professional organization that builds and supports a community of grant professionals committed to serving the greater public good. We have partnered in this effort with GPCI, the grant profession’s organization that is dedicated to promoting competency and ethical practices within the field of grantsmanship, and the Grant Professionals Foundation (GPF), the fundraising partner ensuring that resources are available to train, credential and advocate for all grant professionals.

For more information, visit the International Grant Professionals Week web page at www.grantprofessionals.org/igpd.

For Immediate Release Contact:

Kelli Romero, Membership & Marketing Director

Grant Professionals Association

kelli@grantprofessionals.org

(913) 788-3000

GPA Member Benefits are Endless

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By DeaRonda Harrison

Taking the leap and sharing with my peers to work with nonprofits I could see the stare and gaze of concern in their eyes. In 2013, I attended my first GPA conference where I had never even written 1 grant, yet. I wanted to make sure I was making the right decision. This conference sealed the deal, and I knew this was what I wanted to do. The 2013 GPA national conference was my first BIG date with GPA, and I knew it was time to make a career transition and do more purposeful work. I desired to have a greater impact on people and just because you desire to do good doesn’t mean that it won’t come with challenges and I had to at least create a plan.

I joined GPA to surround myself with professionals that were experts in the field of grant writing. I knew it was a skill I wanted to pursue further as someone who was thrust into the industry; I thought it would be most advantageous to be around people that knew what they were doing and took their craft seriously. I desired to learn from those proficient in the field and little did I know it would be because of the GPA membership that I would acquire 90% of my clients as a consultant.

I get often asked where I get the majority of my clients, and I typically say through word-of-mouth, but through some shape, form, or fashion they have come from a GPA contact. It was not my intent to become a member to attract clients, but it has become a beautiful residue of my membership.

The GPA member benefits are endless. My membership has allowed me to create relationships with business professionals in the community to include other nonprofit associations and businesses. I have had the opportunity to work with successful grant writing firms as an independent consultant by making connections at both the national and regional GPA conferences.

GPA membership provides professional development. As the grant space shifts, I don’t want to get caught up in the way I’ve always been doing things but change and improve with the industry. The membership provides up to date training and webinars and addresses the concerns with solutions from professionals. I take full advantage of research tools offered to members through GrantStation and GPA’s own active Facebook-like community, GrantZone. In this forum, participants ask questions and provide suggestions to help each other and simply make new connections. Associating with other members who are willing to share their business practices and solutions is my top reason for being a member.

I am thankful that the association is ever evolving and comes up with new ideas and new ways to include and support their members. As a former regional board member, I enjoyed the opportunity to connect with other chapter leaders that share their successes with other regions. As a former chapter leader, I was able to garner new relationships with others that understand each other’s expertise to be able to serve nonprofits best because not one grant writer can be everything to everybody. I am grateful for the benefit the GPA membership provides with support from GPA staff, chapter leaders, and members.

Telling my peers that I was transitioning from government to solely work with nonprofits would usually lead the reaction “oh um that’s rewarding.” All I know is that I enjoy grant writing and even though it has its challenges and is not for the faint of heart I wouldn’t want to be doing anything else. But with the change in culture and the direct impact of philanthropic efforts especially with the popularity of TED talk videos, it finally makes sense why someone would be interested in changing the world today. Ultimately, it resulted in a more positive reaction from peers of “what a rewarding and purposeful career.”

 

Conference Experience as a Scholarship Recipient

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by Karen Watkins-Watts, GPC

First, my sincere gratitude to the Grant Professionals Foundation (GPF) for the scholarship enabling me to attend the 18th Annual GPA National Conference in Atlanta in 2016! Defraying the cost of conference registration (and other travel expenses) made the 2016 conference possible for me.

I had the privilege of attending several past conferences, however, with a district-wide budget deficit and year-end reduction-in-force in 2016, my organization set a policy prohibiting district funding for out-of-state travel. Notwithstanding, district leadership understood the tremendous benefit of this important professional development opportunity for me as Grants Manager. With the GPF award, they provided me the professional development days and some travel expense reimbursement.

The annual GPA conference has been and continues to be greatly valued by my organization’s (Brockton Public Schools in Brockton, MA) leadership and myself as a key grants professional development opportunity. Attending the national conferences has been pivotal to my growth as a grants professional! The workshops and dialogue with grant professionals from across the country have increased my knowledge and skills of best practices in the profession, has produced better quality proposals, and increased public and private grant resources for our large, urban district. Serving a diverse population of nearly 18,000 students, many of whom face poverty and myriad of socio-economic barriers, this work is especially critical, compounded by an increasingly challenging funding environment in the public education sector.

I also credit the GPA conference for elevating my professional status in the profession as GPC in 2009. I learned about the GPC credential at a prior conference, then subsequently studied with a cohort of fellow members from across the country and took the exam at the annual conference in Long Beach, CA.

