#IGPW – Grant Professionals Foundation

Founder of #IGPW and #IGPD

The Grant Professionals Association didn’t exist when I drafted my first grant proposal. The Grant Professionals Certification Institute wasn’t incorporated either. Heck, my first grant proposal was written, awarded, and implemented more than five years before those 22 famous attendees met at the Holiday Inn Chicago Mart Plaza for the first GPA national conference. Maybe I would have gone, but I wasn’t invited.

Back then, I didn’t know anyone working on grants in the Midwest. Few of you who are reading this article know what it was like to see your colleagues return from professional conferences energized and eager to show off their new found skills – knowing you had no conference in your field. Only a few of us had a network of more than a handful before the #grantchat community existed. We discovered RFPs on our own, searched the card catalog at the library, and happily attended every grantor workshop we discovered. It didn’t matter if the grant opportunity was a perfect fit or not. We learned from the grant-makers. Yes, we soaked it all up, but we longed for the peer affirmation, too.

That’s why I worked with so many of you to start #IGPW and #IGPD. International Grant Professionals Week is for us, for you, for all grant professionals. It takes a special breed to raise money for a good cause. Like you, my eyes have gone blurry staring into the blank space beneath the questions, with little idea of what to type. Collectively we know how emotionally challenging it can be to ask our friends, family, and strangers for money. I also remember the euphoria of giving every penny of those funds away to other people!

It takes great fortitude to muster a community around a common goal. The pain we feel is real when our passion does not get us funded. Somehow we still feel obligated to schedule the meeting to share the bad news. I have stood there wiping away the tears of my partners before dabbing my own eyes. Why do we do this work? Our passion for good causes and great people knows few bounds.

My fellow grant professionals, you are amazing, every day. You will do it again tomorrow, all of March, and every day next year. We are in “this” together. We are writers, program staff, grant-makers, accountants, executive directors, employees, consultants, and volunteers. Together grant professionals make social change happen, and without you, the world would be a lesser place.

Join me every day, March 14-18, 2016 as we educate, engage others, acknowledge our partners, and celebrate the grant profession. Why? Because #IGPW matters… to all of us.

GPF Board Member, Becky Jascoviak, MBA

Grant Writer, Kids Alive International

becky@kidsalive.org

March, 2015

I am privileged to serve as the Development Writer for Kids Alive International, a faith-based organization rescuing orphans and vulnerable children from abuse, neglect, abandonment, and absolute poverty. We operate residential homes, schools, care centers, and community programs for over 6,000 children in 15 countries worldwide providing hope for today, dreams for tomorrow and purpose for a lifetime. Kids Alive has been serving the “least of these” for nearly 100 years. www.kidsalive.org

It’s 4:00 am and your Skype ping sounds off from your laptop you left open as it searches through thousands of photos of places you’ve never personally seen. Groggily, you get up to answer the Skype call, just now realizing that the email you sent to set up the call did not indicate the time zone as Central Daylight Time instead of the now-ringing Eastern African Time. Fortunately, the Keurig is only a few steps away.

Writing and managing grants for international programs from a stateside office carries a certain set of worthwhile challenges. Whether it is navigating proper channels of government, tribal councils, or seemingly simple visa documentation, there are always parts that come across as illogical and inefficient to the American norm. What we value in having all the information placed in sequential order with clearly defined references, can be lost on those areas of the world that value relationship over process and where a four-hour phone call replaces a 28-page documented trail of evaluation.

It’s not just the logistics of communication that can be challenging but also language barriers, idiomatic expressions, and cultural relativities as well. Inquisition is the key to discovering real meaning. For instance, it is easy to place my own cultural context on field reports from around the world. Directors provide grades as part of a program evaluation, however they reflect a school year that is based on a calendar year – different implications should certainly be placed on that evaluation. Asking lots of questions, about things that seem mundane have led me to the best cultural discoveries.

This, however, is what makes all the challenges worth writing grants that take three times the amount of time, must be translated, and tell stories about kids I’ve never met. Every day, I get to be part of making an eternal difference in the lives of kids and families who have no hope, no future, and no safety net of any kind. I know I’m helping to not just change a life for a little while but transform a family for generations. And, I get to restore play to children forced to grow up way too soon. That is worth every early morning Skype call, photo library organizational stresses, and the occasional culturally embarrassing flub.

To serving more with excellence … and for all the children who get to sleep in a bed tonight, eat a warm meal or go to school for the very first time…

#IGPW

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Grant Development: An International Perspective