Grant Writing – Case Study 3
In our series of grant writing case studies – this is the third installment. Again in this article will showcase the skills of our grant writers and give readers tips on how to improve their grant writing chances.
We were approached in this instance by a club in a rural area affected by drought which was seeking funding to restump their community hall. The project was going to cost $50000 and the club needed assistance in finding appropriate funding programs which would fund a $50k project. At Red Tape Busters we are very strategic in our approach to the grant writing task. So initially we worked with the client on their project to identify if there was any way of breaking the project up into smaller components in case there were no $50k funding opportunities around given the higher the funding amount needed – the less funding opportunities that exist.
In working with the client we identified that there is not much scope to restump a hall in different stages given that the entire hall needed to be completely restumped at the same time given the extra costs of splitting the project and restumping part now and part later and also the fact that the hall was in fact dangerous with the stumps in the condition they were in and essentially unusable. In pondering on the project our Grant Writer Melbourne identified the possibility of splitting the project in two stages – the first stage being to dig the holes for the new stumps and remove the old stumps and prepare the hall to await the new stumps and the second stage of the project could encompass the purchase of the new stumps and the erection of the new stumps under the hall – thus completing the project.
As such we were able to split the project into two grant writing tasks – the first stage needed a $15k funding grant and the second stage required $35k to complete. In order to identify what funding was currently available our Grant Writer Melbourne undertook extensive research to identify current available funding programs. Two prospects were available – one through the local Council which related to community infrastructure projects with a maximum funding amount of $20k, the second prospect was available through the Department of Sport and Rec and given this was a sporting club this was an ideal program with a maximum of $50k available. We could have maybe applied for the entire $50k from the Department of Sport and Rec however our view is that the closer your project is to the maximum amount – the less chance you have of success. So we decided to pitch two different submissions to the two different programs.
While this was slightly more costly to our client given we were now preparing two submissions instead of one – we were convinced that the prospects of grant writing success were substantially increased. Our Grant Writer Melbourne prepared the two applications which were both successful. The club was successful in receiving the full $50k all because our grant writer was highly skilled and understood fully the strategies involved in the grant writing process and in implementing a cost effective grant writing approach.