Since joining GPA and the GPA Massachusetts Chapter in 2007, I have served in a leadership capacity including responsibilities as Secretary, Vice President, and President. Then Immediate Past President, it was important that I attend the 2016 conference (and the Chapter Leadership session), to represent our chapter and to gain and share ideas from other chapters and chapter leaders. We had successfully convened our first New England Regional Conference in June of 2015 and had begun discussion on our next conference. We were eager to build on our success and learn from other chapters. The regional event is vital to the growth of our chapter and its presence throughout New England (Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Vermont, Maine, and Connecticut).

I am extremely grateful for the work of the GPF to advance our profession and privileged to be an awardee of the 2016 GPF scholarship!

Benefit of Attending Conferences In-Person

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Konstandina Dulu

2017 Becki Shawver Memorial Scholarship

by Konnie Dulu

Upon award of the 2017 Becki Shawver Memorial Scholarship, I attended the 2017 GPA Annual Conference. This is the first grant professional conference I have ever been able to attend, and I would describe it as very well worth the trip. As a young professional who’s been in the field for 4 years, finding quality education is difficult. Finding quality education my organization will physically send me to is even rarer. In a world of webcasts and digital attendance, attending in-person meetings are all the more important.

The benefits of in-person meetings are the people! There are many aspects to attending in-person starting with Keynote Speakers. This year’s Keynote–Thomas Ahern–was very awe-inspiring. Without being in the grants field himself, he was able to draw you in, make everything relevant, and inspire you to succeed in your own career. Much of what he said directly correlated to working in a grants position within a company that may not fully understand your role. Attending excellent sessions is another very beneficial in-person experience. Some of the topics focused on creating a career development plan, teaching grants to those not in your field, increasing grant capacities, knowing how to manage from the middle, and recognizing your own power as a grant professional. Not only was the content engaging but also I was able to listen to those around me. The collective experience of other professionals in the room was wonderful! In every session are not just expert presenters but others in your field and in your shoes, experiencing many of the same day-to-day difficulties and various personalities types.

Learning from and discussing in a group setting with like-experienced or like-situational individuals is one of the greatest benefits of the GPA National Conference. Quite a few of the impactful takeaways I gained from this year’s meeting are from random one-on-one chats with other attendees and vendors. Everyone is a source of knowledge. Attend meetings, attend in-person, reach out a hand and introduce yourself, take a moment to have interest in others around you and what you may glean from them. It is the in-person interactions that help you grow as a professional and develop network connections in your field.

 

Amy made the leap to attend the 2017 National GPA Conference in San Diego

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2017 Susan Kemp Memorial Scholarship

by Amy Shankland, GPC

Once upon a time there was a grant professional named Amy who loved her career. She joined the Grant Professionals Association in 2007, became active with her chapter, and attended every national GPA conference starting in 2009. Amy even obtained her GPC in 2010. An unexpected job change in 2015, however, brought a halt to her conference attendance. While she still did some grant work, it wasn’t enough to justify attendance to her employer.

Every day she went to work but missed using her grant skills and experience. Amy also missed her grant professional friends. She made do with the occasional webinar and local GPA meeting, but she knew she was missing out on the big picture for her development.

One day, Amy made the leap to become a full-time grant consultant. She had an amazing client and wanted to become the best possible development director for her organization, the Link Observatory Space Science Institute. She applied for a scholarship from the Grant Professionals Foundation in order to attend the 2017 National GPA Conference in San Diego.

Because of that, Amy received the Susan Kemp Memorial Scholarship and was finally able to return to the conference to get the latest information on trends in her field. She flew to San Diego in November and was thrilled to be reunited with her grant “peeps” from all over the country. Amy enjoyed her morning walks from the Hyatt to the conference hotel, Paradise Point, and loved her first ever visit to San Diego. The perfect weather, sunshine, and beautiful surroundings kept her alert and open to learning, despite the three-hour time difference.

Because of that, Amy attended workshops that gave her valuable information she could use right away for her organization; networked with others who worked in the science field; and gave her own workshop showing attendees that grant professionals really are superheroes! Amy discovered she loved healthy California food, right down to her last bites of quinoa, rice porridge, and steel cut oatmeal.

Finally, she returned to Indiana with incredible enthusiasm and is already implementing what she learned to help Link Observatory Space Science Institute become Indiana’s Space Center. Her bosses were quickly impressed with her new knowledge and expertise.

THANK YOU, Grant Professionals Foundation!

