Grant Writing – Do you need qualifications to be a great grant writer?

Many people think you need to be a qualified writer or have some formal qualifications to be a great grant writer. It is a common misnomer that many in the non profit world and especially micro non profits believe that they can’t compete with grant writers from larger organisations because the grant writers are more skilled, more experienced or have tertiary qualifications which will give them the edge in the grant writing process. I will give you a real life example of how this misnomer was reinforced to me as a total falsehood. This actually happened when I first started as a grant writer 16 years ago and it is something I am very proud of but also clearly proved to me that you don’t need a qualification to be a great grant writer. 

I was contracted as a grant writer to a medium sized non profit organisation in the disability sector when I first started this business 16 years ago. The State Government had released funding for the purpose of building accommodation specifically for those in the community with a disability. The funding was open to non profit organisations and property developers and really was encouraging innovative proposals to address the issue of disabled homelessness. I was very concerned when approaching this task that other bigger organisations and especially the property developers would be able to hire more skilled, more experienced, better qualified grant writers than me. Remember this was in my very first year of business specialising in the grant writing world. I was convinced that our competitors would craft a better story and have a glossier production that what we would offer.

After my initial thoughts I decided to develop a strategy for our project that would set us aside from the opposition. In part my strategy encompassed an accommodation project that incorporated accommodation that met the needs of those with different physical disabilities but also addressed the differing accommodation needs of those with a mental Illness. I felt that our competitors might just focus their project on homeless people in the community with a physical disability. To me the funding was available for the building of purpose built accommodation for homeless people with a disability – the specification documents were not specific if this meant only those with a physical disability so to me we needed to build a project which addressed the needs of all people with a disability – physical and mental.

This in fact complicated our project significantly. To build our case I needed to undertake extensive research to prove that there was a real lack of purpose built accommodation in our catchment area for people with a physical disability OR mental illness or suffering from both. I then had to detail how our accommodation would meet the divergent needs of people with different physical disabilities and different mental illnesses. Again I was able to undertake research to demonstrate different initiatives we would incorporate into our accommodation units which would address these vastly different needs.

This proved a very challenging and complex submission and while the organisation I was working for was small in comparison to some of the bigger players we produced a high quality document which set ourselves apart from the competition. Suffice to say my strategy and the quality of my proposal ensured my client won funding in the amount of $4.9 million. Not a bad result at all! This proved to me that you don’t need a degree – I have no degree – you don’t need to be massively experienced – you need to write with passion and clearly demonstrate your project and your organisation stands out from the rest. We achieved that by adopting a completely different and innovative approach. Grant writing really is about being creative and proving how your project will deliver above and beyond the outcomes the funding program is aiming to realize.

So in summary – you don’t need to be a rocket scientist, you don’t have to be tertiary trained, you don’t need years of experience. You need some skill, some word smithing abilities and yes you need some luck in the grant writing process. Have confidence in your abilities and try and set yourself apart from the opposition. To me that are real keys in being a successful grant writer.        

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