Red Tape Busters

Funding bodies offer grants to not for profit groups to help with project funding. The process of applying for the grants can be made easier if you understand what the funding bodies expect from you. Your grant proposal should begin with a  Short Overview . This is where you use as few sentences as possible to present the key elements of your grant proposal. Ensure that in the proposal you address: • The purpose of your project. • The expected outcomes of your project. How will you achieve the outcomes? • How will the success of your project be measured? • Why is your project important to you and the community? • Who are you? An assessment of need tells the funding body why your project is important. It should detail how their funding will respond to a gap in resources, opportunity or knowledge that really to be filled. Your grant application needs to clearly define the need or problem that your project is responding to. Description of your project or the project goals, objectives,...

Grant writing  may seem like an overwhelming and shudder inducing task. And this is with good reason. It can seem very daunting. Will you use the correct words? Will you be able to use the best sentence structure? What about your spelling and grammar? The best way to ensure you can handle the task of grant writing is to find out the purpose behind what you are writing and the approach you need to take. This will help you clear your head and make a good start. If you get everything right at the start, it will make the rest easier. The key to a successful grant application is research and preparation. Being prepared will help you to establish the tone and purpose of the grant application. The following Questions will help find the purpose and approach when taking on the job of grant writer. Who are your readers? Knowing who your reader is and understanding the funding body will allow you to tailor your grant application’s vocabulary and focus accordingly. A grant appl...

Whether you’re a seasoned grant application writer or someone who is new to the game, we can all improve our grant writing  skills.  Competition for grant applications is at an all-time high, so you need to nail your grant application writing every time.  Want to improve your grant application writing skills for maximum success?  Here are our top five recommendations.   1.     Separate Yourself From the Crowd Chances are, your grant writing  application is one of potentially hundreds of similar applications.  So, ask yourself, “Why should my organistaion receive this grant ahead of other organisations?”  If you think you can complete a project more quickly, then say so.  If you feel like your project has great community support, then round up some data that supports your assertion and get some prominent referees to back you up.  If you feel like you can deliver a project in a more cost-effective manner, then highlight t...

Grant writing is not just about the writing – grant writing is more about the preparation and the development of the strategy. People always ask me about the skills required to be a great grant writer. Everyone always thinks that you have to be someone with experience in writing – maybe someone who writes for a living or someone with a passion for reading/writing novels. To us at Red Tape Busters we focus more on being strategic and getting all our “ducks in a row”. To us the preparation and our strategic approach sets us apart from other grant writing businesses or other grant writers. Our team are all highly skilled writers but they didn't all start at Red Tape Busters with extensive writing experience. We can train and teach people how to improve their writing – it is far more difficult to teach potential Consultants or grant writers how to be strategic, how to prepare and in essence how to significantly improve the chances of success. You can write a great grant submi...