Most Useful and Pertinent Conference Ever

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By Polly Bates; St Rose Dominican Health Foundation

2016 Pamela Van Pelt Conference Scholar

Receiving the Pamela Van Pelt Scholarship last year allowed me to attend the Grant Professionals Association conference for the first time. After a 25-year career spent writing and editing a wide variety of communications, I found myself in a new position that was focused solely on grants. As the grant officer for the St. Rose Dominican Health Foundation, I am responsible for conducting grant funding research, preparing and submitting grant proposals, working with program staff to ensure contract compliance, attending program audits, reconciling grant payments, and developing an annual program plan. A year ago, most of these duties were still new to me. Attending the GPA conference greatly sped up my learning curve and deepened my understanding of the overall grant process. By far, this was the most useful and pertinent professional conference I have ever attended. Whether it was a keynote speech, a workshop, or a reception, I learned so much from the varied experience and perspectives of accomplished practitioners.

Each day was packed with relevant information—on program design and evaluation, persuasive writing, the sustainability question, and ethical considerations. A panel of local funders provided a wealth of guidance: get local employees to engage in what you do; build connections because “relationships determine results”; don’t ask questions that are answered on the organization’s website; leverage collaborations to solve big problems; put your request succinctly and clearly outline the problem to solve; remember that “people don’t give to you, they give through you,” and no one wants to be treated like an ATM. All the speakers were generous with their knowledge and advice. In fact, the atmosphere of the conference was so friendly and congenial that it was easy to meet new people and have interesting conversations. I also enjoyed meeting other grant professionals from my state of Nevada and going out to dinner with them. I was so inspired by the conference and the people I met there that I have decided to pursue the Grant Professionals Certification. It’s wonderful to embark on a rewarding new career, and I’m grateful for the scholarship that helped jumpstart my interest.

Skeptical to Enlightened

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By Matthew Fornoff; Community Food Bank of Southern Arizona

2016 Conference Scholar

I don’t like to label myself as a grant writer. Until I took my current position just over two years ago, I had only assisted writing a couple grants. So of course, the Community Food Bank of Southern Arizona (CFB) – an organization I’d been trying to get back into since I left my graduate school internship with them – hired me as the full-time, lead grant writer with a goal of bringing in $5 million in grant funding.

Actually, that timeline excludes a few steps, as you probably expected. A better starting point to explain is February 2007, when the U.S. Peace Corps flew me and a few others to Malawi for a two-year attempt at saving the world. Most Peace Corps volunteers are full of a noble, sacrificial energy and belief that they can truly make the world a better place. (And they often do, but usually not in the way they expect.) Generally speaking, Peace Corps volunteers implement ambitious, effective projects that make for heartwarming stories in their hometown newspapers. After two years, the volunteer leaves the tiny rural village in which they’ve been living – a community that faces deep systemic poverty, limited resources, and usually widespread chronic illnesses. Then the borehole that the volunteer helped fix breaks again. Or the school text books the volunteer acquired fail to find their way back to the school. Or the small business the volunteer helped a single mother establish doesn’t flourish. Even when you implement a successful project, you will experience some of this. And it begged the question: how can one person go into a community and truly contribute to improving the lives of the people who live there without fear of working in vain?

At least partly this is the question that led me to pursue a Master of Public Health degree. I wanted to plan and implement programs that could change behavior and systems in a lasting way. I wanted to know how to work with individuals or small groups or big groups to identify needs, resources, and solutions, and then how to put together the jigsaw puzzle of variables that would make their lives and the world a better place. During two years in academia, I studied the core tenets of public health, supplemented by focused classes in behavior change theory and program planning and implementation. After graduation, someone hired me to develop programming around local food systems in a town on the U.S.-Mexico border. This was the experience that the CFB saw and that they apparently desired in a grant writer.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one: The grant writer does 90% of the steps in the proposal development process, including all the writing, drafting the outputs and outcomes, and pulling together the budget. When the grant is awarded, program staff have limited, if any, familiarity with the information in the proposal because they had limited, if any, involvement in the process, including discussing with the grant writer how many trainings or participants should be included or where or how often activities would happen. Of course, none of us enlightened GPA members do this. We’ve either learned differently from the beginning or been reformed. For me, it was the former.

In graduate school, I learned to plan programs based on a proven behavior change theory and framework using a needs assessment that I conducted with direct input from the community. During my time in the border town, I put this into action, learning to distinguish the safe and structured academic experience from the messy, protracted real world. When I was hired as the Grants Program Manager, I could not imagine planning a program without close collaboration with at least one program staff (and usually more) and at least one finance staff (usually more). Often that team consisted of 6-8 people. The CFB has dozens of programs and subprograms and a budget in the tens of millions. In no dream world could I craft a grant proposal in a silo. Even though I had the title, I wasn’t a grant writer. I was a critical thinker, a problem-solver, an evidence-based program planner, interested in figuring out how we can solve the root causes of hunger, food insecurity, and poverty.

