Grant funding can sometimes seem like an impersonal process. You find the grant funding you’re interested in, read the guidelines, submit your proposal, then receive notification of whether you’ve gotten the grant funding. After you get the grant funding, you will possibly submit periodic reports on how you’re using the money. It’s entirely possible to do this on an impersonal, faceless basis, but not necessarily desirable.

The people and organizations that provide grants and funding don’t like throwing their money away any more than you do. They want to know that they’re getting their money’s worth and that they’ve chosen the most deserving recipients. So how can they tell how well their grants and funding are working? The measuring stick for how much value has been derived from the funding is the

The key to receiving grant funding is the grant proposal. The grant proposal is the way that you tell the grant funder who you are, show that you’re worthy of grant funding, and describe how you plan to carry out the activities required to get the grant funding. Grant proposal is a catch-all term, but there actually are several types of proposals.

If you are having difficulty deciding whether or not to hire a grant writer, below are some pros and cons that can help you decide what is right for you. One advantage of hiring a writer to assist you with putting together your proposal is that it can mean faster results. The basic job of a grant writer is to complete your work based on your financial strategy in a timely manner.

It might seem as though grant proposals are pretty cut-and-dried, without much latitude for how you express your ideas. This may seem especially true in the case of government grants, which have pretty definite and no-nonsense guidelines. I’ve written in more than one previous article that it’s important and necessary to adhere to the guidelines, or else risk disqualification.

There are many great reasons to volunteer. If you’re in the United States, there’s a central resource where you can check for opportunities to serve others. It’s www.serve.gov, which is the United We Serve website. The idea is that Americans can individually help the economic recovery and do their part to restore unity in the country.

This article is about avoiding scholarship scams, but what makes it special is that it was researched and compiled by high school students, who are themselves in the target demographic for scholarship scamsters. It originally appeared in The Mash, a weekly publication distributed to Chicagoland high schools.

Who wouldn’t want to open their mailbox and find a government grant check, payable to you, waiting there? The bigger question is whether you can get sufficiently motivated to assess your situation, make plans, learn what you need to, and take steps to do what it takes to get that government grant. (If you’re already my student, you know that I get you a hand with many of those.)

One of your resources for grant funding is foundation grants, so knowing a little about how they work and what gets funded can unlock a vast resource of grant money. We’re going to look at a representative sample of foundation funding. These figures are for what was given out in the United States in a recent year, but many of the categories are similar to the types of foundation grants that

This story happened in Washington, DC, but the lesson to be learned from it can apply anywhere. It shows why government grant money needs to be used properly and there needs to be proper oversight to be sure that it is. Government grant money in the amount of $330,000 was awarded to an organization called “Miracle Hands”

Post-secondary education can be one of the largest expenses we will face in our lives, second only to buying a house. Fortunately, we do not necessarily need to pay the entire amount out of pocket. You may be able to get free money for tuition, and sometimes also books, supplies, and living expenses. Governments, both federal and state/provincial, are potential sources of funding.

How do you think a grant reviewer will see your proposal? Try putting yourself mentally in the place of the reviewer, keeping in mind that he or she has no emotional attachment to your idea, nor any prior background knowledge of why your project would be a good one.Here, we get some hints and insights from professional grant reviewers about what their preferences and pet peeves are (adapted from research by Purdue University).

Many people have a preconceived notion that grant writing is difficult and get intimidated at the thought of completing a grant application. With your busy life, who has time to figure it out? To save you time, here are the top ten tips for writing successful grant applications.

What do you want to know about Pell Grants? Chances are, you’ll find the answer here! It’s a good source of school funding that you don’t have to pay back, so it’s a good idea to know what will qualify—and disqualify—you.

It’s unquestionably a huge disappointment to work hard on your grant proposal, only to have it not be chosen. At this point you can either become discouraged and give up, or you can use the rejection as a learning experience. Most proposals are rejected. Given the large numbers of proposals that are submitted, that is a reality of the process. However, you can try to pinpoint the reason in several ways:

Another article, A Good Grant Proposal Tells a Story, describes the benefits of creating an interesting narrative in your grant proposal. Briefly, you get a grant more easily if your proposal tells a story. Most of us are not born storytellers, so we need to learn the elements of a good story, the order to present them, the purpose of each, and how to convey them all in the most effective way.

In July, 2014, thirteen young Canadian entrepreneurs attended the G20 Young Entrepreneurs Alliance (G20 YEA) Summit in Sydney, Australia. Rebecca Palmer, a Barrie, Ontario-based serial entrepreneur and founder of the Triigo Project, wrote this firsthand report of the key issues and initiatives that resulted.

“Our mission was to encourage the G20, B20 leaders, and the United Nations, to adopt strategies that facilitate youth entrepreneurship as a solution to high youth unemployment rates – 13.6 per cent in Canada – and reduce youth employment below 10 per cent globally by 2030.

I sometimes have students who are gung-ho to get a grant, any grant. They will inquire where to go to get the most money, the most quickly. I ask them what it is they are seeking to fund exactly, and they have no idea. This approach is not likely to succeed, for several reasons. First, grants exist for a purpose. The idea behind them is that the government wants to encourage positive social changes, such as job creation or home ownership,