Let's Write a Grant Review

Independent Review
SchoolGrants Let's Write a Grant CD

The SchoolGrants' Let's Write a Grant interactive CD was reviewed in the September 2001 edition of the National Association of Secondary School Principals (NASSP) publication, Bulletin, the journal for middle level and high school leaders. For more information concerning NASSP services and/or programs, please call (703) 860-0200, or visit www.principals.org

Susan Powers, associate professor in the School of Education, Indiana State University, Terre Haute, where she teaches educational technology at the undergraduate, masters, and doctoral levels, reviewed the Let's Write a Grant CD for NASSP.

A personal thanks goes to Susan and to the Bulletin editor, Amy Ciliberto, for writing and publishing the review!

Let's Write a Grant
(review reproduced with permission granted by NASSP)

Annually, more than 44,000 funding agencies support organizations with billions of dollars. PreK-12 schools are among those who seek dollars for special projects that extend beyond the general operating budget. Not all schools are equally successful at garnering these resources. How do school personnel create successful grant applications? One tool is now available in a CD-ROM called Let's Write a Grant, created by SchoolGrants.org.

The CD-ROM writers advocate a proactive approach to grant writing (i.e., fully developing a project and then finding appropriate funding) as opposed to the more common, reactive approach when an idea emerges based on a Request for Proposal (RFP). To that end, the CD-ROM provides guidance in seven areas critical to effective grant development: assembling a grant team, identifying the problem(s) or need(s), identifying grant makers and kinds of grants, determining the appropriate funder, reading application materials and grant guidelines, gathering the information to write the proposal, and writing and submitting the proposal.

There are many grant-writing tips available through books, journals, and the Web to help proposal writers, and the SchoolGrants.org website provides many of these tips and links to more tips. However, the power of the SchoolGrants.org CD-ROM for grant writers is in the resources provided on the CD-ROM and through the online Web links available only through the CD-ROM. Some of these resources are available as Microsoft Word documents that can be printed out or added to and modified as needed. The "Project Worksheet" is one example of these documents. This worksheet guides the grant writer through the process of developing the project idea, determining a statement of need, creating project goals and objectives, determining project methods and activities, formulating the project evaluation, conducting an assessment and writing a description of the organization, and developing a budget worksheet (that is also available in an Excel spreadsheet).

Although a worksheet can be helpful to organize thoughts, sometimes samples of required documents can guide the process as well. The CD-ROM provides a repertoire of sample documents including letters of inquiry, support, and community collaboration; cover letters; budgets; and proposals that have been both successful and unsuccessful in garnering funds. Additional proposal samples are continually added to the SchoolGrants.org website.

Other resources help the grant writer conduct research. The CD-ROM provides links to online sources to identify funding agencies, search for relevant RFPs, and research educational trends and reports to develop a comprehensive organization need based on national and local trends.

Let's Write a Grant emphasizes the importance of addressing the funding agency's expectations and requirements. To provide assistance on how to interpret and find relevant information in an RFP, the CD-ROM uses examples on how to "mark up" and highlight RFPs. The CD-ROM also recommends using the agency's scoring rubric to help guide and evaluate proposal development. However, because not all organizations provide a rubric, Let's Write a Grant offers a sample that writers can use in addition to a proposal checklist and guide to assess the quality of the proposal.

The CD-ROM writers recommend that every grant team have as a member a person in the organization whose work time is at least in part dedicated to grant development. This commitment level is necessary to ensure that efforts are not duplicated, to develop community partners, and to generate projects that are proactive and not reactive. The amount and quality of information on the CD-ROM enhances an organization's ability to obtain external funding, but only if there is at least one person who is given the time and responsibility to work on the grant project.

The content of the CD-ROM is easy to navigate. The information is presented as a series of linked webpages and Word documents. Much of the work can be done offline, but an Internet connection is necessary to access information such as lists of funding agencies and research reports. The index makes the organization clear; however, it is relatively easy to lose a sense of where one is in the content if one uses the "Next" and "Previous" buttons instead of the index. Each page requires a considerable amount of scrolling. Users who are not comfortable reading large amounts of text on screen should consider using the printable version available on the CD-ROM.

The SchoolGrants.org website does not duplicate the CD-ROM, and some Web content is available only to those who purchase the CD-ROM. However, the website provides Web links to information on scholarships and financial aid, school safety, national organizations dedicated to education, and more. Although the website is helpful, it does not provide the grant writing guidance of the CD-ROM.

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