I was skeptical of the development team – this group of people who (in my mind) said what they needed to say or shook the hand they needed to shake to get the money in unrestricted dollars in the door. Maybe the cared about the cause; maybe they only cared about the size of the check. But did they really know what our program staff was doing each day? Did they know how to teach a Spanish-speaking single mother how to install drip irrigation in her potted tomato plants? Did they understand the struggles local farmers face just trying to make a living and, even so, how difficult it is for them to change their habits in order to make their operation more productive?

On top of that, I’m skeptical about professional associations and national conferences. I’ve been to a few that are pretty good, but usually, they’re an opportunity to get out of the office for a few days and reenergize, and maybe to visit a new city and socialize with coworkers in a different setting.

The GPA has changed my views on both these points. I’ve learned that most of us enlightened grant writers are critical thinkers and problem solvers. That winning grant awards is fun and what keeps us in business, but that the merit of the program and whether it works is almost as valuable, if not more. I’ve learned that my development team colleagues value me as a link to deeper information about our programs, and they are making stronger efforts to interact and learn directly from program staff. Further, at the risk of sounding like an advertisement, the GPA conference is the best national conference I’ve been to. Every breakout session is informative and applicable, the networking at the conference is outstanding, and the continued connections afterward help to keep that energy fresh throughout the year. Receiving the GPF conference scholarship definitely eased the burden when I went to persuade my supervisor to pay for my membership and conference expenses.

I told my supervisor recently that I have no interest in becoming a fundraiser. I understand why grant writing is part of development, but I have no desire to sell proverbial candy bars door-to-door. With grant writing, I have to really understand the problem and the need, and I get to really think about how that problem can be fixed and who can do it, and we get to come up with a concrete action plan with measurable outcomes, so we can see if we’re actually doing it. Only in the past year or so have I begun to self-identify as a grant writer now that I understand my role more clearly. And, even though my office has no windows to the outdoors, I can’t do this job in a silo. The cross-sector team that makes me an effective grant writer includes several people in my organization, and now it includes the GPA and the network I’m building through my involvement with the association.

No Wining About This Event!

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A fun new event is happening at the 2017 GPA Annual Conference in San Diego from November 8-11. In addition to our regular Silent Auction (which will be digital this year!), GPF will also hold a Cork Pull. A Cork Pull is a fun little mystery game involving wine. And what’s not to love about wine?

Guests attending the Welcome Reception (and continuing, if still available) will have the opportunity to ‘pick a cork’ for a donation of $20. The cork is assigned a number that corresponds to a matching mystery wine bottle for you to take home or enjoy in your room. The wine ranges in value from $10-$50 per bottle and has been generously donated by members of the GPF, GPA, and GPCI boards.

Don’t forget-you still have time to donate an item to our Silent Auction. Sign up here. Thank you for your support, and see you in San Diego!

Privilege of Remembering Through Giving

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By Lauren Daniels, GPC; Writing Services

When I decided to enter the grant writing profession, the first thing I did was look for a group or association of colleagues. To me, being a professional meant linking to an association. I found a local group that in turn led me to the American Association of Grant Professionals. (You can tell by the name that was a while back.) I had been writing commercial proposals, but I found a mentor (one of my first colleagues) that guided me through the transition of working with nonprofit and government applicants. That personal involvement set me on a new path. I have been fortunate to be in a profession that has allowed me to have my own profitable business. It didn’t happen overnight but once established, proposal development and project management spawned a satisfying career.

A component of being a professional is the obligation to assist or “bring along” those new to the profession. The recent death of Michael Wells highlighted a benefit of being a part of a group of colleagues. As comments about Michael appeared on Grant Zone, the idea of memorializing him through a scholarship was presented. How fortunate we are, as a profession, to have already institutionalized a charitable nonprofit entity, the Grant Professionals Foundation (GPF), that allows us to collectively honor and remember colleagues. We remember them by supporting others through professional development activities such as providing registration fees for the national conference, annual membership dues, and GPC examination fees, or through assisting chapters with regional conferences. GPF services extend to providing a venue for chapters to support their own members through their own objective scholarship program. I especially enjoy hearing the names of the scholarship recipients, while also remembering or honoring those that inspired the rest of us. It is further gratifying hearing those same recipient names mentioned again over time as chapter leaders, national committee members, GPC credentialed professionals, and GPF, GPCI, or GPA board members. To me, this demonstrates investment in a legacy rather than simply making a donation.

To support my profession, I contribute annually to the GPF. This is a part of my yearly charitable giving. For me, it is a privilege and reflection of my gratitude for the good things that I have received. We as colleagues have a couple of options for supporting GPF. We can participate collectively through the Every Chapter Challenge or individually through a personal donation. Recently, GPF has added a monthly giving option for those who prefer distributing their giving over a longer period. I invite you to support our profession by remembering GPF in your annual contribution habits. Remember that Giving is a Privilege.